Want to Grow? Lay a Solid Foundation with Intelligent, Global-Ready Systems and Processes

As a finance leader, you play a critical role in helping the CEO overcome barriers to growth and expand the business – for example, by:

• Providing real-time visibility and insight-driven decision support
• Coaching department heads on budgets and where to invest to achieve growth goals
• Proactively managing and forecasting cash flows and spending
• Freeing finance staff to pivot to the most pressing business issues hindering growth
• Empowering your finance team to efficiently handle more work as spending grows

But to do this, you need intelligent, global-ready systems and processes that are built to support growth, automate manual work, and equip your finance team to be a trusted source of real-time insight.

The problem is, most finance departments still do a great deal of work manually. In fact, companies still spend 60% to 70% of their time manually getting consistent information analysis and insight before business decisions can be made. These inefficiencies distract finance professionals from focusing on growing the business – and in some cases, actually hinder it.

Consider, for example, how uncontrolled, poorly directed spend and fraud can prevent efficient, profitable growth. Your business needs cash flow to fuel growth initiatives, but without the right visibility and controls over discretionary employee spending – for example, travel, expenses, and invoiced purchases – these costs can quickly spiral out of control and leave little to direct toward what’s most important.

IT leaders can support your move to intelligent finance by implementing next-generation digital solutions that exploit intelligent technologies and automation. By working with IT to implement an intelligent solution that integrates, manages, and automates travel, expense, and invoice management, CFOs can digitally transform spend management and support business growth. Finance benefits from having a single, near-real-time view into expenses globally, by team, and more, as well as the power to predict and proactively manage spending. This ensures that every bit of budget is directed exactly where it will have the biggest impact. Employees across the business benefit from simplified day-to-day tasks – for example, through the use of engaging, mobile apps for booking travel and filing expense reports. And finance staff benefit from built-in, intelligent automation that frees them to focus on higher-value, growth-enabling initiatives.

Want to learn more about how you can take the leap to intelligent finance solutions that transform spend management? Read the latest paper from SAP Concur solutions: “Scaling Travel, Expense, and Invoice Management for Growth: How CFO-CIO Collaboration Can Bring Intelligence to Spend Management."