Business growth is a fundamental goal for many organizations. Strategies for reaching growth-related goals are often directed outward through sales and marketing departments. While developing new markets and increasing revenue in existing ones is essential for growth, many companies overlook internal bottlenecks in other operational areas which can stifle these growth initiatives.
A prime place where many inefficient and ROI-draining bottlenecks are often found is in the accounts payable department. This is because unless an organization has fully implemented available AP workflow automation capabilities, it is likely lumbering along with an inefficient, manual, and resource-heavy AP process. It’s easy to understand when looking at this situation strategically, how remaining in this state will make it unlikely for your organization to maximize its full growth potential.
The antidote is to create an AP process that supports and drives your company’s goals forward. This requires adopting new tools and a new approach which leverages the automation and standardization of AP processes. This is truly the starting point for creating a growth-driven AP department capable of delivering measurable value across your organization.
By doing so you’ll be able to achieve dramatic increases in processing efficiency, spend visibility, and improved data analysis to inform strategic growth decisions. Fully leveraging these benefits plus the cost-savings and risk mitigation inherent in the transition to automated accounts payable may seem daunting at first, but it doesn’t have to be if you follow these steps:
1. Evaluate and select a robust and scalable accounts payable solution to meet your organization’s current and future needs. When your firm has a strategic growth plan in place, it’s imperative that all operational decisions align with it to maximize efficiency and to ensure that they meet your company’s needs as you scale.
2. Create a standardized AP workflow to support the growth of your organization. Standardizing your workflow goes hand-in-hand with creating efficiencies for your firm through automation. In order to truly benefit from an automated workflow, you must have a standardized AP process in place. Your selected AP platform vendor should help you create and refine your workflow to support a workflow that will help you achieve long- and short-term goals.
3. Implement your organization’s chosen AP automation platform. It’s go time! Are you ready? Now you’ll be able to start to see the benefits of automated AP as you and your team become more familiar and efficient using this technology.
4. Create team training and hiring standards to ensure compliance with your new AP automation processes. As your organization grows and more people join your team, standardization becomes even more critical in order to keep everyone on the same page, moving in the same direction, and focused on the same goals. When you onboard the new members of your team, take the time to provide them with documentation of all of your operational processes they will be involved in, including accounts payable where applicable.
5. Create a culture of compliance within your organization for adhering to the AP system you have implemented. Once you have the organizational standards in place and you have your team trained, the next step is to make sure the standards are met consistently. This is how you can effectively manage growth and get the most out of your automated AP system over time.
6. Develop metrics for the new efficiency gains and cost-savings achieved through the systematic automation of your AP workflow. Once you have utilized automated AP processes for a few months, you’ll be able to benchmark your new efficiency gains, cost-savings, and increased capacity to not only process more payables, but to make AP a value-added function for your company.
7. Utilize and report on AP data to inform your organization’s growth-centric KPIs. The ability to draw strategic data out of your AP activity is the golden grail of automation. Being able to align your data with your organizational goals and utilize insights on spending, workflow efficiency, vendor relationships, and more is critical. Information about your available working capital and cash flow which can be projected using AP insights are the keys to ensuring that your company has the financial foundation required to execute its growth plan.
Your company’s growth trajectory can only be as dynamic as the organizational structure, resources, and processes which support it. Taking the steps outline above now to automate your company’s AP department will allow you to continually scale and grow with a nimble and efficient AP process, enhanced productivity, and reduced financial resources and risks. Learn how to support the growth initiatives of your organization now and in the future by implementing and leveraging the benefits of an automated AP workflow solution and earn CPE. Join us on November 2 at 2 p.m. ET for the Steps to Becoming a Growth-Driven AP Department webinar. You can register here.