Spend management of employee plays a major role in how they feel about their daily experience at any organization. In this rapidly evolving era, there is a need to create expense management best practices that derive great value through effective strategies, which must include several major components, technology and latest tools. While human interaction is undoubtedly important, emerging technologies and digital transformation are crucial for businesses to drive meaningful change in the employee experience and enhance their productivity. Spend management was already the priority for businesses much before. However, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of technologies which might have taken a longer time instead.
The global pandemic transformed our personal and professional lives as we rapidly learned how to work remotely. In response, businesses also had to digitally transform nearly everything about the way they work – especially when it comes to managing company finances. With existing work pressure, employees look for better technological solutions, which can enable them to manage their regular schedule. A key aspect is to have a spend management solution, which can have a bigger impact on how employees feel during their everyday work. To make the most of every investment, requires a transparent system for clear spend visibility.
Initiating with a secured spend management system
At first, organizations must take stock of spend management solutions available for the employees. In fact, managing employee expenses is about finding the right balance between control and agility so that everyone’s interests can be served. There should be process efficiency, spend control, and transparency needed to ensure there is clear view of the employee spends. The spend policies and workflows must be flexible and scalable enough to support operations over the long term. The software could instead be one of the more narrowly focused employee experience tools known to have the most impact, such as intranet.
Engagement for better productivity
Even before the pandemic, employers were debating on the ways to engage better with their workforce to ensure high retention rate. However, it was seen that employees are looking for better tools to better communicate their business spendings. With modern tools, organizations have that option to provide a software that can not only support the employees to manage such expenses but provides a transparent platform for the employers to avoid any fraud. A happy and engaged employee is more productive and less likely to leave. In addition, when the employee is facing the client, the positive impact results into better customer experience.
Critical considerations during implementation of spend management software
Implementing a spend management software is not a cake walk for the organizations. As with any technology implementation, focusing too much on the technology and not enough on the business process and outcomes can lead to the unwanted results. When installing and implementing such software, it is important to focus on the outcomes and to understand what the strategy should be for best possible results. It is also important to consider the needs of every employee. While some of the workers are only with the organization on a temporary basis, many of them spend a significant amount of time working at the company. Engaging and including every employee and ensuring that they have a positive experience will enhance their productivity and help them blend into teams.
By working together to digitally transform spend management across the organization, finance and IT teams can empower the entire business to achieve the agility and financial stability, a business needs to grow and thrive over the long term. By evaluating the way finance and IT work together and the solutions that are in place, both departments can collaborate and solidify the technology needed to meet employee needs so the business can move forward. Together, businesses can implement the processes and software required to increase process efficiency, spend control, and transparency.
One of the best experiences of the past year and a half is that it has pushed finance teams to come to terms with the inefficiencies and gaps in their spend and cash flow management. No matter where they are in solving those problems, there is no going back to the old way of working. Finance leaders need IT to bring together siloed data, automate manual operations, and enable deeper levels of insight if they hope to continue investing in growth and ensuring a satisfying job experience for employees across the organization. Not only can a strong finance and IT partnership help improve the bottom line, but it will help improve the employee experience and better position the business for future growth. By giving employees a system as a part of assurance that their entire business finances will be transparent and secure, organizations can establish a unique way of operations that can be continuous, irrespective of what the future holds.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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