Getting Your Company on Board with Automating Company Spend

Most companies are feeling pressure to digitally transform how they do business—to stay competitive, build resilience, and more. But in today’s climate, they also need to get more done with fewer resources—and less money.

That means it could be tough to get other stakeholders at your company on board with investing in finance automation. After all, if your paper-based spend management flow works well enough, why not keep it for now?

If you’re all-in on automating your company’s finance process, but other company stakeholders want more information, we have some helpful tips and talking points to help you get people on board.

44K+ reasons to automate your spend management

In a twist on a familiar saying, sometimes you need to spend money to save money. Especially when it comes to building your company's technology infrastructure. And the sooner you can get up and running, the better.

Spend management automation can help businesses quickly start saving money on travel, expense, and vendor invoice processes—seeing positive ROI within 8 months, on average, of adopting the technology, according to the Analysys Mason 2022, Travel, Expense, and Vendor Invoice Management Study. The study also found that companies that adopted spend automation reported saving an average of $44K yearly on vendor invoice management and $52K yearly on travel and expense management as a result.

Learn more: Automating Finance on the Way to Digital Transformation

What are your company’s goals for digital transformation?

The shifting economic landscape has made a lot of businesses redefine their long-term strategies, including using automation to improve their processes. The Analysys Mason 2022, Travel, Expense, and Vendor Invoice Management Study found:

Top finance leader pain points included...

• Incomplete documentation
• Fraud/risk management
• Difficulty tracking spending trends and behaviors
• Employee experience issues with manual expense and invoice management workflow

The top three expected benefits of digital transformation included...

• Improving business process efficiency
• Enabling the business to run successfully whether employees are in the office or working remotely
• Making faster progress in digitizing finance processes

And the savings reported after adopting SAP Concur solutions for spend management included...

• 28% reduction in excess mileage claims
• 26% reduction in budget overspending because of increased visibility into spend data
• 26% increase in tax reclaim

You can keep these points in mind when you have conversations with other stakeholders. But it’s also important to acknowledge the issues your stakeholders and their teams are dealing with that spend automation can specifically address.

Get aligned: Connect with stakeholders' interest

To get a clearer picture of what your stakeholders’ needs are, ask them how the following benefits could impact their teams in the everyday and the longer term:

• Streamlining processes, eliminating manual processes, and improving compliance with policies.
• Ensuring corporate data security and regulatory compliance, built-in policy compliance, and meeting duty-of-care requirements.
• Having clearer visibility into employee spend, financial reporting, and spend management processes.
• Getting control over costs and savings through supplier negotiations.
• Improving safety, satisfaction, and ease of support for travelers.

Aligning with your finance leader

Your finance leader or CFO knows your company’s finance process inside and out—including its pain points. They might also already see how the company could benefit from automating its spend management.

So they might not ask, “Why?” but “Why now?”—which is a good opportunity to lead with the speed to ROI. In addition, remind them that automation can also help them bridge the gap in finance processes for all work arrangements, gain real-time visibility into cash flow, and keep up on shifting compliance regulations.

Helpful resources for finance leaders include: the Concur Expense ROI Calculator and Concur Invoice ROI Calculator, and the eBook, Oxford Economics Global + US Report: Leadership in a New Era.

Are you a finance leader looking for talking points to get buy-in from others? Check out: How the CFO Can Create Partnerships and Boost Company ROI.

Aligning with your AP team

With an automated spend management solution, you can connect all your company’s finance applications and platforms for a much more efficient, streamlined process. And when your accounts payable team has an up-to-date view of all outstanding AP items, finance decision-makers have a clearer idea of what decisions need to be made—and when.

AP automation can help your team avoid making late payments, find opportunities to pay earlier for discounted rates, and get insights to help negotiate better rates with vendors.

Helpful resources for AP include: Concur Invoice ROI Calculator and 8 Questions to Ask About Your AP System.

Aligning with your IT team

Your IT team will play a major role in the company’s transition to full spend automation. Be sure to communicate that cloud-based automation of your finance processes can help your IT team: Centralize finance technology into a single platform, protect company and customer data, and create secure and integrated back-end systems.

Helpful resources for IT include: Oxford Economics Global + US Report: Leadership in a New Era, a video on Top Integration Questions from IT Leaders, and learn about our world-class security.

Aligning with your HR team

Your human resources leader is familiar with employee pain points and can help determine the best way to use automation to solve these issues. Talk to your HR team about how automating the finance process can benefit the company and its people by: Reducing manual tasks for employees—for submitting and processing expenses and invoices—so they can focus on higher-value and more rewarding work, as well as ensuring duty of care for all employees.

Helpful resources for HR include: this eBook on how to make employees happier.

Connecting your finances, connecting your teams

When you meet with decision-makers in your company, ask about their challenges and work together to help solve those issues. Take note of who seems clearly ready for change and on board with digital transformation. And be sure to collaborate with the team members who can help you get buy-in across the entire company.

Being a good listener is key to building bridges and finding ways to set up your company—and its people—for greater efficiency and success.

Ready to start a transformation conversation? Feeling stuck in your journey? Contact us.