2020 was not an easy ride, it saw many businesses face prolonged uncertainty and cash flow strains.
With cash flow management more crucial than ever to weather the continued economic uncertainty that many businesses are facing, more and more business leaders are turning to tech to optimise their financial processes.
Additionally, over the course of 2020, with the introduction of the furlough scheme in the UK and budget cuts often leading to staff layoffs, an increasing number of businesses have needed to adapt to operating with a reduced headcount. These new strains on internal resources have turned the attention of many business leaders to improving the efficiency of their team’s processes, often through utilising technology. In fact, research by Deloitte found that:
68% of business leaders have implemented tech solutions to help their businesses deal with the economic impacts of COVID-19
However, with new fintech startups appearing every week and over 800 fintech apps now built specifically for SMEs (Xero, 2021), navigating the fintech landscape and choosing the right solutions for your business can be a daunting task.
Having supported businesses in improving cash flow and increasing efficiency since 2014, we’ve learnt a thing or two about the world of business fintech solutions and what to look for. In this article, we’re sharing our advice on some of the leading fintech apps and how they can support your business.
To take your fintech knowledge further, in March 2021, you can hear from a panel of fintech industry experts on how to improve cash flow and increase efficiency at your business by harnessing the power of fintech. Join the live event on the 4th of March or request the on-demand recording.
Cut your admin time and run a more efficient payables process
How much time are your team spending on accounts payable processes? Payables processes can often require substantial manual time input and the associated tasks are often repetitive and mundane, leaving them prone to human error.
You can cut your costs and time by up to 80% with automated procurement and accounts payables workflows. With solutions like Lightyear, purchase orders and bills can be approved in seconds, cutting your team’s time on manual tasks. To supplement this, businesses can utilise Lightyear’s data extraction features and gain a real-time view of their business’ payables data to make smarter cash flow and forecasting decisions.
Make better business decisions and improve your cash flow
Having accurate and effective budgeting and cash flow forecasting can mean the difference between success and failure for your business. Fintech tools can improve your visibility over the future of your business, helping you plan and taking the guesswork out of critical business decisions.
By adopting the right fintech tools, such as Spotlight Reporting, you can use integrated reporting and forecasting to achieve greater visibility over your business’ performance and create insights to inform better outcomes for your business.
Streamline your expenses process and keep accurate spend data
Manual expense processes can be mundane and time consuming for both your staff to submit, and your finance team to process. If you’re running your expense process across multiple, disjointed platforms or tackling expenses submitted in different formats, and across various company cards, you can easily save time and money by streamlining your expense process into an all-in-one solution like Expend.
Save time on accounts receivables and put an end to late payments
If your business sells on payment terms, late payments and the follow ups that ensue can be extremely expensive and time consuming. Not to mention, the countless hours spent on manual payment admin like uploading invoices and completing data entry - which are often subject to human error, can easily eat away at time your team could be spending on more impactful and rewarding tasks.
By using fintech to automate these repetitive tasks and implementing accounts receivable automation, tools like Chaser are helping finance teams drive greater efficiencies and save upwards of 15 hours per week.
