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How Business Process Automation Reduces Operational Costs Without Sacrificing Control
Reducing costs is one of the biggest reasons for a company to implement Business Process Automation (BPA) software. Automation lowers labor costs, cuts down on costly errors, speeds up financial processing, and streamlines workflows. It’s an efficient method for managing financial processes that yields a good return on investment.
People often wonder, though, about potential downsides to BPA software. If you choose to automate with a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform–which is one of the most cost-effective and easy-to-use BPA solutions available–it’s a common concern that your organization will lose control over the financial processes. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. You can get all the benefits of SaaS BPA software without sacrificing operational control.
How BPA Cuts Costs
There are several direct and indirect ways that BPA software helps companies save money. For starters, automation reduces the cost per transaction by lowering labor costs and speeding up processing. Tasks like generating purchase orders, reconciling invoices, and processing expense approvals become much faster and more efficient after automation. That means the cost per PO, invoice, or expense goes down dramatically.
Automation also gives your company tools to reduce costs in other areas. In Accounts Payable, you’ll be able to avoid late fees by always paying on time. Your AP and procurement departments might even be able to work together and negotiate favorable purchasing contracts and/or early payment discounts.
BPA software also reduces or eliminates errors, including spreadsheet errors that can be extremely costly. The software also creates easy-to-access records of financial transactions. This streamlines audits and makes it simple to access accurate, timely financial data.
SaaS and Operational Costs
If you opt to go with on-premises software for your company’s BPA system, it typically involves a large initial purchase that’s handled as a capital expense. With SaaS programs, though, you typically have a low upfront cost and then treat the subscription fee as an operational expense. Cloud-based systems don’t cost your company anything in terms of hardware, server maintenance, or IT support.
With a transaction-based pricing system like with NextProcess, you only pay for what you use. The software scales to match your company’s needs each month. There are no hidden fees and you’ll be able to budget easily for the expense. With NextProcess, you also won’t pay any fees for adding additional users. You pay for what you use and can add as many or as few people to the system as you want. This helps keep costs down as your company grows.
Maintaining Financial Control
Using SaaS for your BPA automation is similar to outsourcing in some ways. Rather than outsourcing a whole business process to a third party (as with offshore outsourcing), your company “outsources” the software by working with a SaaS supplier. However, with SaaS BPA, your in-house employees are the ones running the software and using it to manage your company’s business processes.
You might not expect implementing BPA software to give you more control over your financial processes, but it often does. Compared to paper-based and manual processes, automation software makes it easier to implement controls and maintain oversight. CFOs retain full oversight through configurable approval workflows and real-time reporting dashboards.
With highly configurable NextProcess software, your company stays in complete control. We’ll work with you during implementation and beyond to customize the software to fit your company’s preferences and needs. You’ll even be able to automate compliance with company policy and external regulations right there in the software.
Departmental Examples
Let’s take a look at some department-specific examples of how BPA software can improve control over financial processes.
In purchasing, you can use the software to set limits on where employees can shop and how much they can spend. Features like punch-out catalogs and item catalogs make it easy for employees to submit purchases within the software system and ensure that those purchases align with procurement policy. The software automatically generates purchase orders without the hassle, and potential for errors, that come with doing it manually. In addition, the software includes vendor management tools to make it easier for your procurement department to work with vendors and notice any unusual activity.
In accounts payable, BPA software supports implementing key payment controls including 3-way matching, payment approvals, automated checks, and segregation of duties. When you automate purchasing and accounts payable with modules from the same software suite, the software can communicate to automatically cross-reference invoices and POs. It can even auto-approve payment for some invoices, depending on your custom settings.
For expense reports, BPA software simplifies and streamlines the process of enforcing reimbursement policies. You can customize the software to automatically enforce company policy such as requiring receipts (which employees can upload quickly by taking a picture with their phone), automatically cross-referencing receipts, and categorizing acceptable and unacceptable expenses. This also helps prevent fraud.
Try NextProcess Today
With SaaS business process automation software, your company can reduce costs, streamline business processes, and ease the burden on finance teams all while maintaining control of financial processes. Transparent processes and data that updates in real-time provide the clear insight and oversight tools you need to manage cash flow, access actionable data, and take control of finance departments.
Rather than replace employees, automation makes their jobs easier and frees up time for them to devote to other things. By automating routine tasks, finance teams can shift their focus to valuable tasks like strategic analysis, interdepartmental collaboration, and forecasting.
NextProcess is an end-to-end financial solution that integrates seamlessly with existing ERPs. You can automate the entire procure-to-pay cycle as well as travel and expense reporting and digital document management without worrying about software conflicts. We work closely with your teams during implementation to customize the software and get your team comfortable with our user-friendly system. Contact us today if you have any questions or to set up a free demo so you can see first-hand how our software could work with your company.
