The future of business is paperless, and it is coming faster than anyone imagined, with the rate of automation having increased fivefold during the pandemic lockdowns. Old fashioned Accounts Payable (A/P) models of pieces of paper flowing through businesses seeking approvals, coding or additional information have rapidly become impossible to operate with the large scale Work from Home movement.

will only continue to gather momentum as more businesses recognise the inevitable. Tremendous improvements in are making the decision to transition to an automated solution easier than ever.

Businesses understand that they must have leaner A/P staffing to reduce overheads, and the productivity gains and enhancement from mobile, cloud-based A/P automation tools is now impossible to ignore. The repetitive nature of A/P processing and the inherent time-consuming drudgery involved can be eliminated, releasing the employee to move to more value adding tasks, improving both employee morale and productivity in a single stroke.

and into the future will both expect and demand that businesses utilise the most modern technology available to empower them to do the role to their upmost ability. Only by doing so will businesses be able to attract and retain the best talent.

What are the key factors in successful

Mobility – As the need for people to conduct businesses wherever they are (office/home/café/interstate) only increases, so does the importance of mobile capabilities in systems increases. Such mobility enables managers to approve invoices wherever they are, vastly speeding up the process which improves organisational efficiency. The mobility factor gives decision makers within the organisation real time visibility into exactly what is happening which enables better decision making. Both cash flow and P&L forecasting are vastly improved.

AI driven automation – Another important productivity enhancement tool is to utilise increasingly sophisticated machine learning in the pursuit of improved productivity and accuracy within the finance department. From extracting and populating key data, suggesting account coding or even working out complicated departmental splits the utilisation of A-I to facilitate the speed of transactions is a key part of the automation productivity story.

Supplier portals – Another key enhancement which adds value both internally and externally is the ability to give key suppliers visibility and insight into payment information, saving time for an organisation’s staff in answering queries and improving and deepening the relationship between businesses.

ERP integration – A necessary and standard feature required to ensure productivity gains are achieved is a seamless integration into the ERP system. This ensures accuracy of data and allows the real time visibility provided by A/P automation to flow through the entire organisation.

Further benefits accrue to businesses in regards increased transparency of data, ease of data storage and retrieval, minimising time and cost of audit, enhanced accuracy and importantly, reduced risk of fraud.

The future of successful business lies in automation of key manual process to provide efficiency. To scale and grow profitably manual paper-based processing must end. offers the means to achieve this digital transformation now. The pandemic has only accelerated the process.

Access to all the experience and expertise 51ˇçÁ÷Concur has gained in assisting thousands of businesses to go paperless and move business processes to the Cloud is only a click away, as you can . Act now and a digital A/P process and an improved business is as little as 6 weeks away.

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A business continuity plan (BCP) is common practice within an organisations overall business plan and risk management strategy. Its purpose is to help the business be prepared for, and continue to operate after, an incident or crisis. The current pandemic is an unfortunate, global, example of an incident which has stress tested many BCP’s around the world. Some other examples of incidents which can incite one or many aspects of a BCP are:

• Natural disasters – floods, storms, drought.
• Technology – computer networks, business critical hardware, data breaches.
• Work health & safety – accidents that are caused by work-related hazards.
• Economic and financial events – global financial crises, interest rate increases, rising costs.
• Human resources – union and industrial relation issues, human error, conflict management.
• Suppliers – failure or significant disruption to supply chain for inventory or raw materials.

The types of incidents can be quite broad and vary significantly, depending on the business, the event, and the potential negative impact on the business and its people. In terms of the current pandemic, this event has had an impact on several levels because it is global, and the nature of the event has meant that it has likely touched nearly every area of the list of incidents above with its ripple and flow on effects – directly and indirectly (such as ‘panic buying’). Most incidents are often more isolated, still severe, but limited only to a single business, a single industry, a single country, for example.

What is in a Business Continuity Plan?
It is not just a box to tick, as I am sure many businesses will attest to at present. The contents and complexity of the BCP will be unique to each business, but should all have 3 core components:

1. Risk management plan (and business impact analysis) – outlining the key risks that could adversely affect the business – what is the risk, what is the potential impact?

2. Response plan – how the business will respond if one of the risks becomes a material event?

3. Recovery plan – how will the business recover, following the event? If at all.

Even with a BCP in place, risks are often subjective and it’s difficult, or impossible, to accurately measure the foreseeable impact. It requires an element of scenario analysis based on what is known, what is foreseen and events of the past.

Key takeaways following COVID-19
Like we saw following the global financial crisis of 2007, I would expect that businesses will have a ‘return to normal’ debrief of the events over the last 4-5 months.

One aspect that many businesses have underestimated during this pandemic was the need to be able to decentralise business critical processes at short notice, while minimising disruption, and cost, to their business. Organisations who were most prepared appear to be those who had already commenced a digital transformation strategy or at a minimum had enabled a semi-remote workforce.

If we and procurement as one example, we have witnessed the extreme strain placed on the supply chains of supermarkets, where demand for certain products increased drastically while at the same time certain manufacturers were unable to provide products. It highlighted the need for real-time visibility for these businesses to be agile, making informed decisions about pivoting their operations to deliver the best outcomes for their customers.

I have seen can be in a challenging business environment and the importance of good communication with suppliers and customers. In my engagements with customer and prospects, one of the biggest challenges they have faced is effectively decentralising the finance function which traditionally is the last area of the business to be addressed.

In my field, and have been highlighted as areas where the challenge of manual processes have been magnified by the need for workers to move to a remote working environment. Not only from a business process point of view, but also a severe lack of control and visibility into financial liabilities at a time when cash flow is critical. Lack of insight also leads to the inability to make informed decisions, quickly, when it matters the most.

Digitising these areas along with other core business processes, will not only form a basis to build out a solid BCP, but also ensure businesses are better prepared to survive the challenging times we are experiencing today.

This blog originally published on .

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Finance, procurement, supplier networks, and IT teams are working together more closely than ever to tackle broader business challenges, create new business models, and leverage a changing workforce. But for this strategic effort to succeed, leaders need a comprehensive, coordinated approach to spend management that works in real time.

Why Real-Time Spend Management Matters

The banking and insurance industries are facing an urgent need for a real-time spend management solution. Banks’ costs have been rising faster than revenues, with banks in the U.S. and the EU experiencing significant cost increases on average. In parallel, increased regulatory burdens, such as IFRS17 for insurers, IT investments, and fines are unlikely to change. The real opportunities for improving margins lie in cost reduction by making more strategic spend decisions.

Managing and optimising spend while staying agile is a challenging balancing act. To fund innovation and manage risk across complex supplier networks, businesses not only need full control over each spend category, they also need a comprehensive bird’s eye view into spending across all categories in real time. Growth forecasts must be measured against risk tolerance. Business leaders must continually weigh spending on growth against spend control. Information silos and lagging spend data threaten this intelligent decision-making.

Today’s pace of decision-making is only accelerating. Decisions that were made over the course of many years are now made in months or weeks. Information silos hurt visibility into big picture spending decisions, damaging the bottom line. Fifty percent of CFOs say inefficient decision-making is causing margin erosion at their companies, according toĚý. Spend transparency cannot be ad hoc; it must be consistent and automated so that every single expenditure is part of a broader, coordinated strategic effort.

Spend Management for Insurance and Banking

Many companies are hindered by different planning processes and disconnected planning tools, with manual consolidation between them. This creates unnecessary inefficiencies in planning and a lack of alignment with organisational strategy.

solves this problem by bringing together networks and ecosystems, capturing every source of spend, across every category, for a single, unified view. A holistic approach to managing spend — across every source and every category — is essential for achieving strategic business objectives. Visibility and transparency can result in more competitive bidding, rate card creation and enhancements, and other areas of cost avoidance. This, in turn, can have a ripple effect on the organisation, reducing risk, uncovering opportunities, and improving agility.

Intelligent Spend Management: Real-Time Insight, Unified View, Better Decision Making and Cost Savings

Intelligent Spend Management gives financial teams insight into spend and exposure across every category via a “single pane of glass” view. This single view aligns spending priorities with corporate policy priorities, balancing investments in innovation with core business needs and transforming procurement models. 51ˇçÁ÷leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide real-time insights that accelerate decision-making. 51ˇçÁ÷Fieldglass Live Insights, for example, simulates and predicts external talent scenarios, helping customers make workforce decisions from one uninterrupted workflow.

Together with 51ˇçÁ÷products like 51ˇçÁ÷Concur software, the results are significant. JP Morgan Chase, for example, used 51ˇçÁ÷Concur software to standardise its expense and non-PO invoice processes, resulting in Ěýthrough greater control and efficiency. AIA Insurance Group Limited used 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba software to achieveĚý, transforming its business.

Learn more about howĚýĚýcan achieve critical cost savings and drive success for your business.

This article first appeared on the Global 51ˇçÁ÷News Centre.

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All businesses are facing unprecedented challenges right now as the impact on the global economy continues. Business travel is restricted, events are cancelled, and supply chains have been weakened — it is not “business as usual” in any sense of the phrase.

51ˇçÁ÷was founded nearly 48 years ago with a very clear purpose: to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Right now, more than ever, we are leading through our purpose. 51ˇçÁ÷is uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on businesses at a time where supply chain and business travel disruption is very real.

For the next 90 days, we areĚýĚýso any buyer can post their immediate sourcing needs and any supplier can respond to show they can deliver. Free to post. Free to respond. Open to everyone.

Access to 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba Discovery will help buyers and suppliers connect quickly and effectively, and minimise disruption caused by shipment delays, capacity issues and increased consumer demand in times of crisis. 51ˇçÁ÷operates the largest business network in the world, representing more than 4 million suppliers in over 190 countries and $3.21 trillion in commerce on Ariba Network. We can help make the connections to keep the supply chain intact, that ultimately have an impact on the everyday consumer.

The 51ˇçÁ÷Concur portfolio offers a tremendous pulse into the travel industry. Each day, TripIt from Concur processes hundreds of thousands of travel itineraries for people around the globe, monitors their flights, and alerts them of any changes or delays. In response to increasing schedule changes and cancellations stemming from COVID-19, we want to do our part to help those who must travel.ĚýBetweenĚýMarch 13 and March 31, anyĚýĚý— and download the app if a first time user — andĚýreceive TripIt Pro for six months. Existing TripIt users will also get the premium service complimentary for six months. By doing so, we hope to make things a little easier for anyone that must leave their home and family.

There is a lot of uncertainty and fear around the world right now as we collectively fight COVID-19. Opening access to 51ˇçÁ÷technology is a clear way we can help address these global challenges.

This article first appeared on the Global News Centre.Ěý

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Thankfully the cloud is widely accepted and understood as essentially a network of computer servers that allows users to access their data through the internet. My employer, uses cloud computing to store and process information so rather than our customers needing to install software on a single machine or hard drive, they can access it through their web browser or mobile application.

Whilst I believe the cloud is now largely understood by the broader business community, I suspect the understanding on how to value and benchmark SaaS Companies is relatively unknown.

This is quite typical in the tech start up sector where valuations or share prices may be grossly over or under inflated. It’s not uncommon to see volatility of listed company share prices as investors struggle to value these companies who commonly report year on year net losses whilst revenue and customer growth exceed expectations. This is often due to the fact these SaaS companies have a truck load of venture capital funds at their disposal and invest these funds for growth (people, product and marketing).

As a chartered accountant I thought I had a solid grasp on financial metrics and whilst the traditional metrics such as revenue, cash flow, profitability, liquidity still hold true, the introduction of the SaaS business model has introduced some new metrics that I had not heard of 10 years ago.

Below I will explain six metrics that should be considered when assessing the performance of a SaaS company:

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – are the costs incurred to secure a new customer. These costs include upfront investment in sales and marketing.

Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) – this is calculated by dividing Monthly or Annual Recurring Revenue (A or MRR) by customer numbers at the end of period. To grow revenue, 51ˇçÁ÷Concur can either add more customers or increase Average revenue per Customer (ARPC). By adding new , ARPC can be increased as more value is provided to our customers.

CAC Months – represent the number of months of ARPC required to recover the cost of acquiring each new customer.

Churn – Simply this is the % rate which customers cancel their recurring revenue subscriptions. Perhaps a better measurement of this metric is Monthly Recurring Revenue (“MRR”) Churn, this measures churn through revenue rather than the number of customers. MRR churn is the amount of MRR attached to customers that leave the company in the previous 12 months.

Lifetime value (LTV) – is a key measure of the value a customer represents to a SaaS company over the customers lifetime. LTV is calculated by dividing ARPC over the monthly churn rate to get the total revenue expected from a customer, then multiplied by the gross margin percentage to get total gross margin expected per customer.

There are multiple ways to improve LTV, such as enhancing products and services to existing subscribers to increase ARPC, improving efficiencies in costs, and investing in retaining customers. LTV of a customer can indicate potential future margins, whether the SaaS company is acquiring the right customers, and provides a strong signal to investors as to what they should expect as the company scales.

LTV/CAC – The LTV of the customer divided by the cost of acquisition per customer. The metric gives the gross margin of a customer’s lifetime as a multiple of the cost of acquisition. A LTV/CAC ratio of 1 would mean margins over the lifetime just cover the cost to acquire the customer.

Just like technology, the metrics and methods of valuing companies in the digital age are evolving, so keep these above indicators in mind when investing your hard-earn’t cash in that next SaaS Unicorn! Recurring Revenue is powerful just like compound interest.

This article was originally published on .

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