Finance Departments: Clear Workflow Congestion With Content Management

For Finance Departments, Document/Content Management could mean working smarter, faster, and more securely, clearing the road ahead for you and your organization.

A Finance Department is a major thoroughfare for any organization, serving as a central pathway for financial activities and resources moving at top speed. Just like a major highway connects parts of a city, this department links various departments and operations by managing budgets, processing transactions, and ensuring the financial health of the organization.

Nothing disrupts a thoroughfare like major congestion. Nothing frustrates a financial department like broken workflows that stall out approvals, delay productivity, and cloud the current financial “roadmap.”

Document/Content Management, by its basic definition, is a centralized platform that provides organization and structure to the plethora of documents, content and records you need to do business. For Finance Departments, this could mean working smarter, faster, and more securely, clearing the road ahead for you and your organization.

5 Common workflow challenges Finance Departments Face in their Daily Tasks.

1. Manual data entry and reconciliation: Many finance teams still rely on manual processes for entering and reconciling financial data. This can lead to errors, time-consuming tasks, and inefficiencies in closing the books or generating reports.
2. Approval delays: Financial transactions often require multiple levels of approval, which can slow down processes like invoice payments, purchase orders, or expense reimbursements. Delays in approvals lead to bottlenecks and missed deadlines.
3. Inconsistent reporting and data visibility: Finance departments often struggle with accessing real-time, accurate data across various departments or systems. Disconnected data sources make it difficult to create unified, up-to-date financial reports.
4. Messy records management: Finance departments often store records across different systems (e.g., ERP, accounting software, spreadsheets), leading to fragmented data that is difficult to access and manage. Additionally, manual processes often lend themselves to time-consuming, error-prone paperwork.
5. Compliance and audit challenges: Keeping up with regulatory requirements and ensuring compliance can be a tedious process. Finance teams may lack the necessary tools to track, document, and audit financial activities efficiently, leading to potential risks during audits.

5 Ways Document/Content Management can Alleviate those Challenges.

1. Data Entry made easier: Replace manual data migration and repetitive operations with automated workflows to save costs, drive productivity and support key environment, social & governance (ESG) initiatives.  
2. Automate approval process: Expedite and automate AP approval processes from procurement to payment with the ability to recognize different invoice formats, and push them through workflows that keep the approval process moving no matter where your employees happen to be.
3. Clearer view of finances: Obtain a more transparent view of cash flows throughout your organization. Insightful analytics dashboards and powerful process automation tools give finance departments an edge in finding new efficiencies and managing funds effectively
4. Improve Records Management: Laserfiche enables the finance department to store documents like invoices, receipts, and financial statements digitally, eliminating physical storage needs and making documents searchable. All financial records are stored in one secure repository, making it easier for finance teams to access historical data for audits, forecasting, or analysis.
5. Compliance Comforts: Enable easy periodic audits with automated compliance tools which save compliance costs and time, and support industry compliance standards like SEC, FINRA, FDIC, and NCUA

8 Real-Life Finance Department Use Cases for the Business Road Ahead. 

1. Customer Invoicing: Enhance efficiency by swiftly routing documents to the appropriate parties, including key approvers and stakeholders, ensuring transparency throughout the invoice management process.
2. Cash Flows: Gain a comprehensive view of your incoming and outgoing funds through processes supported by detailed analytics dashboards.
3. Audits: Simplify audit procedures with audit trails that provide a complete history of actions taken on each document in your repository.
4. Purchase Order (PO) Generation: Extract crucial details from scanned or imported purchase orders, making it easier to identify and match them with invoices.
5. Invoice Processing: Automatically capture data from scanned or imported invoices, simplifying the verification process and ensuring accurate matching with related purchase orders.
6. Expense Reimbursement: Streamline the expense reimbursement workflow by efficiently routing documents between requesters and approvers.
7. Budget Transfers: Improve your organization’s ability to move funds between departments using pre-built automation templates available through a solution marketplace.
8. General Ledger: Promote transparency in your organization’s reporting by maintaining accurate records and securely storing transaction evidence.

Is the way your company manages, stores, and access documents in need of a numbers audit?  Are you strapped to manual, paper processes, or storing documents in too many separate silos to keep track of? Unsure of what types of workflows you need?

Consider Datamax. With our Content/ Document Management engagement, we can provide the consultation and the tools to arm you with workflows that really work for your specific business needs, beginning with a Discovery process to holistically understand your people, your processes, and where improvements can be made.