Managing a company’s finance and accounting often makes for a high-stress environment. When money is on the line and every department is fighting for their piece of the pie, you can’t afford to make any mistakes. Unfortunately, manually overseeing money coming in and out leaves room for human error––even with highly skilled, knowledgeable employees using cloud-based platforms.
Finance teams have gone digital, but just digitizing financial processes doesn’t always make things easier. Without automation, it can actually slow you down, adding extra time double checking and inputting data between systems and devices.
Simple automation can eliminate this chaos. With the Odyssey Platform, you can deeply integrate your tools, applications, and devices to make finance and accounting responsibilities more efficient. Here’s how.
1. Improved financial visibility means fewer surprises.
Integrating your various tools and applications gives you one clear snapshot of where money is coming in and where it is going out. This holistic view of your company’s finances allows you to better understand cash flow and create better forecasts, resulting in better decision-making.
Your financial team is able to use real-time updates on accounts, balances, and invoices to ensure your organization is not taken by surprise.
2. Faster budget and reimbursement approvals.
A slow budget approval process can slow down an entire company. However, manually working through different department’s budget needs is incredibly time consuming and frustrating for all parties involved.
With automation, you’re able to set up automatic approval systems for specific budget items or reimbursement claims. By eliminating the small tasks (and the lengthy back and forth of people trying to check in on a payment status), your finance department can focus their time in a more strategic way.
The Odyssey Platform allows employees to simply upload expense documents and receipts to be sent to an approving manager. Once the manager gives final approval, all information is automatically forwarded to Accounts Payable.
Learn more about this process from our “Expense Management” Use Case.
3. Keep sensitive customer information protected.
A data breach can be costly for any organization. In additional to paying costly fines, exposing sensitive customer data to the wrong people can severely damage your company’s reputation.
When using third-party tools and applications to accept payments from customers, an automation platform can keep those transactions secure. By managing third-party risk in ways manual processes cannot, an automation and integration tool can ensure your customers are properly protected.
4. Maintain accurate information and data integrity.
While your finance team might be highly skilled, no one is completely free of human error. A change in policy or a minor mistake can make information inaccurate, resulting in an endless chain of errors.
Through automating data forms and processes, you can remove the risk of human error and ensure you always have the correct numbers to work with.
For example, the Odyssey Digital Automation Platform can automatically generate invoices by pulling data from multiple sources and populating an invoice template. Accounts Receivable can then preview the completed invoice and send to the appropriate customer.
Learn more in our “Invoice Generation” Use Case.
Using the Odyssey Platform to Reduce Financial Risk and Improve Efficiencies
You want all your team members working with the most accurate information possible, but when it comes to your finance and accounting departments, the stakes are a bit higher. When just one number is incorrect, it could have catastrophic consequences for your business.
Integrating your applications, systems, and devices through the Odyssey Platform enables your team to work more efficiently with less risk. By streamlining tedious and time-consuming financial processes that are prone to human error, your team can make smarter decisions.