For many startups and scale-ups financial administration is clunky and time-consuming. Seeing your revenues increase is exciting, and nobody wants to do expenses, invoicing, payroll, and financial reporting manually. These practices are complicated and outdated. Fintech solutions have modernized the way we do finance and for all types of businesses help significantly streamline financial processes.
In a time of economic uncertainty, it is even more important to have control and visibility of your business expenses. Research we conducted earlier this year among Dutch SMBs shows that 37.6 per cent of them don’t have a good overview of their expenses. And with a lack of overview, you can’t fully control your financial situation.
Working for a scale-up myself, I know the tension between cash management and growth. While we are globally experiencing the impact of macro-economic factors beyond our control, some key common practices can and should be upheld to ensure we ride out the storm. It is always important to never lose sight of your North Star: your growth strategy.
There are a number of other very important factors to keep in mind:
Always forecast
Making your projections as reliable as possible will not only give you a better picture of your company’s financial health but also make clear how money moves in and out, ensuring you avoid surprises and can spot trends faster. It also aids in making more informed decisions that will drive growth further down the line.
Predictive analytics is one of the tools that can help your finance team make better decisions. Using these analytics makes it easy to sift through large amounts of data and then translate it directly into action.
Keep it simple
Additionally, ensuring transparency and a good helicopter view for all people accountable for a cost centre within the organisation is important. Automate and digitise as much as you can, to ensure wider visibility and control of spending as it happens – not before!
Not only you and your finance team are involved in financial processes, but also your other employees. Don’t forget that manual financial administration tasks such as filing your expenses can be a true burden for your employees. There are plenty of ways to make this easier and it all begins with engaging the entire workforce with information about the importance of the spend they are carrying out.
Let your finance team focus on more strategic work
The role of a finance team has changed considerably in recent times, so give them the tools they need to make smarter decisions and free up time to spend on more strategic work.
If you want your team to be able to work more quickly and only spend time on what they’re good at, make sure your people spend as little time as possible on often boring, lengthy and manual processes. Fintech solutions can help smoothen many business processes, help to avoid frustration and deploy your team in the best possible way.
Scaling together
Many fintechs are designed to scale as you grow, enabling startups and scaleups to manage your finances effectively along their journey. Also, fintechs are often meeting the regulatory requirements you have to adhere to. Pick the solution that is able to meet your unique needs.
So while starting to use a fintech solution can feel like a hurdle to take at first, a fintech can save startups a lot of time – and ultimately increase margins. Finance teams spend less time collecting and monitoring data, but can focus on the future. Growth is ultimately the goal of any business, and using fintech solutions ensures that this is sustainable growth.
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/fintech/streamline-processes-using-fintech-solutions/
