Unlocking Value Beyond Boundaries: Where to start?

Bringing all the pieces together

Companies often work in several silos. It is a great idea to bring in neutral experts to evaluate your overall current IT ecosystem. They can bring best practices and an external objective point of view, specific industry, sector or local knowledge including examples of how to optimize workflows in areas such as, but not limited to revenue generation, invoice processes, talent and skills management, organizational collaboration and knowledge sharing, security, and customer success to name a few.     

When aiming to improve efficiency, organizations must consider the entire ecosystem, including people and processes. One effective approach is to prioritize successful automation and integrations as essential decision criteria. By doing so, organizations can seamlessly combine solutions that align with their specific needs, ensuring optimal workflows. However, achieving this synergy is challenging and requires a thorough organizational readiness evaluation beyond technical considerations.

High-impact questions that can be used when self-evaluating include:

1. Are we prepared to integrate diverse solutions effectively?
2. Do we have the necessary education and awareness to manage these workflows?
3. How can we balance cost-effectiveness with optimal performance?
4. Do we have the leadership skills and capabilities to make the change happen?
5. Which type of business model is best fit for the future?
6. What is negotiable, what is not?
7. How will the change add value and get internal buy in?
8. Who will lead the change?

Automation

Business leaders are under immense pressure to deliver results in the face of market challenges. Automation is an immediate way to improve efficiency and productivity across every department. The technology is no longer a “nice-to-have”; it’s a must-have, because automation tools improve both business and employee performance. And automation can help combat burnout reduce employee sick leave and improve work-life balance, which are critical retention strategies for companies. 

Context is always key. However, an example and hot topic where automation can add value is expense management.

Sweden’s Digital Leap

From a finance perspective Sweden is at the forefront of a digital society. On the private side B2C. Almost a cashless society, Swish, makes sending money quicker than before. BankID enables digital signatures for everything from individual purchases to contracts. This is now spilling over into the B2B world which includes for example expense management, with it being relatively common for individuals to have to submit expenses (More so than other EU countries).

The result of this is high expectations in terms of speed and user experience.

However, companies in general have not managed to keep up. This is now changing. There is currently a legislation submitted (expected to be finalized in July 2024) to enable organizations to move away from having the painful process of being required to store physical expense receipts to a digital model. This shift, coupled with automation, not only streamlines processes and improves employee experience  but also offers significant cost savings, particularly for large organizations and better aligns the expectations of employee and employer.

Another example and currently a hot topic is that today’s automation technology can trigger immediate actions based on real-time customer behavior or market shifts, providing critical information to decision-makers in a timely manner. Examples include monitoring Net Revenue Retention or Customer Behavior and using leading indicators to support decision-making and to enable faster time to action.

The technology is ready to go, it is now a case of shifting mindset to align people, legal, processes and the tech to reap the full rewards.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

When talking about unlocking value AI has to be mentioned. The primary focus of AI is to enhance efficiency and productivity across various industries. By deploying AI in different open models, companies are exploring the potential of integrating machine learning into their operations.

On the theme of expenses AI can be used to make every part of the expense management process mobile and automated. For example to automatically analyzes the account, date, amount, and currency on every receipt while following local tax rules and categorizing what type of transaction has taken place. This often delights the person needing to submit expenses because it in simple terms makes their lives easier, giving them more time to focus on higher priorities.

Share Your Thoughts in the Comments.

• What are your automation success stories or key lessons learned?
• What are your pain points and what do you wish you could automate?
• How has automation and or AI changed the way you work?