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How Personalization is Key to Better Accounting

Feb 02, 2018

How Personalization is Key to Better Accounting

Communication is essential to a business’ success every bit as much as it is to one’s personal life. We’ve seen the recent rise in collaborative digital tools, and they are a clear testament to the value of fluent communication: more effective communication correlates to a rise in quality and efficiency. It’s in the best interest of the entire operation that employees are granted access to the kinds of tools that allow them to best complete their tasks.

CONVERSATION BREAKDOWN AROUND ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

No matter how big or small your business, challenges around efficient collaboration are a recurring theme. These types of communication struggles are especially apparent in Accounts Payable, due to varying means of communication often resulting in mistakes, delays, and headaches. Accounts Payable is subject to hierarchical approvals and bureaucratic red tape to perform many of its primary functions. AP bears the brunt of the challenges inherent to the many different ways people choose to communicate and execute.

Poor communication has adverse effects on the timeliness of invoice management in countless instances:

What if a manager on your approval chain doesn’t recognize the source of an invoice? They’re likely to reply via email to inquire about it. If nobody else can see it, or this manager forgets it, finance won’t understand why there’s delay.
One of your aprovers suddenly realizes they need an additional approver; is this a matter that should really require the involvement of AP?
What if there’s an invoice question that can’t be answered by anyone except the vendor? The conversation occurs via email or phone, or “offline,” and finance again is left out of the communication altogether.

INCLUSIVE COMMUNICATION PLATFORMS ARE YOUR FRIEND

All the above scenarios reveal a common misstep: a lack of efficiency around communication. This is not only irritating, moreover, it can actually become expensive. Finance leadership isn’t without options, however. There are a few things finance leadership can do, right now, to help AP run a more succinct operation:

Develop a means to get everyone on the same page and included in the conversation.
Make sure the people directly involved with a supplier, those who own that relationship and know the context of an invoice, are active participants in the approval process.
Strengthen accountability of all collaborators with full process transparency

Better communication seems like an obvious fix. Nonetheless, "communication breakdown" persists as a waste of valuable resources. Financial leaders looking to truly optimize productivity should seriously consider the prospect of making all players active participants in the ongoing conversation, as a means to cut spending and boost outcomes.

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