This year brought about supply chain disruptions, increasing interest rates, high levels of inflation, and the beginning of a trend toward layoffs in some companies and industries. An economic slowdown or perhaps even a recession is here. As budgets are submitted and planning is underway for 2023, the financial back-office may be on the cutbacks chopping block.
When the economy slows and your company feels the effects of slowing sales growth and margin contraction, financial back-office operations are among the first functional areas to be targeted. This fact is largely due to the perception that these departments are cost centers that do not substantially add value to the enterprise beyond their provided services.
The Good News
There is a silver lining: Your back-office organization has the opportunity to get the attention of senior management and implement systems and processes that drive efficiencies and allow you to do more and add value to the company. So instead of enduring draconian cutbacks and layoffs in the financial back-office, you can save money and add value by increasing the efficiency and productivity of your operations, and in some cases, even help improve the bottom line with tools like dynamic discounting.
While these opportunities present themselves for all of the various back-office functions and departments within an organization, we will focus on two specific areas that deal with vendors and have a direct impact on a company’s spend and therefore have a direct correlation to future budgets and financial decision making: finance/accounts payable (AP), and procurement (sourcing, purchasing). Both of these areas have processes that are generally very manual and therefore labor intensive and prone to cutbacks. But by being proactive you can help address those areas of the procure-to-pay cycle (PtoP) not particularly automated or efficient. ICG provides modular solutions that deploy individually to target areas that are the least efficient first, then scale to deliver a full-function PtoP system in a phased, modular approach.
Solutions to Utilize
- Vendor Portal
- Online Invoice Submit
- PO Flip
- Payment Inquiry
- Payment Dispute Submission/Tracking
- Deductions
- Vendor Onboarding
- Company Information
- Compliance
- Diversity
- Tax (TIN check)
- Insurance Submission & Renewal Notification
- Internal Approval Workflows
- Real-time Collaboration with Vendor
- PO Dispatch & Update
- Automated PO Dispatch
- Request Real-Time Vendor Updates
- Dispatch PO Updates & Communications
- AP Automation
- Remote Approvals
- PO Matching
- Workflow Management
- Online Forms
- Data Capture
- Dynamic Discounting
- Early Pay Discounts that YOU define
Get Started
As we enter an economic slowdown, prepare by operating more efficiently and doing more to add value to your company. Be proactive in your approach and don’t fall victim to the budget ax that can take a toll on your staff. Be a value creator, not just a cost center.
Contact ICG today for more information or request a demo of our back-office automation solutions. You can also watch a brief video on ICG’s back-office solutions.