Integrate Solutions, Be the Finance or IT Leader the Times Demand

Christene Oganov | 30-03-2022

If you’re the one making the decisions in finance or IT, your role in the organization has changed. No longer do you just corral numbers or keep computers running, important as those tasks are. 

You’re now expected – and likely energized, challenged, or unsettled by the expectation – to be a significant player in moving your company ahead. Recent surveys drive home that the digital transformation is accelerating and that playing well with others is essential. You’re at the center of all that change, with the pandemic only shining the spotlight brighter. 

  • 40% of CFOs are driving new business models, while 72% have the final say in the direction of their organization’s technology, Accenture reports. 

  • 60% of CIOs are being primarily measured by their ability to help create new business models via company-wide collaboration, IDC predicts.  

  • 40% of CIOs will fail to evolve their IT capabilities in the next two years to provide modern digital infrastructure and support architecture-driven business outcomes, IDC estimates. (So now’s the time to evolve, as who really wants to among those 4 in 10?) 

Our new Ebook, Bringing It All Together, takes a deep look at a key tool – integration of your travel and expense solution with your ERP – for meeting your organization’s needs. It’s a way to obtain accurate, timely information while satisfying your broader role as a strategic, value-adding partner within the business. 

Integration doesn’t need to be complicated – or drain all the energy from your IT and finance teams. Your solutions provider should be readily able to integrate T&E and invoice management systems with your ERP. And they should be able to tell you if it’s simple to set up, what internal resources are required, what support you’ll get, and how rollout time can be minimized.  

 

Making life better for finance, and IT  

With integration, you and your finance team obtain a better view of spending, especially travel and employee purchases. You can watch cash flow in nearly real-time and use analytics and intelligent technology to find spending patterns that highlight opportunities, catch errors, and cut waste. You close data gaps and gain insights that can control costs, ensure compliance, and satisfy regulatory requirements.  

Instead of chasing paper and performing other manual tasks that eat resources and increase the risk of error, your finance team can focus its time on noncompliance and fraud. In other words, they can do the strategic, engaging work that they want and the company needs. 

Integration also helps simplify what the IT team has to manage, maintain, and secure, as they will have a single solution for travel, expense, and invoice management to cover instead of several. They, and employees across the company, will appreciate having just one end-user interface to navigate, meaning less time spent taking questions and complaints. With data encrypted and flowing reliably between systems, both security and end-user confidence are enhanced. 

The overall result is something going beyond just the IT and finance teams. A streamlined digital process can reduce the frustration travelers and other employees often feel when using a company’s systems and processes, especially with all the adapting and shifting the past two years required. So better technology not only provides efficiency and visibility, but also delivers a better experience for employees who are taking a hard look at what they value in work and workplaces.  

At a time where your company is scrutinizing what it values and needs from your role, here’s a chance to meet their broader expectations and improve your own, personal employee experience along with it.  

 

Learn more 

Get your copy of the Bringing it All Together  Ebook to learn more about how SAP Concur solutions and extensions can integrate your T&E system into your ERP and help fulfill the roles finance and IT leaders have today.