Why small and medium-sized business should invest budget gains in automation

While SMEs will achieve some short-term gains through the recently announced federal budget, they could lose that impetus if they don’t invest in automation now.

There is a major sticking point for SMEs in Australia and New Zealand because they still heavily rely on legacy, manual business processes, which will continue to hold them back even after an economic recovery.

Recently announced Australian federal budget small business incentives such as JobKeeper, JobMaker and instant asset write-off, and the New Zealand small business e-commerce package, are giving SMEs the opportunity now to restructure their organisations by replacing high-risk, costly, manual systems with automated processes that will give them the agility and scalability they need for the longer term.

SMEs that continue to use manual expense and invoicing processes are spending more than five hours each week of each finance employee’s time on processing invoices.

At the same time, SMEs are being compelled to align their invoice process with the larger goals of reducing expenses, increasing efficiency, improving productivity and getting better visibility into spend across the business.

Achieving these goals requires the elimination of manual processes, which are inherently cumbersome, inefficient, and laborious. Manual processes also make it difficult to monitor spending trends and behaviours and detect potential mistakes or fraud, which ultimately leads to cash flow problems for SMEs.

SMEs can use significant time and cost savings that can be achieved through automation to reinvest in the business, and drive new opportunities that will deliver resilience, scalability and sustainable growth so they can weather the storm of the next economic downturn.

It is crucial to choose an automated system that ensures financial visibility, avoids risk, and drives operational efficiencies. The solution must be secure and highly available to employees through smart devices to meet the needs of the new anytime, anywhere workforce.

Fabian Calle, General Manager – SMB, SAP Concur ANZ