by, SAP Concur (CA) Inc, September 1, 2022 | Canadian Manufacturing
Canadian manufacturers have been at the forefront of using automation to drive operational efficiencies and business growth. With the unprecedented market volatility of the past few years, however, there has been a shift toward prioritizing spend management digitalization, and for good reason.
Nearly nine in ten executives say finding new ways to increase speed and flexibility in the management of travel, expense, and invoice is critical for their organizations to stay profitable and continue to grow.1
Today’s leading spend management automation solutions use mobile apps, AI and machine learning, centralized dashboards, and data integration connectors to accelerate the capture, validation, and approval of expense reports, travel bookings, and supplier invoices.
Simply put, the benefits of automation apply to more than just your production line. When spend management processes rely on manual steps, such as manual data entry and data validation, it can result in limited visibility into company spending, high risk of non-compliance and undetected fraud, wasted time and money, and lower employee productivity and job satisfaction.
Conversely, when you digitize how your company manages every spending choice – controlling cash, costs, and regulatory compliance along the way – you can boost agility and momentum across your entire organization. This is particularly true for manufacturers.
How do your T&E and invoice management processes compare?
Due to their relative size, manufacturing companies process a higher-than-average number of supplier invoices and expense reports on a monthly, if not weekly, basis. In fact, in a recent survey of financial decision-makers from over 500 businesses globally2, more than two-thirds of manufacturing industry respondents agreed there were high costs associated with manually processing expenses and vendor invoices.
These costs were driven by incomplete expense and invoice documentation (72%), tax and compliance issues (69%), and a lack of audit trail and/or challenge to pull materials for audit prep (64%). Findings such as these underscore the urgent need for Canadian manufacturers to adopt spend management tools to boost compliance, reporting, planning, and visibility.
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