Optimizing Your Business’s Financial Strategy for the Digital World

Managing a thriving business is, first and foremost, dependent on how well it can keep up with the competition within ever-shifting markets. While this has always been at the core of business success, it is especially true in the 21st century. With new technology being produced and improved upon at a rapid rate, there is no shortage of ways businesses are adapting to these changes and using tech to outshine their competitors.

In order to keep up with this shift, your business will need to incorporate technology into its many departments; marketing, communication, and management all play an important role. Along with this, money management plays a key role in maintaining thriving business, and therefore, having solid technology as a foundation for your finances is crucial. In this article, we’ll be discussing how to integrate new technology into your finance department.

Read on for different ways to optimize your business’ financial strategy for an evolving digital landscape.

Improving Employee Payments

Getting your employees their paychecks on time in an easy and convenient manner will have a positive impact on your ability to retain workers. A poor handle on payments can have a negative impact on employees’ lives and prevent them from paying their bills on time. If this is a consistent trend in your business, you could see high levels of employee turnover.

Employee retention has been shown to improve productivity in the workforce, as more experienced employees require less training/assistance to perform their job. This means saving more money within the hiring process, on job advertisements, during employee training times is crucial and should not be overlooked in your overall business strategy.

There are a few ways to improve payroll processing for your employees. When hiring, always make sure new hires set up a direct deposit with their bank account. With new technology, banks are able to quickly receive checks digitally to help your team get paid faster. Some banks are now finding ways to give employees their paychecks before a scheduled payday, instead of the usual two-day holding period.  Technology is now taking on a lot of the work that was originally done by hand and making your team’s jobs much easier.

In addition to this, you can find a plethora of software and digital tools that help manage your paycheck processing to make sure all employees are paid the correct amount, and on time. Certain HR software can keep communication open between your HR team and employees, so workers can know when their paychecks have been sent out to be able to quickly report any errors if needed.

Digital Accounting

Accounting can be a difficult, time consuming, and a costly process for many businesses. While this is certainly the case year-round, it is especially true during peak times, like the end of the year, quarter, or during tax season. The development of a successful accounting strategy should not be ignored in any business, whether it has only one worker or 500 workers. If you take the time to properly bookkeep and ensure that you’re staying on top of your business’ financial statements, it may keep you from losing money or being unprepared for financial challenges that may arise.

To build a prosperous accounting method, look into the easy to use accounting platforms available for any size business. An accounting software automatically handles things like bookkeeping and tax preparation, and allows you to streamline the accounting process to have better control over how your finances are organized. This will also allow your accounting teams to benefit from being able to focus on more vital aspects of their work while the software handles other tasks. If you’re someone who manages a small business on your own, automated accounting can free up more of your time to better handle other areas of your company that need more attention as well.

Reducing Overhead Costs

The integration of new technology into your business can have a positive effect on your overall profitability. While it may be a costly investment upfront, in the long run, it will save you more money. Many businesses that only operate online, such as e-commerce stores, benefit from significantly reduced overhead fees. This is because they are able to lower their use of office hardware and equipment, as most of their operations will become digitized. Some even operate entirely as a network of remote workers with no office space.

There are a few ways you can use new tech in your finance department to reduce overhead costs. To begin with, start linking more of your financial management work to secure cloud services. This can greatly reduce the amount of hard drive/paper you need to store important information. Because you will be using this for financial purposes, make sure the software you use is completely secure so that your business isn’t at risk, and always have backup files ready.

You can also look into hiring remote finance professionals and consultants to work for your business. Less on-site employees can give you the ability to lease smaller office space, and thus, cut costs on real estate.  Saving money on an office can help you reinvest into other aspects of your business, and with new technology, such as Zoom and Slack, employee y communication is possible and easy right from a laptop, desktop computer or smartphone. Whether your workers are doing their jobs from home or within the office, digital communication hubs make meetings adaptable and efficient from anywhere.

Get Connected with Mobile Apps

As a business owner, your phone is a vital tool that can help you stay connected with your employees and keep up to date with day-to-day operations while you’re out of the office. It also allows you to connect with clients and communicate quickly with remote teams. However, there are also plenty of ways your phone can help you manage your business’ finances.

To start, a budgeting app can also be utilized to help you keep track of your expenses and income in real time. They also give you brief overviews of what your business’ financial situation looks like on a month-to-month basis. Even while on-the-go, having the ability to check up on your budget is never a bad thing, and can help you feel confident and in control of your finances.

If you use a business credit or debit card for important purchases, you can also set up push notifications with your business bank account if this option is available to you. Every time you make a payment for your business, these notifications can help you get an idea of whether or not you’re spending too much or too little each month. In turn, this creates a better picture of where you should be reallocating your funds.

Staying on the Cutting Edge

Make it a goal to stay up to date with the latest tech trends, especially those impacting the financial technology market. You can do this by following different technology blogs and news sources, and set Google Alerts to follow trends and terms related to FinTech. By doing this, you’ll be the first to know when new changes or products are released that could help your business grow, and get a head start before other competitors can take advantage of these changes.