Modern finance stack for CFOs

Every business function, whether sales, marketing, product development, has undergone massive advancements in the technology they use every day. Finance, however, seems to have also taken strides from r more traditional means to new age solutions. CFOs are the custodians of past, present, and future financial data of their organisations. Being at the core of strategic decision making across businesses is the emphasis of leading by numbers and optimising performance.

New-age CFO or anyone in the finance department needs an apt solution which addresses present day challenges and eliminates the tedious processes through a modern tech stack, aimed at transforming data into useful insights.

Key requirements for CFOs in today’s dynamic business environment

The finance teams often suffer from manual and repetitive tasks and require workflow automation solutions: As the scale of operations increases, volume and complexity of data increases hence the necessity for automation.

Overly complicated tech stacks, need for simplification: Using multiple tools and gathering information from multiple sources can be highly time consuming, leading to manual errors thus impacting business processes negatively. The need for the hour is a one stop integration for a customised approach, which would be better suited to the firm’s specific needs.

The need for collaboration between multiple departments: In today’s work environment which sees finance collaborating with multiple stakeholders. Decentralised working has significantly increased the requirement for digitised processes.

The finance teams need real time and automated solutions: A modern toolkit which streamlines processes such as managing liquidity, budgeting, forecasting, and planning.

A modern solution which is compliant to tax regulations: Implications of GST has brought the need for a tech stack which accounts for specific tax management solutions.

Modern finance stack must haves

Excellent payable, receivables & expense management: There is a need for a one-stop solution for CFOs which encompasses processes across the value chain.

● By adding automation across key processes such as invoicing, which offers the option of uploading a single file with vendor information, vendor bank account & other KYC validations, generating invoices, setting payment reminders, and enabling accounting, all in a matter of a few minutes. Receivables, which were previously dependent on manual processes around cheques/ cash/ bank transfers, now can be completely digitized with automatic reminders, process digital payments and offer better spend analytics.
● Improved risk assessment through automated factoring where the software extracts, reads and processes updated invoices to identify possible fraud risks and enable more accuracy while reducing turnaround rates.
● Payment automation enabled on the platform to integrate users’ accounting systems and bank accounts to drive efficiencies.
● DIY platforms for management teams to control and monitor their business transactions with respect to cards or other payment modes. Intuitive features like enabling card issuance, bill payments, vendor payments, utility payments, GST payments and more can be customized as per user requirements. There’s a hierarchy-based approval mechanism in place and advanced analytics available to fine-tune procurement. Empower employees to digitize expense receipts and centralize reimbursement requests, streamlining the management process. Set spends limits on virtual and physical cards while also set approval workflows.

Apart from all this, upgrading to a modern tech stack provides a single platform for multi offices or multi branches or multi department workflow management. The team would no longer have to worry about analysing trends, doing tedious reconciliation, and set manual reminders and escalations. The modern solutions will help with advanced ageing analysis, automated reminders, and escalations workflows.

In conclusion, all businesses today need a modern tech stack which integrates all in-house software, bank accounts, processes & policies and empowers the finance team across levels to generate deeper insights and offer a granular view, real time data visibility and continuous planning.