As we step into the first weeks of 2025, it’s the perfect time to evaluate and enhance productivity within our organisations. The Productivity Commission is actively seeking community feedback on ways to boost Australia’s productivity, making it an opportune moment to reflect on how finance teams can contribute to this national goal. Here are some practical strategies to supercharge productivity within your finance function.
1. Automate Transactional Overheads
As your business grows, so does your transactional volume. Traditional processes for handling this information can become cumbersome and inefficient. Implementing automated systems can significantly boost productivity. For instance, Suncare Community Services were bogged down in manual processes and error prone data, which was impacting productivity. Implementing ebs-plus Ezidebit has seen an 83% reduction in time and resources required to process payments.
2. Eliminate Manual Invoicing
Manual invoicing is a time-consuming task that is as monotonous as watching paint dry. Forward thinking organisations can streamline these processes with optical character recognition (OCR) document capture systems like Continia. The Pancake Parlour, for example, saved at least two days per week in invoicing and over $25,000 annually by adopting this technology.
3. Streamline Remittance Processes
Handling remittance processes manually can delay payments, create bottlenecks and negatively impact customer service. Automating these processes can expedite payments and provide customers with flexible options to pay. Utilising click-to-pay via credit/debit card, BPAY and direct debit facilities through Ezidebit has led to significant cost savings for organisations like Gippsland Lakes Complete Health. The direct debit payments remove the need for debt collection saving the team 8-10 hours per month.
“Our accounts receivable officer has definitely noticed time savings in her role. Prior to Business Central, she was really struggling to keep up with the workload. It wasn’t even a month in, and she commented that she was starting to catch up. We never thought we’d see efficiencies and time savings that quickly.” – Chloe Watson, CFO
4. Simplify Vendor Onboarding
Vendor onboarding often involves a lot of back-and-forth communication. By using ebs-plus Vendor Management with Business Central, you can allow vendors to input their information directly into your financial management system, saving hours of setup time and enabling easy review and approval.
5. Enhance Reporting Capabilities
Efficient reporting is crucial for informed decision-making. Business Central offers over 200 built-in reports, providing quick wins for board, team, financial, and project status reports. For more customisable reporting, Jet Reports can export financial data into Excel, allowing for greater flexibility and ease of manipulation. The Australian Childhood Foundation has found that producing their P&L and balance sheet immediately saves their finance team a significant amount of time.
6. Leverage AI for Greater Efficiency
AI, being a new technology, can be perceived as a threat to jobs, but it can be an invaluable assistant in the finance function. By automating repetitive tasks, enhancing customer service, and using historical data to predict future trends and anticipate business challenges, it can provide deeper insights into financial data for decision-making while keeping you in control. Embracing AI is a future-forward approach to achieving significant productivity gains. By integrating AI into your finance operations, you can streamline processes and empower your team to work smarter, not harder.
7. Modernise Expense Management
Paper-based expense management is becoming obsolete. By bringing expense management online with Continia Expense Management, employees can quickly and easily photograph receipts and enter data directly into Business Central for approval and payment. This not only simplifies the process for staff but also ensures timely reimbursements, leading to significant productivity gains.
Embrace the Future of Finance: Small Changes, Big Gains
The Productivity Commission’s call for feedback is a reminder that small changes can lead to substantial productivity improvements. The finance function is well-positioned to benefit from these enhancements. If you can relate to any of these struggles and would like to see how Business Central and EBS can help solve these – feel free to reach out.
Here’s to a productive 2025!
This article is republished with permission from a LinkedIn article written by Terri McKinnon
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Terri McKinnon is the Marketing Manager at EBS. With a focus on delivering communications that support the EBS community and reflecting the company’s core values. Her breadth of experience sees her building out the communications strategy, and being hands-on in the delivery of the website, collateral, success stories, social media, and managing our events and customer user groups.