{"id":13386,"date":"2022-11-03T19:13:48","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T19:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jboitnott.com\/?p=13386"},"modified":"2022-11-15T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T20:56:00","slug":"how-automation-helps-small-businesses-meet-financial-challenges-as-they-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jboitnott.com\/zh\/how-automation-helps-small-businesses-meet-financial-challenges-as-they-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"How Automation Helps Small Businesses Meet Financial Challenges as They Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a small business owner, you\u2019re probably aware of how vital workflow automation<\/a> can be to your company. It reduces time and energy spent on repetitive tasks, which helps free up space for more meaningful work.<\/p>\n

Yet implementing new workflows and systems is not cheap. It costs time, employee attention and effort, and money\u200a\u2014\u200asometimes lots of money. When you use it properly, of course, good workflow automation should save your company in all of those areas. But, it requires a substantial investment to get there.<\/p>\n

Evan Goldberg has a better grasp of these costs and risks than most. He\u2019s the Founder and Executive Vice President of Oracle NetSuite. The company provides integrated cloud-based business software for financial, inventory, and customer relationship management (among other things). So, he\u2019s seen directly how clients at every stage of the business lifecycle struggle with putting the right automation to work.<\/p>\n

Yet, as Goldberg points out, to some degree, it\u2019s not as easy to automate now because there are constant shocks that take place in the economy as well as in the market in general. Yet companies want and need more productive employees with adequate time and space to focus on more meaningful strategic work if they want to raise employee engagement and retention rates.<\/p>\n

That can start as early as the company\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

Lean startups: Just make it\u00a0work<\/h2>\n

For brand-new companies that haven\u2019t yet raised significant capital and are operating on shoestring budgets<\/a>, and may not even yet know the full extent of their workflow needs. Automation is a matter of getting the task completed. There\u2019s a specific learning curve as a company launches and begins to find its footing, as team members explore various procedures and approaches, learning both what works and what works more efficiently.<\/p>\n

A company\u2019s early days are also where data and personal touchpoints are identified. When your team can somewhat fully outline duplicate effort and a subsequent need for information that\u2019s already entered your workflow processes once, that\u2019s a good time to start thinking about how to weave together the elements of your systems in service of the objectives you want those systems to help you accomplish.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s especially true for financial systems and processes, Goldberg says. \u201cThere\u2019s a vast chasm between startups or very small companies that run on small business accounting packages and spreadsheets [as] their IT environment and giant companies that run on massive enterprise systems. That covers an extremely wide swath of the economy.\u201d The needs may be somewhat similar, but the resources and the scale can be wildly divergent.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why cost-cutting<\/a> and cobbled-together solutions prevail at this stage. Of course, there may be a higher degree of repetition and duplicated effort, but that might be the price you\u2019ll need to pay to keep costs low and your organizational response reasonably nimble.<\/p>\n

Growing up means seriously investing in automation<\/h2>\n

As the company grows, so do its needs and its resources. Here\u2019s where scalability becomes a more critical factor as teams expand and organizational memory begins to falter. There\u2019s only so much your AP department can remember, for example. If your company winds up entering invoice information three separate times, in three separate systems, then something valuable is being lost to attrition along the way: not just time, but opportunity.<\/p>\n

After all, if your employees interact with the same data point multiple times, for every invoice that gets processed, that\u2019s time they\u2019re losing for more meaningful, strategic, and creative tasks that can help the company grow.<\/p>\n

Automation\u2019s value at this stage is about laying the foundations for capturing and processing information that needs to be worked with without wasting unnecessary effort or time for your human resources. That\u2019s where automation shines: working with, storing, and recalling data across the company\u2019s financial and other systems, freeing up employee time for the kinds of tasks that software just can\u2019t do (yet).<\/p>\n

Playing at a higher\u00a0level<\/h2>\n

Once you\u2019re past the early years and the growing pains, your company has to think about a supply chain process that\u2019s increasingly complex and hard to manage, even for small businesses. That\u2019s especially true in the current economic climate that\u2019s been so heavily impacted by pandemic shortages, inflation, and possibly even recession<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Goldberg says this makes automation even more complex as companies realize they need multiple suppliers and more complicated systems. \u201cSmaller companies have definitely become way more complicated,\u201d he says. \u201cThey want to go global much more quickly than they ever did before. So these complexities are happening earlier in a company\u2019s life cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, automation also helps free up human capital for more interesting, complex work at this stage. Despite the complexities and challenges inherent in automation for corporate players in today\u2019s increasingly global market, the rewards are substantial. Yet to get to those rewards, company leaders must want to invest sufficient effort in pinpointing the systems that genuinely need automation. This lays the groundwork for implementing that automation, sourcing those systems to suitable suppliers, and training employees to make the most of these new tools.<\/p>\n

Why start automation with financials?<\/h2>\n

Suppose there\u2019s one thing that both Goldberg and Lisa Schwarz (Senior Director of Global Product Marketing for Oracle NetSuite\u2019s Global Business Unit) agree on concerning the needs of small businesses. In that case, it\u2019s this: Financials are fundamental.<\/p>\n

Schwarz notes that, to a significant extent, NetSuite\u2019s customers first implement the company\u2019s solutions to solve accounting and other financial headaches.\u201d (They do it) to get more rigor into\u201d these processes, she says. Many began corporate life with family members or others filling in as bookkeepers, working with spreadsheets once a month or so. As they grow, the financial system should grow with them, yet what happens all too often is that the company stays with those spreadsheets or perhaps graduates to a limited financial SaaS solution.<\/p>\n

The problem inevitably arises, Schwarz says: \u201c[They are carrying] too many manual processes that they have to spend time on, and it\u2019s taking time away from fulfilling orders because\u00a0\u2026 they could be pretty lean, maybe five or ten people where you\u2019ve got people doing the books, packing the boxes, calling the FedEx for delivery. So it takes them away from some of those more customer-facing tasks,\u201d or deeper work, such as product development.<\/p>\n

Financials become a foundational area where appropriate and well-implemented automation<\/a> begins to create escalating benefits and ROI. When you remove bookkeeping and other basic accounting tasks from manual entry and management and implement a single system, such as NetSuite\u2019s products or some other solution, company culture changes.<\/p>\n

You remove pressure from your employees while simultaneously creating space and time for that deeper work.<\/p>\n

For example, Schwarz notes, \u201cyou would enter a purchase order, which then updates your accounting segments. And then what if you invoice against that? Everything triggers the next task instead of having to juggle separate systems. As you can imagine, things get out of sync pretty fast if you\u2019re not on top of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Automation frees people up to add\u00a0value<\/h2>\n

Automation<\/a> in financial systems helps minimize human errors that naturally result from manual input and management. It can also help reduce fraud and other risks by verifying all information that touches on a specific vendor or transaction.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s especially helpful for small business owners with a tendency to micromanage. \u201cThey\u2019re micromanaging enough as it is, Schwarz says. \u201cSo if you could take that one task away, that just helps them focus on some more value-added type of work.\u201d Fortunately for everyone, that includes work that helps grow your company, increase revenue, or hit other business goals.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading! Do you want to create thought leadership articles like the one above? If you struggle to translate your ideas into content that will help build credibility and influence others, sign up to get John\u2019s latest online course \u201c<\/em><\/strong>Writing From Your Voice<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u201d here.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Check out my recent appearance on Shayna Weldon’s podcast episode<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We go over questions like:
\n“What does success look like for you?”
\n“Do you feel you reached success?”
\n“How did you make a stand for yourself and your career at an early age?”<\/p>\n