Plain and Simple: Bright Business Insights Summer 2019 | Page 2
5 BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY KILLERS
And How To Slay Them
Keeping up with rising regulatory obligations and relentless
technological change has never been more difficult. To compete and
thrive in this environment, businesses need to optimize their finance
and accounting practices, and that means tackling challenges that lurk
in nearly every enterprise.
Keep reading to discover five productivity killers that are likely
plaguing your finance and accounting departments — and how to
fix them:
1) Failure to Delegate
John Hunt of London Business School found that only 30
percent of managers think they can delegate well. The reason
most managers have trouble delegating isn’t that they doubt the
value of focusing more of their time on strategic tasks; it’s that
managers don’t trust that their team members can successfully
execute on some of the non-core tasks that are ripe for delegation.
The key to successful delegation is building a team that has the
skills and experience needed to give you confidence that the job
will be done right.
2) Viewing Financial Data Through a Reactive Lens
The days of running a business by looking backward at quarterly
or yearly financial reports are over. The adoption of real-time
connectivity and cloud-powered tools have made it possible to
monitor and analyze activities in nearly all segments of your
business as soon as they happen. Having access to updated
information that gives you a comprehensive view of relationships
with vendors and customers allows you to have more productive
conversations and make decisions more efficiently. Most
important, this helps you avoid making decisions that could send
you down the wrong path.
4) Overlooking Existing Capabilities
Oftentimes, solutions that can streamline or automate your
financial processes are already embedded in your existing
technology tools — but you may feel like you don’t have the
time or the wherewithal to fully explore these capabilities.
Product enhancements continually add valuable features, and new
integrations and plugins can automate processes and eliminate
unnecessary manual entries. Working with an outside advisor who
is experienced in your financial and accounting platforms can
help you unlock the full power of your existing tools and quickly
scale the learning curve for these new features.
5) Not Documenting Processes
How you do something is just as important as what you do. But if
you don’t document your finance and accounting processes, that
knowledge walks out the door with your people every night —
a scary proposition in a tight labor market with high turnover.
Laying out your end-to-end processes allows you to spot
redundancies and identify ways to make workflows more efficient
through automation and other technology-driven techniques.
Also, remember that your documented processes aren’t set in
stone. Revisit them often and look for opportunities to optimize
them in light of new technology that has become available or
changes to your team.
If you’re looking for ways to overcome these challenges and take
control of your finance and accounting departments, as well as your
business as a whole, contact the client advisory services team at Rea
& Associates. We work with businesses big and small to identify the
right solutions to everyday challenges by tapping into technological
advances, proven systems and expert business strategy.
3) Not Harnessing Analytics and the Cloud
Many companies will hang on to legacy accounting and financial
systems and processes simply because they are reluctant to invest
the time and energy needed to adopt new tools. But doing things
the way they’ve always been done puts you at a competitive
disadvantage in a business environment of constant disruption.
It’s important to realize that investments made in learning and
implementing a new system or process that helps you operate
more efficiently will pay dividends in terms of streamlining your
operations and decision-making. Change can be difficult, but not
making changes that maximize your efficiency costs you much
more time in the long run.
by: Dustin Raber, CPA, CMP
Principal, Director of Manufacturing Services
545 North Market Street
Wooster, OH 44691
330.521.4534
[email protected]