Change management—it is a primary factor in the success of organizations that have succeeded in navigating the unpredictable impact of the pandemic over the last two years. It’s also clear that companies with solid change management protocols have been able to successfully manage the shifting environment to find new levels of efficiency, productivity and resource capacity by implementing key technologies such as accounts payables.
When your organization makes the transition to accounts payables, keeping the following keys to change management in mind will help you mitigate any potential disruption during the transition and help you more quickly realize the benefits of doing so as part of your overall plan to adopt a digital-first strategy within your company’s financial infrastructure:
1. Communicate your organization’s “why” for adopting a digital-first strategy. With any change, it’s important to communicate to key stakeholders in the process (i.e. executives, board members, employees and vendors) how it fits into your overall plan for your organization as well as the benefits of making the changes as it relates to the specific concerns they may have.
For a deeper dive into change management, make sure to attend the webinar, "Minimizing Change Management While Modernizing Your Payables Process" on July 15. You can register here.
2. Leverage the benefits of payables automation to create buy-in. Automating the payables process can help alleviate the heavy burden of time-consuming, manual payables tasks for your team. It’s important to clearly show your team how the changes needed and new requirements will improve the process over time. For example, with Tipalti you can:
- Free your accounts payable team to do more by eliminating the vast majority of their manual AP processes and accelerating the financial close timeline by 25%.
- Scale rapidly without adding staff.
- Automatically process invoices while eliminating errors with advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR)and machine learning technology.
- Integrate detailed transaction and reconciliation reports with your ERP system.
- Eliminate financial & compliance risk with KPMG-approved W-9/W-8 tax compliance, audit trails, approval workflows.
- Personalize 2-Way & 3-Way PO matching by creating purchase order processes that fit your AP team’s approval workflow.
- Fully integrate with your ERP to improve data collection, reporting capabilities, and speed up your financial close
These are just some of the features Tipalti offers that you can share with your team as the benefits of automating your AP process.
3. Address how automation will impact the the payables process. Building on the information above, it’s important to be clear about how each person in the payables process will be impacted by a new process. Consider, too, that the changes required are likely to impact other areas of your business, so make sure to communicate this as needed and keep everyone in the loop!
4. Select a proactive payables partner. Be sure to do your homework upfront to understand what each platform can offer your organization—from both the features and benefits of their solution to support through the process to help you mitigate any risks or issues during the implementation of it.
5. Choose a comprehensive solution designed for maximum integration. With many solutions on the market, selecting the right tool to help you automate your payables process can be difficult. During your selection process, a crucial criterion should be the integration capabilities of any solution you are evaluating. Will it work seamlessly with the rest of your tools? Be sure you are fully aware of how your accounts payables solution will work within your complete technology ecosystem.
6. Measure your success and manage expectations. As with any business transition, you should establish clear goals for what you are trying to achieve. Consider what you will measure as benchmarks for your success during the AP automation implementation, such time to financial close reach month, growth in clients served without adding overhead costs and efficiencies in staff workflows.
In addition to sharing the goals and your company’s progress toward them, manage the expectations your team has regarding the speed you progress toward them. After all, the management around change is often the most challenging right before you reach the end point of the initial process. Be patient, persevere and point out the progress that is being made on a regular basis.
7. Keep communication open throughout the process. As you plan, begin, continue and finalize all of the steps toward any important change in your organization, communication is a critical driver of success. Share your why, the plan and benefits related to implementation and report regularly on your incremental success and the needed alterations for processes as you progress. Invite questions and feedback because having a healthy dialogue around change is a great way to head off problems which may impede progress.
Even without the pandemic as a driving factor, implementing a new technology in your company can be challenging, that’s why weighing the benefits of any new solution versus the actual and inherent costs of the change is so important. Once the decision to use an accounts payables platform such as Tipalti is made, using the tips above will help you maximize the efficiency and productivity gains that will support your success in 2021 and beyond.
Register now for the "Minimizing Change Management While Modernizing Your Payables Process" webinar on July 15 to learn more about how you can leverage the benefits of an accounts payables program as a key component in your team’s strategy for managing in the “new normal” of finance as well as practical advice on adopting a digital first strategy and preparing for the top trends in 2021 and beyond.