With manufacturers under increasing pressure from all sides as a result of increasing energy and supply costs, material shortages, and the most competitive employment market in living history, it’s no surprise that 58% are having to adjust their business practices to cope.
But many are also turning their gaze inwards, looking for efficiencies in how they operate to find ways to protect margin and cash flow during these turbulent, unpredictable times.
How money leaves your business is a great place to start. By looking closely at payments and expenses and by making changes to internal processes, manufacturers are making significant savings and increasing their financial resilience.
Excessive admin
Technology has changed many of the ways we do business today. With instant access to communication, information and paperless processing, it’s easier than ever to find savings.
But despite Gartner’s estimate that businesses spend up to 3% of their revenue on paper, a large number of UK manufacturers are still trapped in a paper-based past, with outdated pay-and-reclaim expenses processes that create excessive admin and slow them down.
This creates knock-on problems within the business. Slow processing means the data you have about your firm’s financial position rarely gives you the full story, with critical information usually waiting days or weeks to be manually entered.
Hard-pressed finance teams can take up to 20 minutes to process a single expense claim. And because they’re already working at capacity due to the intense economic environment, these stressed-out teams are more likely to make mistakes.
Error risk
Research suggests that people handling simple spreadsheets, including basic formulas, manually are between 18% and 40% likely to make a mistake. When the information is complex, like a multi-page spreadsheet with multiple formulas that likelihood increases to 100%.
Digitisation of these processes is the low hanging fruit manufacturers are looking for to streamline their internal processes, but many are reluctant due to the perceived cost and disruption of implementing new software.
That’s why UK manufacturers are turning to all-in-one business credit card solutions like Allstar, which comes with automated paperless payments and expenses processing. Transactions can be approved and completed in real-time with the click of a button, without the need for paper receipts.
*ExpenseIn is a separate product that can be added to support your Allstar Plus or Expense account.
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