Legacy custom applications and spreadsheets to manage order-to-cash process needs to be in the past

Source: paymentssource.com

In today’s constantly changing and digital-first business and payments environment, manually collecting, evaluating, collating and calculating order-lifecycle data is time consuming and error-prone.

That includes everything from order booking to revenue recognition via spreadsheets, which also poses challenges in scaling and handling the transaction complexity of new business models.

Business leaders around the world who are making investments in modern and automated revenue management solutions agree they are better able to innovate and scale. Their teams' time is freed up to make smarter and more informed, strategic decisions while being more dynamic and flexible.

There are several reasons to move on from your legacy revenue system and manual data-entry processes, and adopt a modern, automated revenue management solution to improve your company’s financial performance.

With a modern revenue management system in place, revenue managers save an enormous amount of time and energy which otherwise would have been spent collecting and evaluating data via spreadsheets. Finance teams can cut down their workloads significantly to do other tasks like analyzing data and making more strategic decisions to improve customer experiences and business growth. With reports and recommendations generated in real-time, finance teams are able to act proactively to meet an increasingly dynamic business environment.

A recent Market Watch report noted that up to 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. According to the report, spreadsheets are vulnerable to mistakes and a simple most popular online casino error like misplacing a decimal point can result in huge accounting glitches. Moreover, there is no way of checking the entries for correctness and they do not allow for analyzing the information in depth. Reliance on manual data entries has immense potential for errors–which can cost the business heavily.

By spending so much time with tedious, time-consuming spreadsheets, the scope for missed opportunities is huge. With the help of specialized algorithms and complex computations, a revenue management system automatically generates data to enable more accurate and reliable forecasting and reporting processes.

Such business intelligence empowers revenue managers to set appropriate pricing, predict demand and optimize the supply chain. Additionally, spreadsheets don’t naturally lend themselves to easily collaborate with other departments. With a central and automated process, teams can access the information seamlessly without risking data integrity and use that “single source of truth” to uncover customer insights and provide better customer experience and service.

You gain a more accurate view of the company’s performance when you no longer have to rely on spreadsheets and legacy systems–with their siloed data sets and processes that are not automated. By adopting a modern finance solution, time tracking, marketing, CRM, and order-to-cash data are all stored in one place. Business managers no longer need to scroll through different spreadsheets seeking information. Instead, data is readily available at a click.

Integrated and readily available data gives business leaders a deeper visibility into the business’ finances with accurate in-depth analysis in a single dashboard. You don’t have to exhaust resources to create reports and manually enter and edit data any more. Instead, you can focus on improving the employee experience, boosting productivity and exploring revenue-enhancing opportunities.

Finance teams will have more time to collaborate with sales and marketing teams and align strategies with business goals. As the forecast becomes more accurate and consistent, senior executives in other departments will become more confident in the reports and more familiar with the language and basic principles of revenue management.

Revenue management is becoming increasingly complex and manual processes are not able to scale to meet the needs of most businesses. For example, hybrid digital / physical business models, which have seen tremendous growth, require the adoption of automated revenue management systems to better manage the associated transaction complexity. Recurring revenue streams, usage-based and other pricing models are also driving investment in revenue management applications. Automated and modern revenue management systems also enable the organization to forecast consumer behavior, boost agility and improve the bottom line.

For many organizations, increasing regulatory pressure, such as ASC 606 and IFRS 15, demands improved revenue recognition, compliance and reporting. In fact, these new regulations have forced organizations to rethink the entire order-to-cash process.

These reasons clearly illustrate that manual processes no longer have a place in the future of finance as they are unable to scale and capture the complexity inherent in new business models.

Modernizing and automating the middle office processes with a purpose-built solution that delivers a complete order lifecycle management experience from order booking to revenue recognition will allow your business to scale and innovate. You’ll be in sync, rather than sink.