At the moment’s heightened financial uncertainty, fueled by the headwinds of COVID-19 variants, inflation and the Nice Resignation, requires an intense deal with worker expertise and the best workforce mindset to adapt to no matter 2022 has in retailer. Accounting should reimagine its know-how stack to remain nimble and alter to the ever-changing, digitally pushed world we stay in.
COVID has perpetually reworked the way in which work will get completed. Distant and hybrid work is now a office staple, as the standard mannequin of requiring 5 days at a desk job has grow to be outdated and pointless. Furthermore, the pandemic has modified the accounting workforce’s priorities. The tight labor market has positioned worker expertise entrance and heart, and, for the primary time, the finance division can see a direct connection to their potential to have an effect on worker retention.
Historically, worker expertise was not seen as accounting’s drawback. Nonetheless, with staff requiring entry to know-how instruments from dwelling, and firms preventing towards labor shortages, hiring challenges and “the large give up,” that perspective is evolving — a lot that just about each division can now declare at the least partial possession of the worker expertise. In in the present day’s digitally related world, staff work together with know-how in each facet of their lives, they usually anticipate their work setting to be equally seamless and pain-free. Accounting is not simply in regards to the finish report; fashionable accounting groups want to consider how all staff use their techniques and what may be completed to make the expertise as easy and as optimistic as potential.
Methods to assume like a product workforce
To foster a superior worker expertise, it’s useful for accounting groups to assume like a product workforce, and take into account the next questions: Who’re our customers? What’s their expertise from starting to finish? What’s their desired final result? How can they accomplish what they want shortly and simply?
Customers (or on this case, staff) more and more embody tech-savvy millennials and digital-native Gen Z. Analysis suggests that the youthful the worker, the extra self-reliant and impartial they are going to be. Having self-service, employee-facing accounting software program out there stands to create efficiencies and improve user-experience.
There are various advantages to a finance workforce pondering like a product workforce. It makes them extra agile and in a position to alter in actual time as a substitute of ready to evaluate how nicely they’re performing. Maybe most significantly, product groups are user-focused and acknowledge {that a} product that’s inefficient or troublesome to make use of will fall by the wayside, benefiting nobody. Worker expertise is without doubt one of the key drivers of software program success and may be the figuring out issue between widespread adoption and failed implementation.
Each good product workforce is aware of simply how necessary it’s to take stock of present know-how and consider room for enchancment. This consists of trying on the return on funding that’s at present being delivered and figuring out any ache factors negatively impacting their consumer (worker) journey. Are techniques getting used correctly, or are there widespread misuses and/or poor adoption charges? Are there areas which might be significantly inefficient and time-consuming? Automation can create efficiencies and scale back redundant guide labor, releasing up staff to deal with the overarching firm mission. For instance, if submitting vendor invoices is a sore spot, implementing a SaaS platform may assist simplify the method and reduce down accounting’s time spent troubleshooting.
In the course of the stock course of, additionally it is necessary to think about the entire firm’s organizational wants (i.e., company card spend, buy orders, invoices from contract/freelance workers, and many others.) and decide which kinds of instruments are required and at what stage. Then, weigh out how seamless and intuitive integrations are for workers and the finance division. If staff often must submit bills and facilitate buy orders on completely different platforms, how easy is it for them to navigate between the 2? Adoption may be additional elevated by assembly customers the place they work. Collaboration instruments have gotten extra necessary items of the distant/hybrid digital workplace, so it’s crucial to think about options that may be built-in proper into these platforms to maximise effectivity.
Extra concerns ought to embody whether or not staff might be instantly interacting with software program, in what methods, and from the place. On a most elementary stage, cloud-based worker useful resource planning software program (which common staff usually don’t contact) is nearly essential to sustaining a contemporary enterprise that balances freelance/gig staff and a hybrid workforce. For platforms that each worker has the potential to the touch (i.e., spend administration, bills, and many others.), ease of use needs to be a key driver in what software program is chosen.
Methods to create the best tech stack for 2022 and past
Now greater than ever, accounting can assist broader firm targets concerning HR, recruiting and retention by creating options that serve staff. Adopting a product-team mindset and viewing the worker as an finish consumer creates a superior end-to-end course of. Plus, when staff are in a position to make the most of platforms with better ease, they’re much less prone to bathroom down accounting with back-and-forth questions and unnecessary submission errors.
A 2022+ tech stack empowers staff to make smarter selections with out having to carry the accounting workforce up. Automation guides customers via software program, serving to them take the best motion on the proper time. The provision of information allows staff to make smarter selections, with out having to ask accounting to drag one-off reviews. Any new system needs to be simple to implement and keep. The much less that admin and IT assets are required, the extra sustainable and scalable the answer might be in the long term. Accounting can use their tech stack to simplify their work and fear much less about hearth drills, and staff mustn’t take into account bills to be their largest nightmare every month.
The best accounting tech stack serves to maintain the corporate fool-proof within the face of uncertainty and alter. Accounting leaders that efficiently zero in on worker expertise will usher their workforce into the way forward for finance.
