Errors in financial processes have an immediate impact on business. That’s why companies usually decide to invest in ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning). They believe that will be enough for the processes to happen in a structured, efficient way.
However, even with solid systems like SAP, Oracle, Sage, you still may have unpaid invoices, which would result in interest; accounts receivable left uncharged, which would impact your cash flow; approval flows might not always be followed, resulting in double work; and customers – internal or external – may be dissatisfied with an eventual delay or failure to return to financial requests.
Why all these problems, even with an ERP?
I talk to approximately 15 managers a week, learning about their processes, in order to evaluate together if Pipefy can meet their needs. In most cases, we hear one of the following problems:
1. Fragmentation in receiving requests
The requester doesn’t always have access to the system. Requests are often accepted via email or other ways such as meetings, internal messaging channels, telephone etc. Because of that, some requests might go unnoticed, and, even if they don’t, someone has to go out of their way to manually introduce the information into the software.
2. No standard in receiving the request
If all the information you need to start the process isn’t submitted, you’ll have another bottleneck. You’ll have to return for the missing information, which is a waste of time. Even though some ERPs do offer the alternative for external input, they don’t always allow you to customize the necessary fields regarding essential or mandatory information. Or, if they do accept customization, it is extremely expensive, which makes it impractical, or even impossible.
3. Separate spreadsheet control is still necessary
To get better visibility of the steps of the process and its status, many teams still use spreadsheets. ERP often doesn’t offer an overview of the workflow and, as highlighted earlier, when it does, it can be very expensive. The spreadsheet is open to filling mistakes: formulas, texts, numbers etc.
4. No record/log of activities and documents
There is no control over the process information: price, approvals, responsible parties, dates, etc. Because of that, the managers don’t know who completed each step. And when there is an audit process, this problem gets even more obvious.
5. Inefficient communication with internal and external requesters
It can be unsustainable to manage agile responses to emails and remember to report on each step of the process.
6. Lack of indicators on process management
The ERP doesn’t always offer you the possibility to get customizable reports with your process data. That makes you unable to access expenses by area, by a requester, purchase approved by the supplier, late payments, SLAs, process lead-time, etc.
Procurement | Accounts Payable | Accounts Receivable | Expenses Reimbursement | |
Information Loss | Requests, Approvals, POs, Contracts, Invoices, NFe (BR) | POs, Invoices, Receipts and Proof of Payments. | Sales Orders, Contracts, Invoices | Requests, Approvals, Receipts |
Missed Deadlines | As it lacks visibility around requests and invoices, they end up missing internal SLAs and paying fines | Late payments, leading to fines | Increasing Overdue | Unmet SLAs, degrading perspective of internal customers |
| Uncentralized Execution | Moving back and forth between Email, Excel, Slack and ERP | Moving back and forth between Email, Excel, and ERP | Moving back and forth between Email, Excel, CRM, and ERP | Moving back and forth between Email, Excel, ERP and Drive (for pictures) |
Money Loss | Unseen saving opportunities and fines | Fines | Unresponsiveness upon overdue | Fraud gaps due to archaic set up |
| Unstructured Information | Mostly open fields, with no validations, leading to wrong values, names, dates, approvers. Making reporting hard | Mostly open fields, with no validations, leading to wrong values, names, dates, approvers. Making reporting hard | Mostly open fields, with no validations, leading to wrong values, names, dates, approvers. Making reporting hard | Mostly open fields, with no validations, leading to wrong values, names, dates, approvers. Making reporting hard. |
| Unsatisfied Customers | Asking for information already provided. No visibility upon request, delays and need for follow-up | Asking for information already provided. Hiring delays, affecting requesters and vendors | Receiving follow up/duplicate emails having paid the invoice | Asking for information already provided |
Pipefy’s research on problems faced in various financial processes
As we’ve seen so far, what really happens is that the company ends up having to adapt to the ERP system and not the other way around.
Then what is the answer?
First of all, the ideal would be for us to know your specific situation, but, in most cases, it is possible to connect Pipefy to your ERP via API. Pipefy acts as the conductor of your processes, collaborating with the ERP, allowing the manager to:
- Standardize the way to accept requests and the way to execute them;
- Centralize files, activity log and message exchange in the card;
- Connect and automate actions between financial processes. For example, when a purchase request is approved in a process, an Account Payable is automatically created in another;
- Set up alerts and specific notification for new demands, set deadlines, SLAs and approval requests, giving finance professionals more time to focus on their work;
- Access a dashboard that offers real-time indicators of your operation.
And the coolest thing about working to improve the efficiency of our financial processes is how easy it is for the team and the managers to help our Customer Success team to calculate the platform ROI ?
If your financial operation relates to these challenges, we will be happy to assist you. Register to Pipefy and ask to speak to a consultant.
* Written by Bruna Marinelli, Accounts Executive at Pipefy.
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