Accounts payable automation company Yooz is looking deep into the crystal ball to explore how the industry is likely to impact SMEs this year. According to Yooz North America Chief innovation Officer Laurent Charpentier, small and medium-sized businesses will further embrace high-tech, yet affordable, cloud accounting services.
In a statement issued Tuesday (Jan. 26), Charpentier released additional predictions for the world of small business AP.
First, he said, data intelligence from the finance department will boost companies’ bottom lines. “Customers tell us that, on average, they see an improvement of 0.5 percent to their bottom line” when they implement real-time intelligence into their finance workflow, Charpentier said in a statement. “With a company that has a 5–6 percent profit margin, simply automating their financial workflow in the cloud has a significant impact on profitability.”
The adoption of cloud-based AP automation tools will also allow these businesses to spend more time focusing on supply chain costs, the executive said. Automation helps companies operate seamlessly, Charpentier said, allowing professionals to turn their attention to more strategic aspects of the business, like their supply chains. “It’s the year we’ll move from shuffling paper to seeing larger processes and understanding how a business really performs,” he predicted.
[bctt tweet=”‘It’s the year we’ll move from shuffling paper.'”]
Finally, the Yooz executive said that SMEs will strengthen their B2B partnerships by connecting into end-to-end solutions instead of multiple, fragmented tools. This will connect all aspects of a company, like CRM, billing, payments and accounting, into a single ERP portal, Yooz said, leading to stronger buyer-supplier relationships and greater insight into business processes.
Overall, Charpentier said, this means greater adoption of cloud-based, automated accounts payable.
Yooz added that these conclusions and predictions are based on feedback from Yooz customers from several industries, including health care and automotive.