What Corporate Managers Get Right (And Wrong)

This week’s Data Digest goes out to all of the managers out there. Whether you’re part of the C-suite or an entrepreneur leading your own business, managers keep the business running. The latest reports and studies lift the veil on emerging trends among these corporate managers and reveal a few ways they might want to examine how to do better.

100,000+ public officials will be impacted by government eInvoicing mandates, suggests a report from Billentis. Executives at government agencies are advised to upgrade their systems — especially public procurement processes — following a slew of government initiatives to implement digital invoicing, Billentis found.The company issued a guide to officials within the accounts payable and receivable space, who, the report claimed, can reduce costs by up to 80 percent through eInvoice adoption.

88% of finance professionals anticipate a rise in payments fraud, said TD Bank in its latest analysis. Executives in this industry see payments fraud becoming an increasing problem in the next few years, but the data also showed that these professionals don’t see an adequate solution available to them today. TD Bank Head of Corporate Products and Services Rick Burke said corporate treasurers need to begin a dialogue with their banks and financial services partners to integrate adequate security controls within their corporations.

57% of treasurers across verticals have no strategy to protect their firms against payments fraud. A recent survey by Bottomline Technologies and Strategic Treasurer found that corporate treasury officials aren’t prepared to safeguard their firms against a cyberattack, despite a quarter of those that said they had experienced such an attack reporting financial losses from the event. According to researchers, the data suggests corporate treasurers need to take a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity, and that includes across all payment processes.

39% of corporate travel managers said their spend on meals increased last year, and much of those expenses, found a report from The BTN Group and Dinova, go largely unchecked. Researchers found that 40 percent of companies surveyed spent at least $1 million on work-related dining in 2015, but the majority of travel managers aren’t examining employee meal spend in an effort to identify opportunities for savings. More than half of the corporate travel managers surveyed said they haven’t initiated an effort to manage this spend category, the report stated.

33% of procurement officials don’t have a procurement management system, at least those in the Middle East across the hospitality industry. The statistic was highlighted in Hotelier Middle East’s Hospitality Procurement Report 2016, which surveyed procurement processionals within both international and local hospitality companies. For those procurement executives that have deployed a procurement management system, the majority admitted that their system is made up of manual spreadsheets and legacy recording tactics, researchers said. The report cited the Middle East’s lagging behind U.S. and European counterparts when it comes to integrating sophisticated procurement managements systems.

16% of CEOs were found to have used corporate funds in a questionable manner by a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review. Researchers examined instances of questionable — not illegal — behavior from CEOs based on news media reports between 2000 and 2015. HBR reported that these actions tend to result in inconsistent punishment on the CEO. Misconduct involving corporate finances, however, almost always resulted in termination.

10% more entrepreneurs emerged within the U.S. last year compared to 2014, found the Kauffman Foundation. Researchers concluded that there were 310 new entrepreneurs per 100,000 adults in 2015, up from the 280 per 100,000 adults in 2014. According to Kauffman, these entrepreneurs are critical for job growth and economic strength, though pointed to the tendency for startups to delay hiring, contributing to a bit of jobs growth weakness recently found in the country.