Business Spend Management Goes Real Time as CFOs Conserve Cash

PYMNTS asked business leaders for their take on how to plan for the rest of 2023 and what they are telling their teams to focus on. Mesh Payments CFO Anna King says CFOs don’t have the luxury of assuming the current company spend is the best one.

As someone with decades of hard-fought payment experience, I understand the criticality of the upcoming weeks for the business community. It is imperative that CFOs take a proactive approach to assess their exposure and risk in light of recent events.

It is clear that many companies must now prioritize their banking setups, diversify their banking services across multiple institutions to maximize their protection under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and develop robust operational safeguards to ensure the continuity of critical functions such as payroll and mission-critical spending. 

Heading into Q2, finance teams must seize the opportunity to strengthen their financial resilience and enhance their risk management capabilities. Mesh is no exception. We will continue to prioritize business fundamentals instead of adopting a growth-at-all-costs mindset and we have our annual budget holding us to account.

We are constantly monitoring and reevaluating expenses across the board, with no category left untouched. One of our most significant expenses is software. We use our own platform to purchase and track software subscriptions, look holistically at spend and prevent zombie subscriptions. Additionally, we can set limits and build our company’s travel and expense (T&E) policies into corporate cards, providing added assurance that we are staying within budget.

As companies across the globe cut costs, they need help with cash management, including real-time visibility and control over how they spend. The bottom line is that companies shouldn’t assume that their current spend is the lowest cost option. Instead, they should frequently review their spending and compare it to relevant benchmarks.

By embracing a spend management solution that is connected to all of your business’s financial systems, you get a much fuller picture of your organization and can better make informed decisions. These insights help to steer decision-making and allow for flexibility in changing conditions — like unexpected banking crises.