Time is the great equalizer in life. On any given day, no one person has more or less than another. Some choose to spend their hours differently than their friend, colleague, or competitor, but in the end, most people can use their 24 hours however they wish. Money on the other hand is the great separator, the social construct that separates the high from the middle from the low.
For many, money is the more valuable commodity – the only true necessities in life are food, clothing, and shelter and these all require money to be obtained. But looking at the bigger picture, according to Psychology Today, “If you don't invest the time needed to achieve goals, then all you have are empty ambitions”.
The truth is, in tech innovation and in the business world as a whole, it takes an abundance of both money and time to make a dent in any market.
While CEO’s and C-level executives believe every decision requires a choice be made between placing a higher value on the time or the money spent, startups and enterprises can now have the benefits of both thanks to the digital age of innovation.
Decision making is outcome and goal-oriented and in the case of finance, the goal is simple: “How can we spend the least amount of money and time on the project while maximizing ROI?” But every leader knows that when the going gets tough, the management of money and time can slip through the cracks.
It’s likely you’ve faced this very question in your own accounting department when it comes to weighing the pros and cons that have the potential to save money but will definitely take ample time. A company that has a substantial volume of invoices to process and pay inevitably faces overpayments, omissions, and fraud due to human factors, system errors, and scarcity of resources and control. In fact, the majority of companies either do not audit their vendor invoices, or at best, perform such audits infrequently.
The overwhelm of trying to backtrack and audit thousands of past invoices will take a toll on AP teams in terms of time and money in three ways. First, it impacts the ability to recover and claw back lost funds, second, it can cause strain on vendor company relationships, and third, backtracking invoice audits diverts attention from current and strategic initiatives. So while time and resources are conserved by not deploying in-house staff to complete the mundane task of invoice auditing, the spend over time would be worth it considering that 73% of invoices contain errors.
New software, tools, and technology can aid finance teams in maximizing the work hours in a day, minimizing in-house costs that go toward the completion of repetitive tasks, and prove their ROI and value almost immediately.
With OpenEnvoy, CFOs don’t have to choose between time or money because they are able to achieve the benefits of both with virtually no manual effort. With real time automated auditing technology, companies are alerted of discrepancies between invoices and contracts and are guided through the steps of fixing presented errors, thus saving the time it would take to manually find discrepancies and go through the process of contacting vendors, and the money of blindly paying for duplicate billings, excess charges, and instances of vendor fraud.
By investing in OpenEnvoy, you put another layer of control in your system and process to protect your company and its financial assets. It’s essential to be aware of how both money and time are used on your team, in your company, and in your own life, too. Both are necessary when it comes to keeping your business afloat and making steps toward reaching new milestones.
Explore how the technology of today can help your team reap the benefits of saving time and money here at OpenEnvoy.
