How to Improve Back-Office Efficiency to Increase Profitability: Part Three
This is article three in the blog series, How to Improve Back-Office Efficiency to Increase Profitability.
You can view article one here and article two here.
[Susie] Sometimes after companies look at their current technology and processes, they realize that it’s necessary to invest in additional technology to fully maximize efficiency. Do you have advice for companies that realize they need to invest in new technology? What’s your suggestion on how to vet different options?
[Dave] One thing I recommend and wholeheartedly endorse is to talk to your peers. We’re a remarkably collaborative industry. When you think about the amount of technical expertise shared between operating companies, they tend to be very open with the successes they’ve had and how they’ve adopted the technology. They realize that they don’t compete in the efficiency of their business automation.
But they all see value in actually making back-office business automation as efficient as possible. So there tends to be a lot of collaboration between peers. I’d say that if you’ve hit a spot where you think there’s an opportunity to actually gain greater efficiency by acquiring more technology, I would recommend talking to Enverus. We’ve got lots of good ideas, but, at the same time, talk to your peers, talk to those companies that have actually gone through the process and have got a good understanding of the investment they’ve made, the change management challenges they have to overcome, and where and where they ended up. And what you might find is that you might be thinking – this is the problem I’m trying to solve. But when you talk to your peers, you find out there are other problems you can also solve. It doesn’t take much time and provides a very significant return on that investment.
[Susie] Michael, do you have anything to add?
[Michael] Don’t just jump in and start making changes. Review what you’ve got. Review the options. Talk to peers and design your system to get the right data in the right workflows. Be prepared to adjust for different suppliers that operate differently and different types of invoices. Once you’ve got the right data, you’ve got the right rules. You can start to turn on enforcement and you can adjust as necessary. And then finally look at projects that have minimal effort needed from your collective team – the small change management that provides big wins and savings.
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[Susie] One area we’re seeing more operators consider for time and cost savings due to restricted resources is outsourcing certain tasks. Jeff, could you provide some examples of when it might benefit a company to outsource processes?
[Jeff} One thing I would recommend is outsourcing any type of repetitive task that you cannot automate. Or, if you’re looking for ways to automate, you could outsource the expertise to help you with implementation.
Unfortunately, last year, we saw several organizations with layoffs. We had a lot of organizations reaching out to us asking for help because there was still a lot of work and they did not have the resources on staff to handle it.
Now organizations are coming back and they’re seeing activity return to our business. But they’re not quite sure they want to rehire in these particular areas yet. Outsourcing can help here, too. If it makes sense to outsource half of a full-time equivalent versus hiring full-time personnel – that’s where Enverus could help.
A lot of people are reaching out to us for assistance with price book automation, a very critical step in your invoice process. But what you hear from a lot of companies is that it’s very tedious and they don’t have the resources to manage the relationships with suppliers and work on gathering the right information in the application. Enverus Professional Services has been able to work with companies on this and increase the amount of spend that’s covered by the price book.
We’re also looking for ways to reduce the cost of compliance invoices. We have the ability to go behind the scenes and work with the suppliers to review the information based on how it’s set up. We can work directly with their contacts. We’ll still require that you do the approval process on your side when it comes to the agreed-upon pricing. But we can do the dirty work and try to get everything up and running on the system.
If you’re looking for ways to reduce the number of touches in your invoice process all the way from the ticket to the price book to the invoice, we have certain ways and we can leverage some of the best practices that we’ve seen with our other clients. It really comes down to your need and where you need help.
Are you interested in finding new ways to leverage your OpenInvoice solutions, data and processes, but aren’t sure where to start? The Enverus Professional Services team can help. Schedule a complimentary business review with Enverus experts.
