Ensure future-readiness of your organization’s Accounting Department with these digital tools
by Mr. Chandrasekhar Swaminathan
The ever-changing nature of an industry never fails to remind us of the digital evolution taking place at every step. In the department of Accounts especially, technology plays a crucial role in the path of progress. It helps speed up processes and aids with streamlining, thereby helping professionals devote more time for crucial analytics than mechanical processes. The phenomenon of digitization is nothing short of a beacon that is constantly reminding us of the steady shift towards a complete technological overhaul. Soon, we will be entering an era where the current accounting system bears no semblance to the system that the company originally started out with. Faster, Better & Cost-effective is the mantra of the new age. Are you ready for it? Here are five digital trends that make sure that your company is technologically better equipped to take on the challenges of today.
Business Intelligence Tools
The MIS information requirement of a company is ever-changing, and it is absolutely vital to keep up with the demand. A massive amount of information flows onto the senior manager’s desk on a daily basis. The amount of time that is dedicated to fully comprehend the data is rarely enough to realize its full potential. Business Intelligence (BI) tools empower you to carry out in-depth data review and they do it with incredible ease. They incorporate excellent analytical features, comparison matrices and slice & dice methodologies which prove that they are the future of data review. BI tools should undoubtedly be a part of the digital requirement to keep up with the changes in data demand in a company.
Audit Automation
The advent of Robotic Process Automation has enabled auditors to rethink, redesign and reorganize the audit process completely. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligence Process (IP) are beautiful softwares that are integrated with other application systems. They take a cohesive approach by combining with other systems at the user interface level and can be used to automate both, predefined and non-standardized processes.
E-Compliance
In today’s world, there are numerous compliances that a company is statutorily bound to adhere to, when it comes to accounting and finance. Amidst this plethora of amenabilities, it is a mountainous task to collate and understand what is applicable to your company and keep up with its updates. In such a situation, an E-compliance software would really come in handy to execute time-bound inspections of tasks that are subjected to strict compliances. Smart ERP systems can provide the links to establish payment information and addition or deletion of office lists through master creation control triggers. Data repository of all challans and returns can also be saved in one place for easy retrieval.
Vendor Portal
In today’s world of accounting, the trend of singular-level data entry is shifting. The scenario of not entering the data twice is evolving from the company level to the industry level. One thing that could really help refine data visibility would be to establish an integration link during the vendor registration process itself. It would go a long way in pulling only the relevant data for accounting purposes. The amount of time that this would save, could be invested in review and analysis. This would prove advantageous for the vendors as well, since they would have a transparent display of the ledger in the interest of reconciliation activities on payments and balance confirmations.
Contract Management
Professionally managed companies mandatorily ensure contracts are in place for sales and purchases for regular transactions. However, for the contract to see closure, it runs through various departments with legal being in the forefront. Due to the involvement of many team members, there may be a phenomenal delay as there may be multiple email threads running parallelly for the same contract. A contract management software would help immensely in achieving superior turnaround time from each department that is involved. It could link the contract creation in ERP, backed by the final commercial terms picked through the contract management software.