As a Chief Financial Officer, it’s only natural to want your finance team to perform at their best and meet their objectives as much as possible.
But what steps can you take to ensure this happens?
Well, here are a few that could put you in the driving seat of your team’s operational efficiency:
1. Identify and eliminate productivity killers to improve overall team productivity and performance
The first step in achieving team efficiency is to identify any drawbacks or bottlenecks that may be holding your team back.
These could include things like manual data entry errors, slow processes, fraud, miscommunication, mismanagement of information, inefficient approval processing, unclear role division, lack of visibility, and missing documents.
Once you’ve identified and eliminated these productivity killers, your operations will run much more smoothly.
For the most part, you don’t have to do this manually. UniFi comes with market-leading features and capabilities that are designed to automatically solve each and every one of these issues for your organisation.
It’s equivalent to servicing an engine so that it runs without clogging up.
2. Automate manual processes to reduce errors and free up time for more value-added tasks
Automating manual processes is one of the best things you can do for your finance department.
This could free up human resources’ time to focus on more human-oriented tasks, eliminate human errors, and generally speed up your overall performance as repetitive tasks are automated.
Some of the financial accounting processes and workflows that can be automated are:
- Exchange rates management
- Journal approvals
- Intercompany accounting
- Document management
- Budgeting and forecasting
3. Integrate with other departments to enhance data accessibility and streamline information sharing
Finance teams often rely on data from other departments in order to do their work.
By properly integrating your accounting department with other departments and their systems and processes, anyone can share data very easily and quickly.
This saves your finance team from the usually long and tedious task of requesting data and moves work faster.
The best way to do this? Use UniFi. With innovative Middleware and Integration capabilities, UniFi Data Connectors allow you to connect to third-party applications and seamlessly transfer data between all your systems for a single source of truth.
4. Remove redundant processes to improve overall efficiency and reduce time wastage
Get rid of unnecessary processes or tasks that won’t affect the output when removed. In most cases, redundancies are huge time-wasters and can slow down your team’s efforts.
Redundancies aren’t just found in your processes. They can be found in the movement of your team as well.
You want to limit movements (both physical and otherwise) within your workflows and processes to get projects completed on time and within budget.
This still brings you back to automating manual processes as that’s where most ‘work movements’ occur within a team.
5. Upskill your finance team to enable them to attain better performance
The next step is to invest in the skills of your team members.
For example, if you’re using financial management software, you could send your team to relevant training sessions or webinars or invest in a learning management system to help them improve their input.
The training should help them keep up with both internal procedures and the latest accounting practices.
6. Give your finance team the right tools to work with
You might have the best professionals in your finance team but without the right tool, they won’t be able to perform their duties at an optimum level.
For example, providing your team with reliable financial accounting software empowers them to do their work efficiently, accurately, and effectively.
7. Communicate clearly to facilitate better collaboration and improve the understanding of expectations
Clear communication is essential to teamwork. Little or lack of it could result in process failure and even project breakdown.
You should communicate your expectations, policies, and procedures to your finance team from the outset and be open to receiving their feedback and advice.
Also, ensure you provide adequate communication channels between team members for the free flow of information so they can work more harmoniously.
To wrap up
As a CFO, there are several steps you can take to increase the efficiency of your finance team.
By identifying and eliminating productivity killers, automating manual processes, integrating with other departments, removing redundant processes, upskilling your team, providing them with the right tools, and communicating clearly, you can create a smooth-running, effective finance team that meets its objectives and contributes to the overall success of the organisation.
One of the most effective ways to do this is by using UniFi, a complete business system for finance and all connected departments. It offers market-leading features, automation capabilities, and integration options to streamline and optimise your business processes.