Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Infective and expensive manual tasks are driving finance teams to upgrade to a modern tech stack.
- SaaS solutions that are user friendly, include real-time reporting, and provide automated management tools top the list for most companies in our benchmarking report.
- A comprehensive financial management platform can streamline financial processes and significantly reduce manual work.
As an Advisory Member for the Controller Collective professional community, Peter Nesbitt noticed that members often asked questions about their finance tech stack capabilities and implementation. “People were constantly asking about it, so I thought it’d be helpful if we developed a resource that had all the information in one place,” he explained.
That’s exactly what we did. Polling the nearly 500 members of Controller Collective, we asked which software they use to automate different finance functions, including:
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Spend management
- Accounts receivable (AR) and billing
- Accounts payable (AP)
- Close management
- Budgeting and forecasting
- Tax
- Human resources (HR) and payroll
- Travel management
So, we decided to find out which applications finance teams used to improve their processes, cash flow, and business operations. Our report helps you identify the best finance software and makes a case for how a proper tech stack will give you improved compliance, productivity, and agility.
Read on for a summary of the results, and get the 2021 Finance Technology Benchmarking Report to see all the details!
The Most Popular Software for Your Finance Tech Stack
Before we dive into some of the more nuanced questions, let’s take a look at the solutions our respondents said were the best. Some platforms stood out from the sea of SaaS finance and fintech products as the best finance tech stack solutions, especially for mid-sized businesses looking to improve their accounting processes.
Salesforce for CRM
Salesforce was the clear winner in the CRM category, in which companies prioritized scalability, real-time visibility, and reporting. Almost 90% of firms are using some type of CRM, which isn’t surprising. Recent Salesforce data suggest consumers now expect connected experiences across B2B and B2C.
Teampay for Spend Management and AP
When it came to spend management software, Teampay emerged as the top choice. In fact, more than 2x as many people use Teampay to manage spend than the next software option. Though most finance professionals understand the importance of proactive spend controls, 27% still perform this task manually and 44% are using tools that are not built to manage spend from end-to-end. This way of working creates spend management challenges, like manually reconciling and coding transactions after the fact.
AP automation is a rapidly growing multi-billion dollar market, and software can serve as an entry point into wider scale finance digital transformation. There is a great opportunity to establish controls before the payment to manage costs and eliminate manual work.
Paystand for AR
Paystand was the most common choice for accounts receivable (AR). Only 8% of respondents were not using any software for accounts receivable, but we expect this number to decline.
es for which respondents did not turn to automated SaaS: close management, forecasting, and budgeting. For these categories, the majority of respondents still use manual processes.
Though FloQast was the number one choice for close management, 67% of teams continue to deal with the month-end close manually. Similarly, 64% of respondents reported manual budgeting and forecasting. A manual approach can lead to errors, dirty data, and severe business challenges.
The rise of remote work has further complicated these areas because employees at every level are making more purchases from more places. That means more expense reports to process, more employees to chase down for receipts, and more transactions to manually reconcile.
Furthermore, when finance teams have to wait until the end of the month to get the corporate credit card statements, they may only find out about purchases weeks after they happen. This delayed visibility means you’re basing your budgets and forecasts on outdated data.
Without purpose-built software to manage distributed spending, it can spiral out of control. Conversely, research shows that agile finance leaders who embrace finance software are able to better deliver on the company’s bottom line.
How a finance tech stack optimizes expense management for rapidly growing companies
With the increase in remote work, there has been a SaaS explosion. Businesses have had to strike a balance between giving remote employees the software they need and preventing zombie subscriptions. In order to do so, finance leaders look for scalable solutions that can grow with them, rather than tools that only work at certain stages of growth.
For example, Salesforce is a highly scalable application that quickly adds more servers to accommodate more users. Teampay is just as configurable and can be updated to meet your evolving needs as your business grows.
Another factor is the user experience. Finance teams are placing increased value on ease-of-use in addition to just capabilities. In the end, all the software functionalities in the world are worthless if no one uses them.
Lastly, finance leaders choose systems that have robust integrations. Any new software should not only automate a set of tasks, but also improve connectivity so data is seamlessly transmitted across platforms, unifying otherwise disparate processes.
The changing economy brought expenses into focus
It’s not just software usage in general that has risen. Looking one step deeper into the SaaS explosion, it is clear that certain areas have emerged as ripe for accounting automation.
Remote work made it more difficult for companies to process accounts payable manually, for example, so they turned to software to automate it. Bill.com’s stock price rose sharply over the past year in what Forbes calls a “covid turbo boost.”
The pandemic thrust the world economy into an ever-changing and unpredictable crisis. As companies looked to control costs, finance leaders became laser-focused on expenses. They realized the immediate need to control spending at every level of the organization, while still empowering employees to move quickly to adapt to changing market conditions.
“Companies suddenly started focusing on expenses more than they had before as a way to manage costs,” said Nesbitt. “It will be important to maintain this focus going forward.” And in a virtual world, maintaining control and visibility into company spending is more important than ever.
What CFOs should consider when selecting a new finance tech stack to improve efficiency and compliance
CFOs see more than the day-to-day accounting challenges—although the two are intrinsically linked. Long-term goals, granular transaction transparency, and compliance guidelines require its own toolset.
For that reason, it’s often critical to look for accounting solutions that go beyond simple reconciliation automation. Integration, automated policy enforcement, nuanced user controls, corporate credit cards, and real-time data syncing all contribute to wider range of visibility and more compliant workflows. A modern finance tech stack includes tools that eliminate manual data entry, consolidate financial reporting, and make payment processing easy.
Embrace finance technology to stay ahead of the curve
While forward-looking finance teams have begun to embrace finance automation software, far too many still rely on manual processes. This suggests a great opportunity for companies to modernize their finance operations with technology that doesn’t merely digitize old processes, but optimizes them through machine learning.
In the year ahead, high-performing finance leaders will embrace finance technologies to automate important functions and free their team to focus on more strategic work. Building your financial tech stack is a step towards improving your finance team’s precision, productivity, and work satisfaction.
Discover how you can transform your accounting workflow with a modern tech stack in our Benchmarking Report or check out Teampay’s comprehensive spend management platform.
