Can you remember the last time you wrote a cheque? And apart from shopping lists, which most people now type into their smart phone, many of us don’t use a pen anymore. All over the country, our handwriting looks like a doctor’s scrawl through lack of practice. It’s a far cry from the precise copperplate handwriting of our grandparents.
Cheques are still used of course by businesses but less and less with funds being deposited directly into bank accounts. Finance departments have come a long way since the days of handwritten ledgers and double-entry bookkeeping, but in the new digital age, it’s perhaps more important than ever to make sure everything is accurate. This is so true in the finance department, where one slip of the keyboard can cause untold problems, especially if staff are untrained or unmotivated. Maybe it’s not their forte but they have been asked to fill in as the finance department is struggling.
Mistakes occur in overstretched departments – perhaps with too much work or unskilled staff – and a small input error can have a catastrophic and domino effect on the business – impacting on much more than the finance department. By the time the mistake is discovered – and it might be first discovered by a client – irreparable damage could have been done. There is also the good name of the business to consider and whether suppliers will tolerate repeated mistakes, or motivated to find business elsewhere. Your BPO outsourcing can build bespoke digital systems to fix the little issues that can sometimes snowball and therefore affect relationships with suppliers. The systems that they can build include those that are able to automatically verify forms such as invoices, not needing manual entry unless a mistake is identified.
Various statistics claim that four in ten small businesses will fail within the first five years. Failure is nearly always due to liquidity – or lack of it. No matter how good your product or idea and how many sales you can achieve, if you don’t get the numbers right, you will fail. The finance department is crucially important.
Outsourcing the finance department – either partially or in its entirety – is definitely one way to go. Even if it’s just a little support until your business is up and running and can stand on its own feet – it’s well worth considering.
Cheques are so ‘last year’. We shouldn’t really be using them in the 21st century and in the same way, outsourcing help just makes so much sense.
