Companies often find it difficult to figure out how to improve the efficiency of support functions such as finance and accounting. The work of these departments does not directly affect the company's revenue, but without this functionality it is impossible to organize business activities.
However, companies can to increase the efficiency of the accounting service. How to do this, Spreadym team will consider below.
Time and labor management
When we talk about time and labor, we mean time that consumed to make any work operations that are needed to obtain a certain result of work. Accounting business processes depend primarily on the specifics of the business and size. In some sectors, for example, control over the financial activities of enterprises can be tighter, in others it can be softer. In terms of size of business, we also can see differences. The volume of accounting operations of a large holding with many production assets and a number of sales departments is not comparable to a medium-sized business.
Since the business is increasing the growth rate of the number of service function staff corresponds to the surge in corporate revenue. However, the rate of decline in the employees’ number is usually much lower than the rate of slowing in business. Workforce efficiency can be defined in different ways depending on the goals of the companies. The list of methods is quite wide and includes both the simplest and the most complex (but at the same time the most precise) solutions.
Comparative work time tracking is the simplest and least accurate method. It includes simply looking at the time that employees spend on the same operations in advanced companies of the same industry.
Performance factor is a more time-consuming, but also more accurate method. It is based on the calculation of the required number of employees subject to time factors that determine the results of a particular process. We can compare the company's results with industry averages and draw conclusions about whether the staff is overworked or underutilized.
Recording time and activity data. The method involves a tracking of the number of operations performed during the day in order to understand how much time each employee spends on each operation, how much is spent on solving related issues, and how much is spent on personal matters that are not related to work. The method gives the same exact results as the previous one.
Audit of the organizational structure
Often there are situations when accounting departments take over the functions of other departments. Why this happens, no one knows. For example, the effectiveness of accounting operations is often associated with the speed of receipt of documents and information. So the final documents on the corporate transactions are often requested by the accounting service, and not by the sales department. Although it is more common for the latter to do this, because the sales department is interested in client’s conformation of acceptance the services or goods.
The problem can only be solved by an audit of organizational structure. As a result, it may turn out that the workload can be easily distributed to other departments to increase the efficiency of work.
Digital transformation
Any automation of processes leads to more efficient operation of the company. The selection of the appropriate one also occurs in the process of auditing business activities. This may be the integration of accounting and sales systems, the introduction of a corporate performance management platform, the formation of a single database of corporate reporting of the company, the unification of reporting forms for input and output. We wrote more about how to prepare for automation here. If you already realized that you need all these toolkits with a convenient interface, you should pay attention to Spreadym. The platform allows users to automate financial functions, increase the efficiency of business intelligence and simplify business processes such as planning, budgeting, reporting, forecast and operational management.
