5 Things You Might be Overlooking if You’re Looking to Grow.

They call them growing pains for a reason: Business growth does not come without a price. Whether it’s headcount, or brick-and-mortar buildouts, or overseas expansions – or all three – getting bigger means spending more.

But you’re on top of it: You’ve got the tools in place to see and stay ahead of spending. You’ve made the commitment to continued improvement, and your investment in SAP Concur solutions is paying off. That’s all good. But is there more you could be doing to drive additional data and dollars into your expansion strategy? Is there a way to soften those pangs of progress?

Well, we probably wouldn’t be writing this if there wasn’t.

You know what’s been spent. You’re a little foggy on what’s going to be spent.

Preapprovals: It used to be that you had to wait until the end of the month to see how much your employees had drained the coffers. Now, with SAP Concur solutions in place, you can see spending before it happens and track actuals as they accrue. That makes it easier to make decisions and protect your bottom line, but what about forecasts? We’re guessing here, but they’re often still a shot in the dark, and not knowing those numbers makes it hard to know if growth is feasible. How do you get a better look at what’s next?

You don’t have time or money for more audits, even though mistakes and fraud cost you time and money.

Audits: Sure, it would be great to audit each invoice and every expense report, but it would also be nice to be a gazillionaire. The truth is, audits take time away from your overworked AP team, and adding staff just doesn’t add up. But when you consider the fact that errors and fraud typically eat through 5% of your annual revenue, recouping some of those losses (and fueling your growth strategy) sounds like pretty good idea.  

Your processes could use a little sharpening.

Automation: Your workflow works, but there’s a chance it could work better – it could work on its own, in fact, if you could automate more tasks and inform your processes with artificial intelligence and machine learning. And if you could do that, you could shift staff from tedious functions to focus on more strategic work. Well, you can. You just need the right tools.

Your big data feels like a big problem.

Intelligence: You’ve got enough data to satisfy every query you could possibly have, but by the time you find the answers, you can’t remember the questions. Sure, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but digging through data isn’t getting you anywhere, and until you get qualified, capable help, your data isn’t worth its weight in ones and zeros. You need tips to interpret the data you have.

You’re too overwhelmed to care about overpaid taxes.

VAT reclaim: Growth means going places, but the requirements and regulations of doing business beyond borders is simply too taxing to follow. So you pay your value-added taxes and your goods-and-services taxes and your harmonized-sales taxes, and you forget about it. Fine, but you’re forfeiting your share of billions of tax-reclaim dollars, and you may face hefty fines. That’s your money, and it could be funneled into growth.

If these pains feel at all familiar, take five minutes and read the growth tip sheet. You’ll see how expanding SAP Concur solution could help expand your business.