You can study every dimension of a business’s on-paper presence, throw yourself into analysing their market, comb through their financials with painstaking detail. You can spend all the time in the world looking at their business, but it’s virtually impossible to truly understand a business without spending time in it. This is why every new external CFO engagement begins with us spending a few days on-site at your operation—meeting your people, observing your processes, and getting a boots-on-the-ground feel for your business.
It’s often this very first visit that our team identifies processes in your business that are ripe for improvement—that, with a little streamlining, could have a substantial impact on your productivity.
What does productivity have to do with financial management? The answer is a lot. For most of our clients, productivity is one of their key levers of profitability. Higher productivity, meaning more or the same output with fewer inputs, directly translates into lower costs per unit of output—which has a direct impact on your bottom line.
Our Business Advisory Partner, Jason Krenske, has been providing external CFO services for decades. For all the businesses he’s immersed himself in, the ones that have every one of their processes dialled for maximum productivity are as rare as hen’s teeth.
Jason recognises that refining your processes is a journey with no finish line. Technology’s always-evolving state means that there will always be new better, faster ways of doing things.
“It’s a journey that we’re on within our own business too—exploring how we can use automation to take some of the routine, menial tasks off our people’s plates so they have more capacity to spend on meaningful work,” Jason says.
When it comes to pinpointing the processes that would benefit most from automation, Jason’s advice is to start with the low-hanging fruit.
“Look for the tasks that involve a human taking data from one system and putting it into another system. These are the obvious places where automation can really give you the biggest bang for buck,” he says.
One to walk the walk, Jason has seen the benefits of using automation to abolish duplicate data entry firsthand—through implementing such tools within our own business.
Explaining one instance of this, he says: “A couple of years ago, our process for assigning BAS preparation tasks went like this: We’d get a download of information from the tax office that outlined all the clients who had BAS due that month. We’d collect that information and from there, our CSAs would go into our workflow management system, manually create the task and assign it to the relevant team member.”
“The process was the exact same every time: Go into the system, select the client code, put the description in (which is always the same), add the due date, assign to the employee, press OK.”
“The whole process took about 4 minutes each time, which isn’t much when you look at it in isolation, but we had 50 of these landing each month. That’s 600 a year. So effectively, over the course of the year, this task adds up to 40 hours of our CSAs’ time,” he says.
Through a simple integration, Jason was able to completely automate the process—giving our CSAs back their much-needed time to focus on higher value work.
In a recent client CFO management meeting, Jason and his client got talking about one of their current challenges: their admin team had more work to do than hours in the day.
After identifying that the admin’s team's biggest time vampire was routine data entry and re-entry, Jason invited them to our office to walk them through the processes and tools that we’ve implemented internally.
“From this first session and some guidance along the way, they’ve since automated a number of their processes using the same tech and approach,” Jason says.
Reflecting on this particular experience, Jason adds that he finds a lot of reward in providing that brand of mentorship to our clients.
“We certainly have the capability to implement these systems for our clients, but it’s also great when the business’s own people are hungry to learn for themselves. It’s really enjoyable to be in a position where we can teach them the skills—because once they have that foundation of knowledge, they can apply it independently to all sorts of different areas,” he says.
While Jason recognises automation as a powerful way to unlock people’s time, and therefore productivity, he acknowledges the importance of handling any change with care.
“It’s important to bring the people who will be affected into the conversation as early as possible. They need to have a clear understanding of why this new process is even being considered in the first place,” he says.
“You can just imagine the negative cultural impact of one day being told that they simply aren’t required to do a task they’ve always been responsible for.”
“So bring them in nice and early, explain the reasoning behind the change, and help them understand that this is a positive thing for them and the business—because it is.”
“The other thing I would say is that as a business owner, before anything’s implemented, you need to have a plan for how you’ll utilise your staff’s newfound time on tasks that add financial value,” says Jason.
Not only is this good business sense, but it also demonstrates to affected staff that the change allows them to focus on higher-value tasks, ultimately benefiting them both personally and professionally.
If you’ve made it through this article and are still feeling sceptical about the value of automation, Jason’s advice is to just have a go at trying one simple and small exercise first.
“Pick a small process in your business that is currently demanding duplicate data entry and apply it here. It’s easy to be wary from the outside looking in, but seeing the practical outcomes of even the smallest change, it’ll make what feels like an abstract concept into something real,” he says.
Keen to streamline your business operations?
Reach out to our Business Insights team to explore where automation could save time and add value in your business.