Money doesn’t grow on trees — as 2023 is rudely reminding the average business owner. The cost of running a company is skyrocketing, and rising energy and commodity prices are fast making it impossible for leaders to turn a profit. As a result, many are turning to modern digital solutions to better manage their outgoings.
Spend management software is a relatively new technology for small and medium-sized enterprises, helping to track, analyze, and reduce any non-payroll business expenses. If you’re looking to boost your company’s operations and trim any rogue spending, these are the three types of spend management software that you need to get acquainted with.
1. IT procurement software
Recent developments have pushed many businesses to bolster digitalisation efforts. Whether it’s due to the alluring progress of AI or increasingly dispersed workforces, you may find that you’re picking up more new software tools than ever before. The issue is, these come at a cost. To help you to manage your growing SaaS (Software as a Service) spending, you could benefit from procurement spend management software.
This can deliver significant value to your business by reducing your software costs. According to software purchasing platform Vertice, “90% of buyers are overpaying for their software by an average of 20-30%” — but with procurement software, buyers can gain real-time insight into their entire SaaS stack. This helps to address issues such as “duplicate SaaS applications, redundant SaaS applications, and unused licenses” that represent wasted IT spending, helping you to better manage your budget.
2. Travel expense software
If you operate in a line of business that requires frequent travel, you’ll want to invest in a spend management tool. According to the expense management platform SalesTrip, the average US company spends 10% of its revenue on business-related travel costs — and chances are, these aren’t funds that you can afford to let slip through the cracks. So, to get the most value for your money when members of staff are on the move, you’ll want to seamlessly track and optimize travel expenses.
There are many moving parts to consider when selecting a travel expense management solution. While some SaaS packages include basic fare-tracking capabilities as part of an all-in-one platform, there are also dedicated tools for expense management. According to TravelPerk, these can provide travel booking, flight tracking, automatic reporting and approval workflows to streamline the process that little bit more, saving you time and bother.
What’s more, these tools can be further integrated with accounting, time-tracking and HR software you might already have in your portfolio.
3. Corporate budgeting software
For more general budgeting functionality, financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software is accessible for enterprises of all industries and scales, helping you to manage where company resources are allocated. If you’re not using software to assist with your budgeting, or you’re scaling your business and wanting to procure a new tool for the job, there are some top budgeting solutions out there that can help you to collect, automate, and organize important financial data.
Experts from Investopedia offer some insight into the best FP&A tools on the market. These selections cover a range of business functions, they explain, as “financial advisors often use an array of software solutions including customer relationship management tools, portfolio management tools, trading/rebalancing solutions, and investment analytics.”
Some of the top choices on the market are MoneyGuidePro, eMoney Pro and RightCapital, each of which offers a range of financial solutions packaged into one tool.
For the best fit, you’re best off researching and trialling different products before committing to one. The bottom line is that if solutions like these aren’t included in your SaaS portfolio, you could miss out on savings across procurement, travel expenses, and general financial planning — spend management software is a vital tool for any company in 2023.
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