It is every CFO’s dream to see their finance team perform optimally and meet objectives as much as possible.

Fortunately, there are practical steps which if taken can put you directly in the driving seat of your team’s operational efficiency, with a firm grasp on high performance and effectiveness. Ready to see those? Let’s go:

1. Identify and address productivity killers

The first step towards achieving team efficiency is always to identify drawbacks and bottlenecks that could be holding your people back. Here’s a look at some of them:

• Manual data entry errors
• Slow processes
• Fraud
• Miscommunication
• Mismanagement of information
• Inefficient approval processing
• Unclear role division
• Lack of visibility
• Missing documents

Once you’ve identified and removed these productivity killers, it means your operations can run more smoothly. It’s equivalent to servicing an engine so that it runs without clogging up.

2. Train your finance team

The next step you want to take is upskilling your people. For example, if you’re using financial management software, sending your team members to helpful training and webinars, or even investing in a useful accounting book can optimise their input.

The training should help them keep up with both internal procedures and the latest accounting practices.

3. Automate manual processes

One of the best things you can do for your finance department is automating manual processes. There are many advantages to this, including freeing up human resources’ time to focus on more human-oriented tasks, eliminating human errors, and generally speeding up your overall performance as repetitive tasks are automated.

Almost all accounting and financial tasks can be automated to a degree, be it accounts payable, receivables, expense management, invoicing, inventory, and what have you.

Automation lets you process documents in batches. For instance, instead of manually processing receipts or invoices individually, your finance team can consolidate and process multiple items together using automation. This saves time and effort while improving efficiency.

4. Communicate clearly

Communication is essential to teamwork. Little or the lack of it could result in process failure and even project breakdown.

Not only should you communicate your expectations, policies and procedures to your finance team from the outset, but should also be open to receiving their feedback and advice. Also, ensure you provide adequate communication channels between team members for the free flow of information so they can work more harmoniously.

5. Integrate with other departments

Finance teams often rely on data from other departments in order to do their work.

Whether you want to use ERP software or a standalone accounting solution, by properly integrating your accounting department with other departments and their systems and processes, anyone can share data very easily and quickly. This saves your finance team from the usually long and tedious task of requesting data and moves work faster.

6. Remove redundant processes

Get rid of unnecessary processes or tasks that won’t affect the output when removed. In most cases, redundancies are huge time-wasters and can slow down your team’s efforts.

Redundancies aren’t just found in your processes. They can be found in the movement of your team as well. You want to limit movements (both physical and otherwise) within your workflows and processes to get projects completed on time and within budget.

7. Give your finance team the right tools to work with

You might have the best professionals in your finance team but without the right tool, they won’t be able to perform their duties at an optimum level.

For example, providing your team with reliable financial management software empowers them to do their work efficiently, accurately, and effectively.