Integration in spend management: Why CRE firms can’t afford silos

When it comes to running a construction or real estate business, the right things need to happen at the right time. 

Equipment and materials need to get to the site, the right people need to be on site and the money needs to get into the hands of contractors, suppliers and employees. Timing is everything, and every single delay that takes place increases the likelihood that something goes wrong. 

Expectations are high, and it’s on you to pay suppliers quickly, accurately and reliably. 

Following recent blogs on the rise of same day ACH, cybersecurity requirements and the risk of fraud, we would today like to discuss the challenges that firms like yours face when data is siloed.

Disjointed, reactive and slow: The dangers of data silos

For many CRE firms, one of the most “invisible” parts of accounting happens before the data even enters the books. 

Necessary tasks — such as invoice management — are challenging because they’re often separate from the rest of the organization, and they can rely on scanning paper invoices, emailing them across approval and inspection workflows, and hoping everything is tracked across job sites.

Forrester recently conducted a study to determine the difference between those who pay invoices on time and those who fall behind. Among their findings:

• 60%+ of companies face timeliness issues with manual processes.
• For roughly 40% of companies, IT and finance are not working closely with a unified travel and expense, and invoice management strategy.
• Only 13% of companies surveyed are extremely satisfied with their company’s spend management solutions.

Respondents believe that spend management is fragmented, laborious and inaccurate; and to be fair, they are right. 

For CRE firms, where speed and accuracy is the name of the game, you can’t afford to spend time scanning and emailing documents from person to person. Contractors are becoming harder to find, suppliers can’t wait for you to bounce documents between departments and jobsites and, ultimately, you can’t afford to keep working this way.

That’s why many organizations are moving to automate, integrate and unify their spend management with their ERP solutions using an innovative connector from Wipfli LLP.

Integration in spend management: InvoiceConnect for SAP Concur

InvoiceConnect creates an automated integration between the two systems to complete your full invoice workflow.