4 Stages of Maturity to Futureproof Financial Health
It’s an interesting time in the world of finance. Stability seems to be returning, indicated by actions such as the OECD revising its GDP growth forecast for 2021 by more than 1 percentage point upward compared to three months earlier. Nearly 90% of CFOs predict an increase in revenue.
But these statistics sit alongside another truth — a shared realization that unpredictability is here to stay with us for a long time. The COVID-19 surge in India, the Suez Canal blockage, and the Colonial Pipeline hack serve as recent evidence. Instead of asking, “What’s next?” the question should really be, “When’s next?”
There’s also the question of, “What to do now?”
Finance leaders essentially have two choices:
- Maintain their default modus operandi and just react when a crisis hits, or
- Become proactive in a way that anticipates disruption and takes better financial control as a way to prepare.
We think the latter is a smarter approach for these times. The key to regaining control is increasing your financial maturity — having a full set of capabilities to help you make decisions accurately and quickly to optimize working capital, invest in growth, or control costs when it’s most urgent.
The Financial Maturity Model at a Glance
We developed a 4-stage financial maturity model to visualize the journey of financial maturity. The model outlines a typical progression of development, beginning with a “reactive” stage in which financial management practices are in place but demonstrate enormous gaps. On the other end, “optimized” companies anticipate adversity and identify key opportunities early.
Finance leaders can use the model to:
- Assess their company’s financial health
- Understand how visibility, control, and financial performance affect financial health at every stage
The notion of economic uncertainty for the foreseeable future is certainly a daunting one. We can’t avoid disruption from now on, and we can’t prevent it. But you can prepare your organization for it — by advancing your financial maturity.
Automation in invoice processing is maturing fast and represents a major source of future value, offering a return on investment that far outweighs its cost. Accounts payable team who work with invoices know the pain points of the manual data entry, managing complex invoice data exceptions, time lost in searching for lost or missing invoices, missing out on payment terms and opportunities, all of which can directly impact bottom-line gains of any organization.
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AP Automation digitalizes the accounts payable process to take away time-consuming manual tasks, minimize errors and increase control over company spend. From your business workflows to your IT operations, we’ve got you covered with AI-powered automation. Discover how leading companies are transforming their Accounts Payable Automation and solving their challenges with Aavenir Invoiceflow Solution.
Accounts payable (AP) departments are among the most paper-burdened areas in business. We want to make sure you’re aware of the benefits that automating your invoice and payments processes could have for your AP team and for your bottom line.
