Take control of business spend with spend management software

Managing purchasing and expenses for can be challenging, with issues such as misplaced receipts, manual approvals, and limited visibility and control. However, there is a solution: business spend management software.

According to Gartner [1], spend management is about maximizing value from company spend while decreasing costs, mitigating financial risk and improving supplier relationships.

By automating tasks, providing real-time visibility, and ensuring compliance, spend management software empowers financial decision-makers to establish processes and policies, increase their team’s efficiency, wherever they're working from, and unlock significant savings.

In this blog post, we'll explore the key benefits of deploying spend management software and why it's essential for businesses looking to simplify their spending processes, drive resilience, and cost control.

What is business spend management software?

Business spend management (BSM) software is a powerful tool designed to automate and streamline the process of managing and controlling purchasing and expenses within an organization. At its core, it enables businesses to track, monitor, and analyze all aspects of their operational spending, from requisition to payment.

Unlike basic expense tracking systems, business spend management software offers a comprehensive solution that goes beyond mere tracking. It encompasses a wide range of functionalities, including requisition-to-purchase orders, accounts payable (AP) automation, and spend analysis.

With this tool, businesses can automate approval workflows, gain real-time visibility into spending, enforce compliance with company policies, and optimize purchasing decisions. The right business spend management software empowers accountable spending company-wide, fostering a cost-conscious spending culture and driving operational cost savings.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of spend management, you can download our free guide to spend management.

Common business spending challenges 

One of the key benefits of spend management software is its ability to tackle common business spending challenges head-on. By automating manual tasks, providing real-time visibility into spending, and streamlining approval processes, spend management software helps companies overcome challenges by:

• Reducing manual work: with features such as automated workflows and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data extraction for accounts payable (AP), your businesses can eliminate manual processes and data entry, save time and resources, allowing employees to focus on more strategic tasks.
• Providing real-time visibility: stay informed about spending activities with intuitive dashboards and view real-time budgets at decision points, leading to better financial management and planning.
• Boosting process efficiency: streamline approval processes, automate repetitive tasks, and optimize workflows for seamless spend management. By optimizing efficiency, businesses can accelerate processes, reduce bottlenecks, and improve overall productivity.
• Unlocking cost savings: identify areas for improvement, optimize budgets, and uncover hidden savings opportunities through data-driven insights. By analyzing spending patterns and trends, businesses can make strategic decisions to reduce costs and maximize profitability.
• Ensuring compliance: enforce spending policies, automate approvals, and mitigate risk with built-in controls. By ensuring compliance with regulations and internal policies, businesses can minimize financial risks and maintain transparency and accountability in spending practices and audit requirements.

8 key features of spend management software

Spend management software offers a range of features designed to simplify purchasing and expense management processes and drive efficiency. Some key features include:

1. Requisition-to-PO: easily request to purchase from approved suppliers and convert approved requisitions into purchase orders, streamlining the procurement process from start to finish, while ensuring compliance with purchasing policies. 
2. Automated workflows and approvals: simplify the approval process with automated workflows based on spending thresholds and hierarchies to ensure control, delegation of authority, faster turnaround times, and efficiency.
3. Real-time budget visibility: gain insights into spending patterns and budgets in real-time, empowering informed financial decisions and proactive budget management.
4. Expense management: easily track and manage expenses, allowing employees to submit expenses effortlessly and ensuring policy compliance and accurate and timely reimbursement.
5. Mobile flexibility: access spending tools on-the-go with mobile applications, enabling employees to manage purchasing, expenses and approvals from anywhere, anytime.
6. AP automation: automate invoice processing with swift intake and AI data extraction, simplified matching, and approval workflows, reducing manual tasks and accelerating payment cycles. Automated processes improve accuracy, save time, and reduce the risk of overpayment and duplicate invoices.
7. Spend analytics and reporting: utilize powerful analytics and reporting tools to track spending trends, identify cost-saving opportunities, and optimize financial performance.
8. Seamless integrations: integrate with existing accounting or ERP systems for seamless data exchange, ensuring consistency and accuracy across financial processes.

How spend management can help your business thrive

By leveraging the power of spend management software, companies can streamline processes, reduce costs, and facilitate growth initiatives.

With automated workflows and real-time visibility, companies can eliminate manual work, improve efficiency, and ensure compliance with company policies and regulations. Spend management software centralizes processes, purchasing records, and controls, even when teams and processes are decentralized. Visibility and quick access to purchasing records, from any location streamlines processes and improves auditability.  By unlocking cost savings and identifying opportunities for improvement, companies can optimize budgets, reduce operational costs, and drive profitability.

Trends in business spend management software

The landscape of business spend management software is constantly evolving, with new trends and innovations shaping the industry. Some emerging trends include:

• AI-powered automation and analytics: leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate repetitive tasks, extract accurate data, analyze spending patterns, and identify opportunities for optimization.
• Predictive coding: uses AI to learn from input data and improve its ability to identify relevant approver assignment, GL coding, and cost allocations. As it learns more, the software becomes more efficient at making determinations.
• Integration adaptability: in addition to and beyond integrations with financial systems and eCommerce catalogs, spend management software providers are integrating with messaging apps to bring requisition and approval processes into widely adopted platforms such as Microsoft Teams. This simplifies processes even further, and seamlessly integrates into a company's existing communications and business processes.

How Fraxion can help

Fraxion's spend management software offers a holistic solution that addresses all aspects of business purchasing, expenses, accounts payable, and operational spending needs.

The software provides a unified platform where businesses can manage their entire operational purchasing process from requisition to payment.

To summarize, Fraxion offers a proactive approach to spend management with its comprehensive suite of solutions, engineered to meet evolving business needs.

• All-in-one solution: Fraxion consolidates purchasing, accounts payable, expenses, and spend analysis into a single platform, eliminating the need for disparate systems and simplifying your financial operations.
• Scalability & flexibility: regardless of your company’s size, Fraxion scales seamlessly with your growth, providing the flexibility to adapt to changing business requirements. Fraxion’s accessibility ensures that your teams are empowered to spend responsibly, wherever they are.
• Exceptional customer support: with Fraxion, you receive dedicated support from a team committed to ensuring your success. From implementation to ongoing support, a knowledge base, tutorials, and new feature training and release notes.
• Integration flexibility: a host of integration capabilities, from ERP and accounting systems, to over forty PunchOut vendors, and Microsoft Teams.
• Focus on security: Fraxion employs industry-leading data encryption and access controls to safeguard your financial information and undergoes third-party threat assessments and penetration tests.

Real-world examples

Fraxion's spend management software has delivered tangible benefits to businesses, leading to significant cost savings and improved efficiency.

According to one of Fraxion’s clients, Lauren R., a Group Financial Accountant, Fraxion has effectively curtailed unauthorized spend within their organization. By enforcing a strict approval process, Fraxion ensures that all items are fully approved before generating purchase orders. As a result, unauthorized spend has been reduced, contributing to better financial control and compliance.

Additionally, businesses using Fraxion typically experience cost savings ranging from 15% to 20%. These savings are achieved through streamlined processes, reduced manual work, and better visibility and control over spending.

Ready to take control of your business spend?

If you're ready to simplify your business spending and unlock savings, it's time to explore the benefits of spend management software.

Schedule a demo with a Fraxion product specialist today and discover how our comprehensive solution can help your company reach its  spend management goals. With Fraxion, you can streamline processes, reduce costs, and ensure compliance company-wide.

References

[1] Definition of spend management by Gartner