The shift to remote work due to COVID-19 has caused many companies to rethink their workforce management strategies, with many organizations now more open to remote work on a long-term basis. Amidst this shift, companies have turned to tools that help enable remote work, such as communication and collaboration platforms that make it easier for employees to stay on the same page with each other, regardless of their locations.
Yet remote work tools should be assessed and leveraged beyond what they can do for productivity purposes. Remote work tools like project management software and spend management platforms can also be used to improve areas like budget management. And considering the economic challenges that many businesses have faced over the past few months and could continue to face for a while, optimizing budget management takes on even greater importance.
Tracking Projects to Improve Budget Management
Popular project management tools like Asana and Smartsheet not only help teams stay organized while working remotely but can also often be used for budget management purposes. Either within some platforms directly or through integrations, companies can track budgets for specific projects while also staying on top of budget management tasks like requesting estimates and planning for invoice payment dates.
For example, suppose a marketing agency uses project management software to stay on top of creating content for a client. Beyond tracking the general progress of content development, the agency could take steps such as:
Improving Budget Management With Spend Visibility
In addition to using project-oriented tools, companies can also improve budget management with tools like spend management platforms that increase spend visibility. In particular, seeing the specific purchases that compose your tail spend — the unmanaged spend that can account for 20-40% of total budgets — can make it easier to find opportunities to reduce these costs, like identifying duplicate or unnecessarily expensive purchases.
Having this visibility into all areas of spend becomes particularly important with a remote workforce, as employees might need to purchase and get reimbursed for products and services on a more personalized basis than if everyone was working within one office.
As such, companies should look for spend management tools that make it seamless to capture spend data from remote employees. Having remote approval functionality can also improve budget management, as finance and procurement teams can be sure to only approve purchases that fit within their budget parameters.
Want to learn more about how remote tools like spend management technology can help your company improve budget management? Request a free consultation with our product experts today.
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