Why Finance Teams Should Drive Value, Not Push Paperwork

We believe finance teams should focus on driving value, not pushing paperwork. And while this seems like a straightforward notion, the reality for most growing companies is usually quite the opposite.

As businesses grow, their financial operations costs invariably increase. They add more people to handle supplier payments and more people to manage reconciliation. The problem isn't the people, it's the internal workings and processes.

Consider a treasury manager at a mid-sized, international company. They likely deal with 10 to 15 different bank accounts across multiple entities. To get a simple 360-degree overview of the company's cash position, they have to manually log into each portal, download statements, and stitch the data together in a spreadsheet. By the time this picture is complete, it's already out of date.

This fragmentation isn't just a treasury headache. It's a source of friction and manual work that ripples across the entire finance function, paralysing or slowing down both payables and receivables.

Let’s look at two real-world examples.

Take a marketing agency that sends hundreds of client invoices every month. The finance team emails the invoice, then emails again to chase the payment. When a payment finally arrives, the real work begins. The client might have used the wrong reference number, or paid €99 instead of the €100 invoiced to cover a bank fee. A team member now has to play detective, trying to match this mystery payment to an open invoice. Multiply this by hundreds of transactions, and you have a "nightmare" reconciliation process. Which to many companies we encounter, is just another day at the office.

The problem is just as bad in accounts payable. Consider a shipping company that needs to process numerous supplier payments. First, they log everything in their accounting system. Then, they export a file, upload it to the bank portal, and begin a lengthy and complex approval process. Once the payments are finally sent, the work isn't over. A finance team member has to go back into the accounting platform and manually mark each of those invoices as 'paid'. It’s a tedious, manual process that is wide open for costly errors.

In both scenarios, the finance team's day is consumed by tactical, low-value work.

The solution to these problems isn't another point solution or a complex new integration. The solution is a different architecture entirely.

Traditional banking forces businesses to operate in silos. A modern financial operations platform connects these silos. Instead of managing dozens of individual banking relationships, you connect once to a unified platform that links your ERP and accounting systems to a global network of financial institutions.

This new architecture changes the fundamental equation.

For that marketing agency, the platform automates the entire receivables process. It pulls the invoice from the accounting system, sends it to the client, and automatically chases for payment. When the client pays, the platform's technology can match the payment to the correct invoice, even if the reference number is wrong or the amount is slightly off. The invoice is then automatically marked as 'paid' in the accounting system.

For the shipping company, the file upload disappears. Payments created in the accounting system appear automatically in the platform. A CFO can then approve payments for all six of their entities from a single screen. Once approved, the platform not only sends the payment and notifies the supplier, but it also automatically goes back into the accounting platform and marks the bill as 'paid'.

The loop is closed, without manual data entry.

When you free finance teams from this operational drag, they don't just work less. They work differently. They can finally shift from data entry to strategy.

Instead of chasing payments, they can spend their time analyzing which customers, regions, or product lines are truly profitable. Instead of manually approving payments, they can proactively model FX risk or optimize liquidity.

Of course, this is partly about efficiency. But there is a more significant impact. It’s about restoring human value to the finance function. Clients often tell us that this new level of automation has given them "control and peace of mind".

That is the real goal. It’s about giving your best people the tools to do the work they were hired for, so they can stop pushing paperwork and start driving real, strategic value.