Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) managers play a pivotal back-office role – budgeting, forecasting, and analyzing financial data to drive intelligent, strategic decisions that will not only enhance efficiencies and cut costs but also help enable company growth.

Today, FP&A managers have a unique opportunity to leverage automation across their spend management model to drive better business outcomes and also increase their own impact and influence across the organization.

Here are six reasons why they should champion this AI-powered corporate finance transformation:

1. Drive Better Decision-Making
   

   Automating company spend management means finance teams have greater insight into how and where an organization spends its money, not only aiding short-term planning but also guiding CFOs and leadership teams to make more informed long-term strategic decisions.

   
   
2. Increase Productivity and Efficiencies
   Automating repetitive spend management tasks, such as the time-consuming manual sourcing process based on spreadsheets and emails, frees up valuable time and resources enabling procurement teams to do more with less. Financial Management magazine recently reported that two-thirds of FP&A professionals believe AI will transform the function – act now to get ahead of the game. 
   
   
   
3. Add More Value
   

   With those time and resource savings, FP&A managers can focus on more strategic activities such as scenario planning, financial modeling, and providing intelligent insights to the CFO – automation empowers you to be more proactive, forward-thinking and add wider business value.

   
   
4. Deliver Double-Digit Savings
   

   Automating the spend management process means that FP&A managers can easily track spending patterns, identify cost-saving opportunities, and implement cost control measures. For example, Globality’s autonomous sourcing platform delivers 10-20% cost savings from day one, as well as 70% efficiency gains and 20x ROI.
   
   

5. Improve Compliance
   

   Automated spend management platforms such as Globality’s include built-in compliance checks and guardrails, which ensure that all purchases align with corporate purchasing policies as well as regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of non-compliance  financial penalties.
   
   

6. Stand Out From the Crowd
   

   According to McKinsey, next-level FP&A managers stand out from the crowd by identifying the critical factors that will have a material effect on the business, explicitly linking those factors to financial performance with data, and participating in decision making. Championing spend management automation is one of those factors and will mark you out as a finance leader with strategic vision and leadership skills.
   
   

If you are interested in learning more about how FP&A managers can lead spend management automation within the organization, reach out to us here.