The digital transformation of companies – you’ve been hearing about this everywhere over the last 10 years. You might even be starting to get sick of it!

But, for SMEs, digitalization is essential to ensure business competitiveness. First, let’s get back to basics! When we talk about the digitalization of companies, what exactly do we mean?

No, digitalization is not (just) creating a Facebook page for your company! Digitalization actually refers to digitizing your company’s internal organization and strategy.

But SMEs often forget about the digitization of internal processes in their strategic decisions, despite it being essential!

Digitizing your internal processes

We don’t always think of it as a competitive factor, but it is essential to digitize your internal processes (administrative, HR, accounting, etc.).

Why? First of all, because it’s good to show the outside world that you’re digitized. But when you have also improved your internal organization, it’s even better! There’s no point in having Ferrari bodywork with a Twingo engine inside, is there?

In addition, you will be able to streamline an organization that is sometimes bogged down by paper documents. Digitizing your processes by equipping yourself with the right tools or solutions allows you to:

  • Save time by automating certain tasks;
  • Limit the risk of errors thanks to recognition and alert systems; and
  • Reduce the time spent on each step (validation, processing, etc.).

Finally, equipping yourself with solutions will give you better control and a better overview of the company’s flows (HR, accounting, etc.).

Accounting tools, a must

Why implement accounting software?

As you know, manual accounting is on its way out. To facilitate the work of your teams, it is crucial that you implement accounting software to automate complex and/or repetitive tasks.

By equipping yourself with an accounting solution, it will be easier for you to:

  • Generate reports;
  • Calculate profits and losses;
  • Manage taxes;
  • Create invoices; and
  • Keep track of transactions.

Automating certain processes will free up time for your accounting team to focus on higher value-added tasks.

SMEs: how to choose your accounting software?

If you are an SME, it is important to equip yourself with accounting software that allows you to manage your accounting:

  • Bookkeeping and preparing the annual accounts;
  • VAT declarations; and
  • Tax returns.

You can also choose specialized accounting software tailored to your business sector:

  • Retail: your accounting software must offer a module for managing the commercial aspects of your business (invoicing, estimates, accounting, etc.).
  • Industrial and production companies: the software you choose must be able to handle your entire accounting and production process.
  • Specific trades: if you are in the craft industry, the restaurant industry, or the building industry, we recommend that you purchase specific accounting software.

🔎 Go further: Accounting entries: 5 best practices to adopt

Digitizing your expense reports

Moving to paperless expense reports is consistent with the digitization of accounting processes, and more generally with the digital transformation of SMEs!

Why move to paperless expense reports?

Because if you’ve ever had to deal with paper expense reports, you know how time consuming and laborious it is for everyone!

Employees need to look after their receipts and fill in the Excel documents correctly. On the accounting side, this often means duplicate entries and hours wasted checking that the receipts correspond to the amounts entered in the spreadsheets.

How to choose your expense report software?

The expense report solution you choose must be customizable to fit your company’s operations.

The N2F expense report management solution makes your daily life easier thanks to its many features:

  • For employees: they simply take a picture of the receipt using their expense report app. The smart scan then extracts all essential data in less than a second (date, amount, VAT rate, location, etc.).
  • For managers/validators: the manager receives a notification as soon as the expense report has been submitted, and simply has to validate it, refuse it, or ask the employee to amend it.

For the accounting department: the Stabilo system makes it easy to check and highlight important information. The expense report software connects directly to the accounting software in order to perform all the necessary exports, and the bank connection allows for the timely reimbursement of employees.

Digitizing leave management and pay slips

Leave management in an SME can be a real headache! To avoid your company’s offices emptying during the summer, or both members of a two-person team taking their vacation at the same time, we recommend that you implement a leave management solution.

In addition to empowering employees and enhancing the employee experience, you avoid tensions between them. They will automatically be able to see when they can take their leave in relation to the rest of the team and can choose which type of leave to take (paid leave, rest days, etc.). Employees, managers and directors will also have an overview, enabling them to better manage human resources, and therefore to better distribute the workload according to everybody’s vacation plans.

Paperless pay slips

Since 2017, employees must be provided with a digital copy of their pay slip. The format is popular with employees, who can now keep and access all their pay slips much more easily!

We recommend using a solution that can store these pay slips in a secure and individualized space, to ensure the security of your employees’ data.

Many companies are reluctant to digitize their internal processes, thinking that adopting new ways of working will only slow them down, or that it is more urgent to digitize their business operations and services.

But, using dedicated tools and solutions is essential! And the stakes of digitalization are high, since streamlining the work of support services and employees by providing them with the right tools and resources allows everyone to focus on their core activity rather than pestering their neighbor for help!

So, now you can see that, by digitally transforming your business, you facilitate everybody’s work, reduce tensions, and significantly decrease the risk of errors, since most actions will be automated.