It was tax time for businesses in Australia with this month kicking off the beginning of a new financial year.  In the midst of this busy period, it was surprising to uncover a PricewaterhouseCoopers report¹ which found Australia has almost double the global average of accounting fraud.   That’s a massive 40 percent of Australian organizations who reported at least one incident of fraud in 2009, compared to the global average of 24 percent.  The report also found that in Australia more than a third of the frauds cost more than $1 million AUD and stealing or asset misappropriation was the most common form of fraud.

These statistics are a reality check for many organisations.  So, with the new fiscal year ahead what can businesses do to better manage their financial processes?  Here are some tips:

• Process all your incoming purchase invoices electronically using an invoice automation system that forces every  out going payment to be approved by more than one person with sufficient approval limits.  Invoice automation gives you greater control and  transparency and your business is provided with a full audit trail which is vital in the event of mismatched invoices or discrepancies with suppliers.
• Minimize possibilities for human intervention with the critical supplier data (e.g. supplier bank account details) by using e-invoicing with your suppliers.  E-invoicing removes all manual keying of invoice data to the financial systems, leaving no room for fraud.
• Get your indirect spending (non strategic spending) under control by using a purchase management system that supports a controlled way of spending company money using catalog based buying and secures that proper approval protocol is followed already prior to any purchase being done.
• Centralize you accounts payable process into a financial shared services center using best available technologies and eliminate the handling of outgoing payments by any local finance functions. Centralized processes are significantly easier to control and remote local functions.

To download a full copy of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, click here.

Karri Lehtonen, Vice President, Australia and New Zealand

¹The 5th Global Economic Crime Survey – PricewaterhouseCoopers

admin market trends, technology

Building on the well known saying used in the title provides us not only with an amusing paradox, but also highlights an almost universal truth: people just won’t work with tools that are too difficult to use. Look at the low adoption of Microsoft’s Vista, or the lacklustre attitude towards early WAP applications for mobiles. Or as a contrast, the massively popular instant messenger that by sheer mass adoption, became a communication tool in many companies, and how Skype is also developing in this area. How things are used, and how they can be made to be used more easily sits high on many companies agendas at the moment- the recent world usability day is testament to this!

Usability and therefore adoption of a software tool is fundamental to not only short term success, i.e. the roll out phase, but also for the long term business plan as staff acceptance enables companies to progress along its technology for business journey. First impressions count- the look and feel is vital. A bad design repels the user – so there is a need to immediately understand what you are supposed to do without any messy help functions or manuals.

It’s really interesting to see how users familiarise themselves with the Basware system and how it fits into one of the easier software tools to use. As is best practice, we use user-centred-design and heuristic evaluations to develop our user interface, and really encourage feedback from the customers and end users, as they are two groups with different requirements- to make it as intuitive and as user friendly as possible.

User experiences must also bear in mind differing needs and cultural perspectives. For example, for color-blind users, you cannot only use red and green colors: the shapes of the icons must also convey their meaning. Similarly, symbols can cause problems in localization. For example the Western representation of the house referring to a “Home Page”, or a letterbox to “Mail” can be misleading. In many countries houses and mailboxes don’t look the same.

Our feedback suggests it is working; Finnair for example, suggests that their users of our system find it very intuitive and easy-to-use. This has both short and long term benefits to the business. With a solution accepted by the end users and quite self explanatory, roll out can happen to subsidiaries without the need for specific training. And over the longer term, solutions that are also best for purpose within the eProcurement and invoice automation area, lead people more easily on the journey towards the integrated and business efficient EPP process. In summary, a roll out with easy user acceptance enables best practices so everyone does the right things AND in the right order so that the business benefits of the technology are realized!

Juha Hakamies technology