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The second blog in our hybrid working series, Ben from Valto explores how Finance departments can get the most out of SharePoint. In doing so we can save time, optimise processes, and improve interaction with the rest of the organisation using SharePoint, Power Platform, Power Apps, Expenses systems, Video content and process digitisation.
The second blog in our hybrid working series, Ben from Valto explores how Finance departments can benefit from SharePoint.
SharePoint is a hugely powerful Intranet tool that can form the foundation of excellent organisational optimisation, but how can a finance team make the most of the solution? Often one of the busiest departments in a company, with a great deal of responsibility on their shoulders, financial / accounts teams can benefit hugely from the timesaving, process optimising features of SharePoint.
In this blog, we’ll take you through a handful of ideas that you can implement which can save time for your finance team and radically improve the service you provide to colleagues, customers, suppliers, and partners.
Finance teams can be bombarded with questions from colleagues about a whole wealth of subjects. A “healthy” Intranet (one that’s got lots of up-to-date, relevant information frequented by all staff, who know how to use it) can become a place to direct colleagues to for self-service issues.
The Finance section of your Intranet could be easily updated by one of the team, then it’s available to colleagues 24*7. Embed the culture of “check the Intranet first – oh and by the way, you have tried Googling this haven’t you 😊?” and build a list of FAQs and more detailed pages of information to save your department time you’d dearly like to spend getting the payroll done instead!
Maybe you’re currently losing hours / days per month checking through receipts / reports submitted by your colleagues, having to categorise them, make sure they’re in line with corporate policy, have they got the VAT receipt and so on… or maybe you’re paying per employee per month for an off-the-shelf expenses solution, and maybe it doesn’t quite fit your needs?
Consider building an Expenses App (opens in a new tab) using Power Platform (opens in a new tab), which, once built, won’t cost a penny (other than the licenses you’ve probably already got) and you’ll be able to adapt to your specific requirements. The beauty of SharePoint / Power Platform is that it works beautifully on a mobile phone, tablet or PC, so your colleagues will thank you for making their lives easier and you’ll save time in your own department to boot! If you’re concerned you don’t have the confidence / time to build the app yourself then Valto are here to help!
A significant burden on Finance teams can be the need to train colleagues, suppliers, partners and so on how to use line-of-business applications / systems, let alone teaching colleagues in your own team. Here at Valto we’ve made a huge success of building up the Valto Training Academy (sounds very grand, doesn’t it?).
In reality, all we’ve done is record training sessions (Teams has a really easy way of doing this – get in touch – we’ll show you!), uploaded them to Microsoft Stream (opens in a new tab) and then linked to them from our SharePoint Intranet. This way, you’re buying back time each time a new colleague needs training – direct them to the video and have a brief catch up with them after to check they’ve understood.
Apps can be built for a wide variety of different processes. A great idea is to look at your current practices and consider whether the process could be made more efficient / effective by digitalising* it.
Maybe you’re using Excel for a certain process. Now don’t get us wrong, here at Valto HQ, we L😍VE Excel, but ask yourselves “Is Excel really the right tool for this job?” …or paper, or whatever you’re using right now… for each process. As with the expenses app we talk about above, the Power Platform toolset is all there for you to use, however it may be wise to enlist the assistance of experts such as Valto at least to get you started on the right track. The time organisations can save by optimising certain time-laborious processes can be significant to say the least.
* Sometimes referred to as digitizing.
The list goes on! In a way, the only limit is your imagination! SharePoint provides a hugely versatile way of interacting with your colleagues. It’s SO EASY to keep up to date when you’ve been shown how, and that’s just SharePoint! When you see how easily it integrates with other applications such as Microsoft Teams, the transformation truly starts to take place in your organisation. SharePoint is designed to be used by “non-techies”, so don’t be afraid, dive in! – and if you need a little support, call Valto!
Valto are Microsoft specialists, and we can help make sure that the deployment of SharePoint for your workplace is seamless, as well as provide help with how to navigate and get the most out of its new features. Get in touch!
SharePoint Intranet to Improve Internal Business Communications (valto.co.uk)
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