Remote work, and accounts payable, are here for the long haul

For accounts payable departments change is no longer a back-of-the-handbook contingency plan. Grit and ingenuity hold the silver lining to a resoundingly difficult year.

The next normal will provide us gradations of clarity as waves of vaccinations roll out and restrictions ease in the late months of 2021. Yet what we do with the clear opportunities already here is a truer prediction of future business success.

The pandemic’s clarifying challenges to businesses and payment operations were not thoroughly negative. Post-pandemic businesses have adapted by interfacing with technology to get the same AP and business tasks done with less redundancy and bulk.

Daily operations have stripped down to bare essentials, some bearing costs to the customer, but many renewed in their devotion to make a more human connection with those they serve. Data security issues took a tremendous and necessary spotlight as a historic number of the U.S. workforce scrambled to telecommute.

There’s no crystal ball to consult when it comes to making big changes with very little advance notice. Data from McKinsey indicates how businesses stayed lean and financially solvent through the initial shutdowns and subsequent quarantine measures. According to McKinsey, businesses that transformed their processes in 2020 nodded to agility as the key ingredient of their success. In the business sense, “agility” is defined by smaller teams that are built to work with rapid efficiency in place of traditional business models with several tiers of leadership per business unit. McKinsey tracked 25 companies across seven business sectors in their handling of the COVID-19 crisis and found companies that ranked higher on managing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis were also those with agile practices more deeply embedded in their enterprise operating models. That is, they were mature agile organizations that had implemented the most extensive changes to enterprise-wide processes before the pandemic.

The benefits of agility were measured in overall customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and operational performance. They found that swifter decision-making, less time determining priorities, and faster and more flexible response processes lent themselves to the business’ overall success. In other words, being agile made everything easier.

A clarion call from a pandemic-tested economy is this: the bustling office setting is becoming increasingly outdated. A small, remote team working closely is capable of outpacing any team that sits less than six feet apart--and with less overhead costs. This is a matter of understanding the amazing flexibility of a business operations model. With technology, we now have the ability to decentralize while staying connected.

Examples of an agile mindset include giving up meeting-heavy schedules and manual workloads and renewing decision-making agency in small teams. Even if the organization at large is still insistent on doing things the old way, your business unit can lead to small changes with great effect. What’s not working with your current accounting operations model in accounting, IT, or even on the executive level? Can you digitize any of your backlogged manual tasks to alleviate the stress on your team and improve supplier relations?

But don’t mistake agility for speed. Speed is fast but can be blind. Agility is about delighting both the customer and those who serve them in the delivery of a seamless and elevated process.

The 2021 workforce demands exceptional collaboration tools. As projections still hang in the air of remote work persisting into the better part of 2021, it is essential that good communication infrastructure is in place to sustain team morale. Longevity is about more than just crossing the finish line, but lifting burdens of redundancy and frustration. As willpower to stay connected wanes and team needs inevitably change, it is essential that touchpoints are added between managers and employees to prevent burnout and ensure team goals are attainable and appropriate. Ask your team what heaving lifting they need assistance with and keep an eye toward any solution that may bolster cross-functionality and productivity within your team.

Whether or not we retain the same jobs we had at the outset of 2020, job demands will have changed. Safety and wellness concerns have skyrocketed in the eyes of the consumer while values like convenience or ease of access have diminished in proportion to the limitations imposed on our lives. Product models will need adjustment. New verticals that businesses once sought to launch into may have dried up, leaving sales teams to pursue other avenues.