Category: Blog

Being able to contain your finances is critical to your company’s financial health. Understanding expenses and identifying billing errors and redundancies will ensure your organization remains cost-efficient and ready for what’s coming.

We know cash flow is one of the most important parts of your business. Therefore, one of the biggest opportunities for cost containment in your organization is to effectively and efficiently monitor how you are being paid and how you are paying others. 

At first glance, invoice management doesn’t seem to be a complex task. An invoice is received or sent to the vendor, accounting pays or receives the invoice, and a record is created in the company’s financial books. 

So why is there a need for invoice management? Let’s look at how invoice management can help your organization. 

1. Builds Better Vendor Relationships

We are living in an age of digital transformation, where payments are often an instantaneous transaction. It no longer cuts it to tell a vendor “the check is in the mail.” Invoice management is key to maintaining strong relationships with your vendors. It also ensures timely payments and allows for proactive financial planning.  

2. Reduces Error & Inefficiencies 

Small inefficiencies and manual tasks, such as invoice processing, often lead to delays, errors, and late payments, costing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. An invoice management system automates your company’s invoice process completely, while simultaneously reducing errors and discrepancies. Companies dealing with complex invoices benefit greatly from invoice management. These invoices vary based on volumes consumed, rates, add-ons, etc. An invoice management system can spot trends focused on items that are in need of attention (inefficient usage, erroneous charges, etc.) and optimization opportunities. Invoice management also allows enterprises to be able to efficiently allocate and split charges on an invoice to the proper department(s) without the opportunity for error.

3. Greater Cash Flow Transparency

For small businesses, invoice management means more than paying and receiving accurate invoices. When dealing with overhead expenses, payrolls, and accounts payable, it can be hard for a business to predict what their cash flow will look like. 

An invoice management system helps streamline the process to ensure a positive cash flow while identifying cost-saving opportunities. Data becomes centralized and automated, bringing efficiency and transparency to your company’s workflow.

How Cannon Group Can Help

The experts at Cannon Group provide experience in all aspects of invoice management. Not only do we leverage our well-established vendor relationships to negotiate the best prices for your invoices, you will also receive access to our easy-to-use, telecom expense management platform, InvoiceVue. InvoiceVue gives you an in depth look at your organization’s invoices and identifies cost-saving opportunities for you. Our experts will guide you through turning these cost containment possibilities into realities that enable your business to proactively save both now and in the future.

Consumers are now looking at how companies spend their time and money. As they research the businesses that they invest in, they’re looking for companies who care about the environment, social issues, and governance. 

However, many companies struggle with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Reporting. When they already have a lot on their plates, how are they supposed to add another thing? The answer is easy: They don’t have to. Utility Bill Management can help track utility cost and spend while also scraping data for ESG reporting – especially the environmental aspect. Here’s why this is so important. 

What is Utility Bill Management (UBM)? 

Utility Bill Management is a service that helps companies track their utility costs. Using UBM will help you track and process payments without the time-consuming effort that it usually puts on your accounts payable unit. Many companies simply don’t have time to track their utility bill costs, so they automatically pay it. However, by doing this, they miss out on reviewing the bill to make sure it’s correct, fixing any issues with the bill, and getting a better rate. UBM saves money, tracks spending, and reduces utility costs. 

What is ESG Reporting? 

As we mentioned earlier, ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. While it’s always important to look at your energy costs and what you’re doing for the environment from a reputation standpoint, ESG reporting goes beyond that. When you do good for the environment, you also do good for your business. How? 

It’s easy. Imagine you cut your energy usage in half. Not only does this help save the environment, but it saves your company money as well. Any time you are able to cut down on your utility expense, you also help your ESG report. 

Companies are responsible for their impact on this earth, which is why it’s imperative to start reporting your ESG impact. 

How does UBM relate to ESG? 

A big part of ESG is the environmental impact that every company has on the world. Obviously, some companies have more of an impact than others, but regardless of company size, your environmental impact should always be something that you’re considering. Policy changes are making companies become more environmentally friendly, but many companies are having a hard time keeping up. 88% of investors believe that companies that prioritize ESG

reporting have better opportunities long-term than those companies that do not prioritize ESG reporting. 

Figuring out your company’s ESG can be difficult. It includes things like carbon emissions, water, and waste management, social justice, diversity and inclusion, business ethics, and more. And while you can often look at your diversity stats, it can be a lot more difficult to see just how much waste management and electricity you’re using. 

That’s where UBM comes in. UBM can scrape the usage data from invoices and input this data into our database to help you figure out your company’s ESG impact. 

How Cannon Can Help 

Cannon combines UBM and ESG, giving you a way to report and prove to consumers that your company is acting responsibly. 

We check, verify, pay, and look for the best deals for your utilities. Our technology and people work together to bring you seamless utility bill management. Then, we use the data that comes from your invoice to help you report the environmental impact your company has, making it easier than ever to practice ESG reporting.

If you are interested in implementing or improving your ESG reporting, click here to schedule a meeting with one of our experts. 

Technology expense management (TEM) is defined by Gartner as services that enable businesses to effectively manage their telecommunications and IT environments, their service providers, and all the costs related to their operations. TEM is a huge undertaking, but with the proper providers and infrastructure, putting a strong system in place can yield massive savings that can be put back into your business. 

Let’s look at some of the ways you’ll improve your bottom line.

Elimination of Invoicing Error

When tech expense management includes reviewing invoices manually invoicing, human error is a major contributing factor to overspend. Your IT managers don’t have time to carefully comb through every invoice to check for mistakes or extra charges. Automating your complex invoicing with an experienced TEM provider will eliminate all that money slipping through the cracks of your IT department.

Inventory and Policy Enforcement

Let’s face it – very few IT managers enjoy enforcing policies with their colleagues, and it’s a task that often gets pushed to the back burner. Switching to automated policy enforcement protocols will ensure that your company’s devices are used within your company’s terms. That means no more unexpected charges, and more time freed up for your IT team to focus on other things. 

You’ll also get a clear picture of all the devices in your department and how much you’re spending on equipment, usage, and even inactive devices. With that knowledge you can easily optimize your inventory to be better performing and less costly.

No More Extra Charges

When it comes to the entire tech environment of a company, small charges here and there add up. Taking control of your tech expense management will help you locate all the money lost to things like duplicate charges, unnecessary third-party charges, and any services you no longer need.

Contract Management

Taking control of your IT landscape includes looking at your providers and contracts to see if they’re the proper fit for your business and the direction it’s heading. It’s definitely possible that you’re overpaying for services you no longer use. Renegotiating your contracts will ensure you’re only paying for what your business needs.

Increased Efficiency

The money saved through the amount of time that will be given back to your IT team is difficult to measure, but cannot be overlooked. An efficient, automated technology expense management plan can free up hundreds of hours for your employees. That time can be spent finding other ways to innovate your IT environment and improve your company’s overall competitive advantage.  

TEM with Cannon Group

When you’re ready to rein in your tech expense management, Cannon Group is ready to help! Using our Expense and Mobile Management technology, we can reshape your tech environment to be more efficient while finding cost saving opportunities at every turn. You’ll gain a clear understanding of where your money goes, eliminate costly inefficiencies, and automate your complex invoicing process. 

Working with Cannon Group’s TEM experts means you’re not just getting data reports; our experts have a strong business acumen that enables them to give you insights to make further improvements as time goes on. Better yet, Cannon Group experts are able to execute their recommendations for you. 

We’ll also take care of ensuring all your contracts are properly suited to your business’s needs and monitored; you’ll no longer have to deal with money lost to bogus charges or services you don’t use.

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Contact Cannon Group today

Discuss all the ways we can help you take control of your tech environment.