SaaS Procurement: How to Optimize SaaS Purchases and Streamline Workflow

When it comes to growing a business, many executives focus on increasing profits and growing revenue as the way to achieve their goals. 

However, one aspect of growth that is sometimes overlooked is the expense management of your organization, and how to make it more efficient.

Without proper spend management strategies, your efforts to grow the company revenue could be easily sabotaged by overstuffed budgets, inefficient spending, and a lack of expense tracking that hurts your bottom-line when tax season comes around.

That’s why this article will discuss the importance of managing your company spending, and how to do it efficiently!

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The Importance Of Company Spending Management

Business spend management is a combination of strategies and business tools used to track, analyze, and manage business spending, in particular in regard to supplier relationships. 

When companies are unable to track and control their spending in real-time, they may expose themselves to financial leaks and lose revenue in the long run. 

The majority of a company's costs come from external expenditures, which account for 40-80% of its total costs. A lack of efficient spend management can have disastrous effects on your business; the statistics speak for themselves.

As a result, businesses that understand and wish to mitigate this risk need to use spend management software to do the heavy lifting. Not only does the software offer cost-saving opportunities, but it also prevents overspending.

A spend management solution becomes particularly crucial when it comes to tax reporting, as the expense documenting process simplifies the tax reporting, which makes it easier to receive tax breaks and avoid hefty penalties.

For the United Arab Emirates region, corporate income tax (or CT for short) will be applied to business activities starting on the 1st of June 2023. You’ll be charged 9% for taxable income exceeding AED 375,000, but 0% if your annual taxable income falls below that threshold. As such, keeping track of your expenses and managing spending will be even more important than ever.

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Benefits of Expense Management

The importance of spending management is not limited to enterprises with large expenses, but also to small and medium-sized businesses looking to improve profitability, scalability, and sustainability. 

‍There are several benefits to spend management automation, regardless of your business size. These benefits include:

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An in-depth analysis of all spending

Saving money for your business requires analyzing all aspects of it in order to find cost-cutting opportunities or other areas of improvement. 

Pluto gives you a general overview of your operations in terms of costs, as well as an in-depth analysis of your spending, making it much easier to find what you are looking for.

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Maintaining an efficient budget

When it comes to proper spend management, your budget is crucial. But building a proper budget requires that you have both an eagle-eye view of your business, as well as attention to the smaller details. This is made much easier through the use of spend management software.

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Control over company spending in real time

It’s much harder to make efficient decisions about your spending when you are basing them on data that is already outdated. 

With Pluto, you’ll be working with real-time data to ensure your decisions are based on current information.

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An easier time identifying and eliminating out-of-policy and fraudulent expenditures

It’s harder to reduce out-of-policy spending when you can’t track it effectively. Pluto will help you automatically detect fraudulent and out-of-policy employee expenses and alert you to them.

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Payables can be tracked and processed easily

If you are managing your expenses properly and using the right account payable software to do so, you won’t have an issue keeping track of your payables, as well as have a better overview of your spending.

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Better negotiations with your suppliers

You can make better decisions when it comes to your supply contracts and purchases when you have real-time data of your expenses.

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Using Pluto's unified spend management dashboard, finance teams can always see where money flows. Pluto's procurement software enhances the visibility of financial transactions, enabling more informed decision-making for procurement and sourcing processes.

Budgeting is the key to delivering on your promises, growing your team, enhancing your product offerings, and weathering inevitable economic downturns.

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The Problem with a Manual Spend Management Process

Trying to manage business spending without proper oversight and strategies in place is like putting all your home expenses on a credit card without checking the statement every month. You might not know what you are facing until it’s too late. 

If you don't implement intentional spend controls, you may still be profitable, but you won't know when your situation will change or how close you are to the edge. 

The importance of spend control becomes more obvious to companies, especially growing ones, after they face a tight situation or a disruption to their business. As a result of these problems, businesses can experience budget overruns, erratic cash flows, supply chain management issues, and deteriorating customer relations. 

But traditional spend management techniques are limited, which is where the aid of software comes into place. If you limit yourself to manual spend management strategies, you might face the following issues:

• Outdated spending reports: Traditional methods of managing spend tend to produce spending data that is at least a month old. As a result, finance teams have difficulty identifying and correcting unnecessary spending before the damage is done. 
• Overspending: Overspending and budget noncompliance are a consequence of finance teams being unable to track real-time spend. Costs like these can quickly add up to cause trouble for tax authorities as well as overspending. 
• Inefficient strategies due to lack of real-time data: If you lack real-time data and work only based on reports that are outdated, you might be missing the forest for the trees. This could have the effect of optimizing your spending rather than improving your overall business process efficiency. In order to cut costs and optimize operations, real-time spend data is essential. 
• Manual entry errors: Data entry errors skyrocket if your finance team has to move data between multiple software programs and map employee spending manually. As a result, financial reporting could be delayed. 
• Issues with remote working and compliance: Employees who work remotely need to pay for other business expenses quickly and in accordance with compliance requirements. The traditional spend management system, with its shared corporate cards and lengthy approval processes, simply cannot keep up.
• Strained resources: It takes finance teams a long time to manually align expenditures to budgets after the expenditures have been made. This takes up many productive hours and, of course, can lead to errors when entering data. 

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How To Manage Company Spending

Managing your company spending is both a science and an art, but much more the former than the latter. 

Each business will have its own unique challenges to overcome when it comes to spending, but there’s still general strategies you can adopt that will fit most situations.

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Create a Budget that Accounts for the Future

When it comes to budgeting, you shouldn’t just think about the expenses in front of you, you also have to consider potential unexpected expenses. 

If you limit yourself to budgeting for the present, you’ll have a hard time dealing with expenses that can pop up out of nowhere.

Your budget should be realistic, but also reviewed frequently to ensure it is still appropriate for your business as it grows and evolves. 

Creating a good budget will require that you examine your current and past expenses, take a look at your spending habits, and consider your potential expenses as your business grows. 

This will give you an opportunity to review your existing processes, expense policies, and track expenses that you might not be thinking about.

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Use Zero-Based Budgeting

It’s not uncommon for organizations to focus on past expenses and budgets when creating a new one. 

However, businesses and the environments around them change, and so budgets need to change as well. 

That is where zero-based budgeting comes in. This technique creates a new budget from scratch for each budgeting period. The budget is then compared to past budgets and weighed against current expenses.

In a company, zero-based budgeting can be used to keep your expenses under control. Your budget needs to be a living breathing element of your operation, and as such you need to constantly evaluate it to find realistic cost-cutting opportunities and areas that can be made more efficient when it comes to expenses.

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Report and Track Your Expenses

Any expenses incurred should be documented and filed as soon as possible. This way, your business expenses are accounted for when filing its tax return. This is one area where the use of spend management software becomes crucial, as it dramatically simplifies the process of reporting and tracking your expenses. Pluto helps to categorize said expenditure, further assisting you when it comes to tax season.

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Use a Spend Management Platform to Automate Processes and Digitize Expenses

As your business grows, you’ll find that using a spend management tool to track your expenses saves you a lot of time and money. In addition to tracking expenses, it tends to offer many other features, such as the ability to track invoices, payments, and credits all in one place. 

Furthermore, Pluto gives you the ability to assess your expenses on the go, thanks to mobile apps and online dashboards.

It is easier to keep track of your expenses and receipts by digitizing them. Employees can do this by taking pictures of their receipts as soon as they receive them. These images can then be uploaded and tracked through Pluto.

Automating your approval workflows and processes will help to reduce, if not outright eliminate, human error.

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Key Spend Management Software Features

Using spend management software is almost mandatory if you want to make your spend tracking and reporting as efficient as possible. 

When looking to choose a platform, consider the following features:

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Complete Control Over Spending Data 

If your finance teams don’t have complete control over spending, real-time data cannot be of much use to your business. 

Pluto allows your business finance managers to streamline and automate processes with superior customizability and control over workflows. 

This freedom allows admins to change or optimize workflows as business/processes scale. 

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Real-time and in-depth spend analytics

Managing company funds efficiently is the essence of spend management. In order to do that, you need to keep track of your employee expenses as they occur. 

Pluto records employee expenditures in real time and provides you with a reliable picture of what they are spending. 

You can control expenses by using real-time expense tracking without restricting your employees’ work.

Additionally, Pluto provides your finance team with insights and analytics based on all the data it gets. A feature like this is crucial for proper management, especially if your goal is to cut costs and optimize spending through automation. 

Your finance team will struggle to drive meaningful change without detailed analytics, requiring them to go through reams of data and make sense of it. 

Reports on expenses provide an overview of your expense history, making it easier to track down individual purchases. Maintaining accurate records, limiting expenditures, and avoiding fraud are all made easier with this functionality.

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Easy to Use

The most advanced software in the world is worthless if no one wants to use it. Simplicity and ease of use of essential business software, such as spend management, should therefore be a priority. 

You might find, for instance, that employees don't use your spend management software if they find it clunky and difficult to use. This can result in a manual spend reporting process that is time-consuming and error-prone. 

A lot of time is spent by businesses storing and processing invoices, receipts, and purchase orders. 

Pluto makes it easy to retrieve and keep track of essential documents, including matching documents to authenticate transactions, for record keeping and due diligence.

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An all-in-one platform

Your spend management platform should be a centralized solution for all your spending needs. Keeping all company spending in one place, in real time, is more efficient (and more secure) than using multiple smaller tools. 

Pluto has it all: 

- Unlimited virtual cards

- Efficient reimbursements‍

- Spend management platform

- Real-time analytics

- Real-time spend control

Essentially, anything that will allow you not only manage your expenses, but really take you spending under control and make sure that everything is at it's maximal eff

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Key Takeaways

Managing your company spending is a crucial aspect of company growth that is sometimes overlooked. Proper spending management strategies can help you find cost-cutting opportunities, gain a better overview of the health of your business, and simplify your tax reporting to avoid penalties.

When it comes to developing effective spending management strategies, you should focus on creating a budget that can evolve with your organization, reporting and tracking your expenses in real time, and using a spend management platform to automate and simplify your expense tracking and reporting.

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PlutoCard now becomes GetPluto — your new one-stop solution for all payables.  

What's New?

After much anticipation and hard work, we're excited to announce the migration from plutocard.io to getpluto.com, a step towards redefining corporate payments.

With getpluto.com, we are extending our vision beyond providing corporate cards. 

We understand the challenges that businesses face when handling their finances. It involves more than swiping a card and filing expenses. That's why we've developed a comprehensive suite of products and features to simplify everything from procurement to payables. 

So, whether you want to streamline purchase requests, integrate your ERP without impacting costs, or manage reimbursements — getpluto.com has you covered!

Beyond Cards: The All-In-One Platform

Here's a glimpse of what Pluto has to offer:

1. Procure-to-pay: Streamline your procurement process from purchase requests to invoice matching, all in one place.
2. Bill management: Centralize bill management and payments for faster approvals, better vendor relationships, and more accurate two/three-way matching.
3. Accounting ERP integrations: Sync seamlessly with major ERPs like Xero, Zoho, QuickBooks, Dynamics, and Netsuite to close your books 10X faster.
4. Petty cash management: Digitize cash-in-hand management to eliminate leaks without losing flexibility or visibility.
5. T&E reimbursements: Simplify travel and expense reimbursements with unlimited budget-controlled corporate cards and custom approval workflows.
6. Corporate cards: Get budget-controlled corporate cards with built-in compliance management — from receipt capture to policy enforcement. 

“We have been using Pluto for a few months now, and we literally have everything in one place.”

~ Lee Kersen Mascarenhas, Head of Operations at BloomingBox

From Our CoFounder — Mo Aziz

Pluto's Corporate Cards have been serving the largest businesses in UAE powered by a platform built for companies of all sizes: from small-scale SMEs to businesses with 1000s of employees.

But company spending does not happen just through Corporate Cards…

At Pluto, we believe CFO & Finance teams need a unified, comprehensive platform that solves all types of corporate spending problems end-to-end.

The new Pluto is our step towards this future where UAE businesses get a best-in-class platform, helping manage company spending across Cards, Reimbursements, Invoice Management, Procurement & more.

Join Us At getpluto.com

We're excited about the possibilities that getpluto.com brings. 

We understand the importance of this change and are here to support you at every step of the way, offering a more comprehensive platform to meet all your financial needs.

Sign up for a demo or create a free account at getpluto.com today and discover how Pluto simplifies payments for—finance teams, procurement teams, and employees.

Thank you for your continued support!

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The finance landscape is undergoing a seismic shift in an era of unstinted technological advancement. Back in 2018, a PWC report found that amongst the top 12 challenges that financial organisations faced, 4 of them were technology-related. It wasn't about deciding whether to implement digital transformation technologies but more about understanding the enterprise value these investments would add.

According to Deloitte, adopting the right digital transformation strategies can increase market value by up to $1.25 trillion across Fortune 500 companies. But how can organisations implement these strategies successfully?

The CFO's Perspective on Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is no longer just a buzzword; it is a mandate for modern businesses, and the CFO plays a central role in this paradigm shift. Gone are the days when the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) position revolved solely around balance sheets, budgeting, and compliance. The modern CFO is now tasked with leading the charge in the digital transformation of the finance department.

With its vision of becoming a global technology and innovation hub in the UAE, the need for digital transformation is even more compelling.

Why is digital transformation so vital for a CFO?

• Real-Time Financial Insights: Real-time access to financial data can be an invaluable asset in combating expense fraud. Digital transformation allows CFOs to detect irregularities promptly, leading to timely intervention and reducing the financial losses associated with fraud.
• Enhanced Reporting: CFOs can generate comprehensive financial reports more quickly and accurately, aiding in transparency and stakeholder communication.
• Cost Reduction: Automating financial processes can lead to cost savings, such as reduced labour and operational costs.
• Strategic Planning: Digital tools help CFOs analyse financial data and create insights to make strategic decisions and adapt to changing market conditions.
• Compliance and Risk Management: Digital solutions assist in maintaining compliance with changing regulations and mitigating financial risks.

What is the best digital transformation tool for you?

As a CFO, your journey towards a comprehensive digital transformation should be guided by specific features that enhance financial efficiency and help combat one of the most prevalent issues—expense fraud. Here's what you should look for in a digital transformation tool to achieve these goals:

1. Full Control Over Budget Allocation and Spend Visibility:

Access to complete control over budget allocation and clear visibility into how those budgets are spent is the foundation of sound financial management. Your chosen digital transformation tool should empower you to allocate resources efficiently and make data-driven decisions.

2. Real-Time Closure with ERP Integration:

Moving from traditional month-end closures to real-time closures is a game-changer. This transition ensures you have real-time insights into your company's expenditure, allowing you to address financial challenges swiftly. An essential component of this is seamless integration with your ERP system, which provides instant access to financial data.

3. Elimination of Petty Cash Usage:

Digitization of financial processes is a fundamental aspect of modern financial management. To achieve this, focus on strategies to eliminate petty cash usage as much as possible. Consider solutions that offer alternatives, such as merchant-specific cards, fuel cards, and PRO cards, which reduce inefficiency and enhance security.‎

4. Advanced Expense Fraud Detection:

Expense fraud is an all-too-common challenge faced by many companies. Leveraging digitization to combat this issue is essential. Look for a solution equipped with world-class Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to identify duplicate receipts and suspicious transactions. The goal is to ensure transactions are monitored in real-time and in an automated manner, such that financial compliance is continuously maintained.

5. Improved Audit Process for Accounting Teams:

Ensuring an enhanced audit process is a vital component of your CFO responsibilities. You must seek a digital transformation tool with two critical features for this. First, accounting automation powered by ERP integration streamlines financial processes and reduces the potential for human error. Second, the tool should provide 100% visibility into all receipts across the company, creating a comprehensive audit trail and reducing the likelihood of discrepancies.

6. Insights and Forecasting:

To thrive in a rapidly changing business environment, a CFO must have a finger on the pulse of their company's finances. A 360-degree digital transformation solution offers complete real-time visibility into all company expenditures. This feature allows you to provide timely, data-driven insights and forecasts, enabling proactive decision-making.

7. Multi-Subsidiary Expense Tracking:

In the UAE, as businesses achieve a reasonable size, they often evolve into multi-subsidiary or multi-branch entities. Given this common trajectory, it's imperative that the chosen digital transformation tool supports multi-subsidiary expense tracking. This ensures that financial data from all parts of the organization is aggregated and analyzed effectively. Not only does it provide a holistic view of the company's financial health, but it also enables consistent monitoring and control of expenses across the entire organization.

To illustrate the power of these digital transformation features, let's look at real-life business examples from the UAE:

1. Dubai Blockchain Mandate: Dubai is on a mission to become the world's inaugural blockchain-powered city. The Dubai Blockchain Mandate, led by the Smart Dubai Office, lays out a clear path for integrating blockchain technology across the city. By embracing blockchain technology, Dubai has the potential to realize annual savings of 5.5 billion dirhams in document processing alone, equivalent to the value of one Burj Khalifa every year.

2. Dubai Government Services: The government is committed to digitizing its services, the rate of which in 2023 stands at 99.5%. Currently, 87% of all government service transactions are digital. Furthermore, the government has also developed over 100 smartphone apps with cybersecurity and data law compliance.

The digital transformation process is an ongoing journey that entails mobilising the entire workforce and instilling a change-oriented mindset with no pre-defined endpoint that might extend well beyond your current leadership. It serves as the fundamental framework for an organisation's survival in an era marked by disruptions. Achieving success in this context involves formulating a strategy around making purposeful investments in the digital realm. It requires the prudent allocation of resources toward innovative technologies that can drive the organisation's strategic initiatives.

Ultimately, the successful execution of digital transformation mandates the ability to communicate to stakeholders that every digital initiative undertaken is a deliberate move to enhance the organisation's prospects for sustained success.