By Anton van Heerden, executive vice-president and managing director, Sage South & Southern Africa.

Accounting, payroll & HR and payments are at the heart of any business. By integrating this golden triangle of business processes and systems, organisations can reduce manual administration and free up time to spend on more value-adding activities. With integrated solutions, businesses can achieve higher levels of automation across their businesses, become more productive and efficient, and gain better visibility into their performance.

Here are a few benefits companies can achieve by implementing integrated business solutions.

1. Reduce redundant data capture

An integrated solution that brings payment, payroll and accounting functionality together eliminates the need to recapture or manually import payroll data into the accounting system each month, and then reconcile financial data with bank statements. That can save hours of work each month for the accounting and payroll teams, while also ensuring that the business always has up-to-date payroll information reflected in its financial systems.

2. Better visibility into business performance

If companies have completely up-to-date payroll, HR and payments data flowing automatically to their accounting systems, they’ll have access to the reports and information they need for better planning, forecasting and budgeting. They’ll have insight into cash flow, human resource capacity and utilisation, and business growth they can use to optimise performance and plan for the future. Because there is no need to collect information from separate databases, reporting is faster and more accurate. 

3. Fewer errors

Eliminating the need to recapture data means that the possibility for human error to creep in is vastly reduced. What’s more, all of the company’s business systems draw their data from a single database, reflecting a single, accurate version of the truth. This creates trust in the business’s financial data and helps the business to avoid making costly errors in tax or payroll calculations.

4. Less paperwork

Integrated payroll, HR and accounting solutions can help the financial and payroll teams to stay on top of the mountains of paperwork involved in managing the workforce. For example, if an employee updates his or her personal information in the HR system via employee self-service, the integrated payroll software should automatically update. This means less work for HR and payroll staff, and fewer chances for data capture errors.

5. A platform for self-service and mobile working

A modern, integrated business system that draws together payments, payroll & HR, and accounting is a platform for more efficient ways of working. With accurate and up-to-date payroll and HR data available, employees can use employee self-service to access information about benefits, payroll, leave, and expenses. They can even update their information themselves. This can save managers, HR, and employees a great deal for time.

This sort of environment also means that managers can get access to up-to-date business information wherever they are. They can monitor employee and business performance from their mobile phones, knowing that they have accurate information at all times to inform their decisions.

Closing words

As the global market leader of integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, Sage enables our customers to focus on their business and helps them to leapfrog to the future. An important element in this strategy is freeing entrepreneurs from the low-level admin and data capture so that they can focus on growing their businesses.