Providers of financial software solutions often claim that their software is “comprehensive” and “covers a wide range of processes and agendas”. But what do these phrases mean? What are these providers actually offering to their customers? You will find these questions answered in our brief summary of key features that any good financial software should have.
Agenda Coverage
The main measure of the comprehensiveness of financial software is its ability to cover the necessary processes and their specifics. This doesn't mean just basic functions such as accounting, purchasing, sales, or keeping records of important data. To operate, financial service providers require particular processes, which differ based on the company's specific focus and products. A truly comprehensive solution should thus cover various areas of the life cycle of a finance contract. They should offer crucial tools for routine activities, while also leaving room for customisation. In practice, the solution should cover the following areas of the life cycle in particular:
- business offer,
- management of the database of customers and suppliers,
- CRM and marketing campaigns,
- contract activation,
- contract management,
- insurance,
- ordinary and extraordinary termination of a contract,
- enforcement and penalisation,
- services within operating leases (management of services, service permits, and fuel cards),
- the entire accounting agenda including statutory statements.
From the perspective of financial services, the solution should primarily cover the following:
- finance leases
- operating leases,
- loans,
- installment sale,
- fleet management.
Management of Financing Agreements
Suitable financial services software covers the entire agenda associated with concluding and managing agreements and contracts. Above all, it should be able to manage various types of financing, meaning a single solution should be capable of working with leases for cars or machinery, property leases, or operative leases, including various additional services (fuel cards, insurance, etc.).
Here, financial services software usually also offers advanced monitoring and reporting tools to provide an overview of agreement status. A single interface will thus display the level of individual agreements and their business goals, which you can then clearly measure and monitor. Depending on the properties of the given solution, users can then even create a custom approval workflow.
Speeding Up and Automating Processes
The above agendas usually require a great deal of paperwork and specific tasks. If these were to be done manually, it would mean a lot of extra work for your employees. In addition to offering a wide range of functions, financial services software should be able to fully automate routine processes, or at the very least, significantly accelerate them. Aside from saving a lot of time and effort, these features also significantly reduce the risk of human error. Specifically, the system should be able to do the following for you:
- automatically filling customer information into forms, agreements, invoices, and other documents,
- tracking important deadlines and sending automated notices and reminders,
- automatically generating necessary documents (handover certificates, invoices, demands for payment, etc.),
- propagating any changes in contracts or customer information to all associated documents,
- bulk tasks that run in the background (accounting agreements, making bulk changes, etc.)
- setting calculation parameters for loan management,
- collecting payments from customers,
- checking for agreements that are near their expiration date,
- exporting/importing bank statements
- and many other operations.
Reporting and Analytical Tools
Customer preferences and behavior, status, a yield of contracts, and tracking of current trends…that is just some of the information that financial service providers need in order to continuously improve and keep pace with their competitors. Financial services software thus often includes a battery of analytical and reporting tools, which use collected data to provide an overview of the status of agreements and predict customer behavior.
