Lots of factors go into an effective business decision, but few are as critical as timing.
Currently, too many business decision-makers are missing their cue and making decisions once the moment has passed. Allowing the window of opportunity to slam shut in this way means teams end up avoiding risks instead of chasing gains. Financial leaders become more like firefighters than enablers of growth or ‘value accelerators’.
Why teams are sidetracked by hindsight
According to Pleo research, as many as 58% of financial decision-makers are making more high-level decisions than they were a year ago – a figure that climbs to 65% for CFOs. This comes from a combination of business complexities, greater ambitions and expectations, plus added pressure – from the economy as well as the businesses themselves.
No wonder then that more than half of CFOs say they don’t have enough time to make effective choices; something that is impacting their confidence, making them second-guess themselves or even avoid making a call entirely.
Time is wasted and everything shifts to hindsight – excess cash is deployed too late, spending goes off track and foreign exchange (FX) fees climb to eye-watering levels. Ultimately, instead of predicting future risks and opportunities, leaders are left lamenting what they really should have seen coming, and finance slips into old habits.
Freeing ‘value accelerators’ from hindsight
Today’s finance teams are about much more than number crunching – they are the decision-making engine of the business. But to drive real value, they need foresight.
With this, they can supplement defensive moves – such as reporting, compliance, risk and cost management – with offensive plays that unlock growth and innovation. And transform their firm’s financial strategy in several key ways.
1
Data-driven business partnerships
No financial decision is risk-free, but when they are empowered to be ‘value accelerators’, financial leaders can bring data-driven decision-making to the table, showing both the risks and opportunities. But more than that, they can stress-test ideas with accurate forecasting and scenario planning, based on their own expertise and an armoury of data insights.
2
Smart technology investments
AI is now part and parcel of the workplace, and technology solutions are once again vying for space, whether it’s all-in-one platforms, speciality tools or agentic AI. Determining which technology to invest in is more high-stakes than ever. But being so close to financial strategy means finance teams can determine where technology can be most transformative, freeing teams up from manual work and ensuring technology proves ROI and ladders up to common business goals.
3
Growth enablement
The old saying still rings true – you have to spend money to make money. Offensive, proactive financial strategies call for investment. Making excess cash work harder than it normally would sitting in an account – through high-interest yield accounts, for instance – is also important. With the right level of oversight and control, finance teams can fund serious growth initiatives and unlock innovation, expansion and revenue – meaning a robust financial strategy is about more than just saving money, but making it too.
4
Trust-based culture shifts
Trust goes a long way in an organisation. Historically, this might have meant submitting receipts or getting expense claims right. Today, however, trust goes further and financial strategies work best when finance is democratised. This calls for greater education, empowerment and transparency, with teams able to access finance dashboards – putting them in control of their own budgets and helping create a culture of visibility and accountability.
Finance leaders are primed to deliver these benefits to the business. But doing so effectively relies on making the shift from hindsight to foresight; something that is about more than just mindset – it’s about having the right tools.
Building the context and clarity for true foresight
To lead with foresight, context and clarity need to run through the entire organisation. In today’s financial landscape, this means appraising tools and ensuring they are primed for collaboration and communication; offering real-time insights, predictive analytics and confidence.
Based on this need for more foresight in finance, Pleo has evolved from being an expenses tool into an engine for effective decision-making. This extends firms’ purview from spend to the broader financial picture, including bank balances and more. With extensive visibility and control at the heart of the product, Pleo empowers financial decision-makers (not just financial experts) to shift from hindsight to foresight in several ways:
1
Real-time visibility
For finance teams to have absolute clarity, they first need visibility. But even though finance has long since been redefined by technology, information silos still exist. Pleo changes this, offering a central source of truth for teams, leaving little doubt in their minds as to what is the latest information. Real-time data enables teams to see spend and cash positions as they happen, removing one of the main blockers of foresight: blind spots.
2
Analytics and insights
While data might be more in the hindsight camp, the analytics and insights it unlocks are invaluable. With Pleo, data has a story to tell. The analytics dashboard takes businesses’ data one step further so teams can track multiple spend patterns, vendors and categories and apply game-changing insights. This is the perfect place for them to spot savings and optimise costs before any money is spent.
3
Pain-free planning
Businesses’ focus on the future means their finance strategy must be informed by accuracy, not hunches. Pleo’s real-time visibility over cash positions helps firms to accurately forecast what will happen next – e.g. using this year’s real-time data to forecast next year’s spend. Currently, most businesses do this manually. This is not only prone to errors but also a massive time waste. Automation changes this, and is a big reason why Pleo acts as an ideal health check, arming businesses with the data to plan better.
In today’s ever-changing landscape, long-term planning is near impossible. This is why Pleo’s cash management suite arms businesses with the real-time data and automation tools to confidently plan for the immediate future, so they can be guided by growth, not guesswork.
4
Budgets and sub-accounts
Foresight is also about ensuring there are no nasty surprises. A major part of how Pleo delivers this visibility is ring-fencing spend for teams and projects. The financial landscape has its fair share of twists and turns, but if this impacts cash flow forecast, firms won’t want some teams and projects to take the brunt. Setting up budgets and sub-accounts in Pleo means businesses can avoid going over budget and declined transactions by safeguarding cash for critical payments. This helps them plan with the confidence that things that can’t afford to change, won’t.
5
Smart optimisation
Every business’s future is also defined by making money, so foresight must be about driving profitability as well as avoiding risks. Pleo empowers businesses to get smarter with their spending and excess cash through features such as cashback, FX savings and deposit yield. This means finance teams have eyes everywhere, gathering up every opportunity there is to make money and maintain financial health.
6
More time for strategic work
If there’s one thing that all financial decision-makers would like more of to help them deliver value, it’s time. Pleo can’t change the number of hours in a day, but it can automate time-intensive tasks to ensure teams have the right information and don’t have to manually manage everything. Take transfer rules, for instance. This feature helps businesses automate their cash movements – following instructions based on different scenarios. This takes a heap of decisions off an already heaped plate, saving time, cutting costly errors and ensuring business operations are empowered – not disrupted – because the money is always where it needs to be.
Removing guesswork from a finance strategy
If an organisation bases its decision-making on hindsight and guesswork, it’ll only ever be making decisions in the dark. Foresight can transform this and ensure a finance strategy is about more than just looking backward.
Pleo is the ideal tool for companies that want to lead with foresight and never miss another opportunity. Every decision the company and finance team makes with Pleo is backed by data, AI and interactive guidelines, so that businesses can guide growth with confidence and rest assured that whatever is waiting for them, they’re prepared for it.
Download Pleo’s ‘The power of better business decisions’ report
Lots of factors go into an effective business decision, but few are as critical as timing.
Currently, too many business decision-makers are missing their cue and making decisions once the moment has passed. Allowing the window of opportunity to slam shut in this way means teams end up avoiding risks instead of chasing gains. Financial leaders become more like firefighters than enablers of growth or ‘value accelerators’.