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Where To Start? 3 Areas To Prioritize for Finance Optimization

Article

June 13, 2025

Knowing Where To Begin

Financial optimization enhances efficiency, provides data-driven insights, and improves cash flow management, but mid-market finance leaders often struggle with knowing just how to begin these optimization efforts.

At Cherry Bekaert, we have found the most meaningful progress often starts with modest, well-targeted improvements. Rather than launching into large-scale finance transformation efforts, many organizations experience greater success by focusing on a few foundational areas that consistently deliver strong returns and that are critical to quick wins, as well as long-term achievements.

Identifying quick process wins, cleaning up financial data and optimizing the tech stack are three focus areas that frequently emerge in our client roadmap assessments and have proven to deliver value and build a strong foundation for future growth.

1. Identify Quick Process Wins

While establishing the foundations for long-term change is important, short-term wins can help build momentum. These quick wins will vary by company, but there are a few areas that consistently offer strong return on investment (ROI).

Month-End Close: If it is taking the finance team 20 or even 30 days to close the books, there’s often room to streamline. This might involve adopting a “continuous close” approach, where reconciliations begin before month-end, and review processes are simplified. Reassigning tasks to the right people based on skill and bandwidth can also reduce bottlenecks and delays.
Cash Flow Management: Visibility into working capital helps increase agility and identify areas for improvement, especially in uncertain markets. From simple improvements, such as renegotiating payment terms and incentivizing faster collections, to more advanced processes leveraging real-time data and dynamic forecasting, finance can adopt several strategies to improve liquidity and planning.
Accounts Payable (AP): Lack of spending visibility can drain profitability. Implementing a procurement policy that ties spend and purchase orders to budgets can create immediate control and clarity. Automation can also help. In a recent PYMNTS survey, 83% of executives reported that AP automation helped them achieve accurate, efficient and streamlined processes. Integrated data ensures leaders have the real-time, end-to-end visibility they need.
Accounts Receivable: Leaders may be frustrated that it takes too long to get paid by customers, while the finance team may struggle with manual processes. Ensuring payment terms are clearly communicated and automating invoices and reminders can significantly reduce delays. Of the companies that automate their invoicing and collections processes, 62% report a reduction in Day Sales Outstanding, according to PYMNTS research.

For mid-market businesses, these are practical, impactful and achievable changes. When strategically aligned with the organization’s unique challenges, they can transform how the finance team supports the broader business.

2. Clean Up Financial Data

Poor data quality is a common barrier to financial process improvement for mid-market companies. Incomplete, inconsistent or outdated data brings significant risks, leading to inaccurate financial reporting, missed compliance requirements, and ultimately, poor business decisions.

A Harvard Business Review survey found that 88% of finance executives believe fostering a data-driven culture is critical to future performance. Leadership teams need reliable numbers to steer the business, but without clean data, even the most sophisticated dashboards or forecasts can be misleading.

Data hygiene is not a one-time fix; it is an ongoing practice — key data points may change as the business evolves and grows. Especially during periods of strategic change, companies should routinely cleanse and validate their financial data to ensure records are accurate and consistent.

This process might involve:

Updating product and service costing to reflect current inputs and margins
Revisiting stock-keeping unit (SKU) structures to eliminate redundancies and improve reporting
Reviewing sales tax exemption certificates to ensure compliance and avoid penalties
Ensuring mandatory fields in master data are consistently populated (e.g., customer, vendor, general ledger accounts)

Just as critical as periodic reviews, finance teams should establish strong data governance, defining:

Who owns which datasets?
Who is responsible for day-to-day updates, data quality and integrity?
How often should reviews occur?
Who can access what data and under what circumstances?

Clean data is the foundation of finance modernization. Without it, future automation, artificial intelligence (AI) or predictive analytics initiatives simply will not deliver on their promise.

3. Maximize the Value of Your Tech Stack

Underutilized technology is a sunk cost — finance teams may be missing potential efficiencies within immediate reach. Too many organizations invest heavily in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other finance technology, only to end up back in Excel for day-to-day operations. Before adopting new technology, leaders should assess whether existing systems are fully leveraged and delivering value.

Additionally, even when teams are making full use of their tools, lack of integration between systems can lead to siloed processes and result in inefficiencies and inaccuracies. Teams may lose valuable time manually rekeying information or reconciling mismatches. As a first step, it is worth checking if:

Your customer relationship management (CRM) tool connects to your ERP
Inventory data connects to your general ledger
Workflows are automated and connected across departments
Your centralized data lake or warehouse aggregates inputs from CRM, ERP, inventory and financial systems to enable real-time, cross-functional reporting and analytics
Integration points are secure and compliant with internal controls and regulatory requirements

Skills gaps in the finance team are another contributing factor. Tools will go underutilized if staff lack confidence, so it is crucial for finance leaders to survey their teams to identify knowledge gaps.

Training, upskilling, and change management are key to unlocking value, scalability and reducing inefficiencies. This, in turn, frees up valuable time for more strategic contributions.

How Cherry Bekaert Can Help

Finance modernization does not require a sweeping overhaul from day one. In our experience, starting with a few foundational improvements — cleaner data, smarter use of your existing tech stack and optimization of select business-critical processes can deliver immediate and lasting ROI.

These changes improve accuracy and efficiency, elevating finance’s strategic role. These efforts lay the groundwork for more advanced transformation initiatives down the road. Technologies like automation, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics all rely on solid foundational systems to deliver meaningful impact.

At Cherry Bekaert, our CFO Advisory and Digital Advisory practices help middle-market and high-growth businesses modernize their finance operations through advanced technologies, optimized processes and strategic guidance. Contact us to learn more about Cherry Bekaert’s finance modernization services and conduct a roadmap assessment of your organization’s needs to see how we can help you.

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