How automated forecasting is revolutionizing hiring practices

For any business, hiring is simultaneously one of the most important but also one of the trickiest business tasks. That becomes even more the case when navigating a market downturn like the one we’re currently experiencing–and SaaS companies are not immune.

A poorly or hastily hired employee can significantly affect their department’s effectiveness and productivity for months or even years. Beyond being a drag on your profits, bad hires can damage their entire department’s morale.

Effective hiring starts within an organization. Finance departments are pivotal in making sure new hires are maximally effective in their specific roles. And just as importantly, SaaS accounting departments make sure that their company’s financial situation can support new hiring.

This article will examine how adopting automation can revolutionize hiring practices and results for SaaS companies of all kinds.

Stop rushing into new hires

These days, we live in a world where no one seems to have time to slow down. But if there’s one area where it pays to slow down, it’s your hiring practices.

All too often, companies are in a hurry to fill new and much-needed roles as fast as possible. This makes sense, right? After all, isn’t the new hire the solution to fix things? At first glance, you might think so. But for the most part, you’d be wrong.

To get to the root of what makes a great hire, we have to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question. Why do so many companies rush their hiring to begin with? They do it because they lack the forecasting data to make better decisions.

Modern cloud-based budgeting and planning software enables you to verify key points before you jump into making hires:

• Analyze current and future cash positions: Automated forecasting gives you a granular view of your current finances. But even more importantly, it enables you to see much further into your financial future than you’d ever be able to with manual forecasts. Hiring with confidence and clarity is much easier when you have absolutely no financial doubts about your decision.

• Spot departmental shortfalls: Because automation centralizes data across departments, you’ll better understand how your entire SaaS company functions. This will allow you to make more intelligent and effective hiring choices. You’ll know exactly where to place new hires to give them the greatest odds of being a long-term asset. Poor hires lead to high turnover rates, and no business wants that.

Consistently making fantastic hires begins with changing your mindset. As a SaaS CFO, one of your responsibilities should be to make hiring as seamless as possible by providing as much contextual data as possible.

Access your capital more quickly

Granting access to more data isn’t the only way finance facilitates winning hires. Due to their subscription payment scheduling, companies with recurring revenue often deal with deferred revenue waterfalls.

This complicates matters when you’re trying to get an accurate picture of how much future capital you have coming in and what you currently have at your disposal for any new hires. By speeding up the lifecycle of your transactions and lowering your days sales outstanding (DSO), automation will help you:

• Hire more quickly: Hiring quickly and efficiently is not the same thing as making a rushed hiring decision. In the latter case, the process is sped up due to a sense of panic and necessity. But there’s nothing wrong with being able to hire quickly because you have the means and the data to help your company back up its hiring decisions.

• Make optimally effective hires: Faster access to your capital means you’ll have more resources at your disposal to attract top talent. Compile enough individual hires together across time, and it’s the difference between becoming a SaaS unicorn run by a dream team or “just getting by” in the marketplace.

Money brings freedom to maneuver more intelligently, ensuring each hire is a net positive for your company.

Hiring more effectively begins with automation

In practically all industries, companies that embrace automation are outpacing their peers who still do business manually. It’s the secret to accomplishing more while expending fewer resources and less time. What else could you ask for?

And once you’re done making stellar hiring choices, Sage Intacct can help you save even more time and money by automating your company’s background tasks.