Growing awareness of the benefits of spend management has spurred many fintech companies to rapidly add new features in hopes of becoming the go-to platform for managing company spend. But this piecemeal approach to new functionality often falls short when it comes to usability. There’s no way around it: Company spending is complex. When an existing product simply adds new features on top of each other — without holistically considering the underlying workflows — the result is unintuitive, complicated, and ultimately unpopular with employees.
That’s a problem. If employees don’t like to use a software product, it won’t succeed. Usability is the most significant determinant of a spend management platform’s ROI. Here are 10 resources that back up the importance of user experience in a spend management platform.
1. Blog: The best spend management platform. What I learned from reading over 1,000 reviews.
Read the results of a deep dive into G2’s spend management reviews and find out what they have to say about the importance of usability.
2. Article: 5 ways low software adoption affects employee productivity.
The costs of low software adoption go beyond the wasted cost of the software itself. Did you know that employees waste an average of two weeks a year trying to figure out how to use tools that are supposed to make them more productive? This article explains the hidden costs of software employees don’t like to use.
3. Blog: Lessons from SaaStr: User experience matters.
Airbase representatives at SaaStr heard praises for our platform but also fielded complaints about other expense management systems. Here’s what we learned at SaaStr about how sales and marketing employees feel about commonly used expense management tools.
4. Infographic: Expense reports drain company resources.
Employees who don’t like an expense reporting system are more likely to make mistakes and omit information. Discover the implications for your company in terms of both time and money.
5. Case study: Airbase and Instawork: Why an experienced auditor loves Airbase.
Instawork employees cite usability as a key reason they love Airbase. In the words of their controller, Steve Lamping:
“Airbase is very focused. It tells you what to do, and what matters. That’s a problem with some other tools — they flood the module with options, but that creates confusion. Airbase does a good job of controlling that and helping you where you need it.”
6. Blog: The price of hating expense reports: True confessions and proven solutions.
Cumbersome expense reporting tools often force bushttps://www.airbase.com/blog/the-price-of-hating-expense-reportsy employees to decide if reimbursements for small items are worth the time it takes to request them. As these add up, it can lead to employee resentment.
7. Webinar: Is your finance operation being crushed by the weight of multiple platforms?
A tech stack that is cobbled together without consolidating processes creates a lot of manual work. As a result, finance team members spend time on tasks like reconciling card statements and importing spreadsheets instead of contributing to company strategy.
8. Blog: How enterprise-level software fails early enterprise companies.
Dan DeVall, Airbase’s VP of Business Development, examines the differences between lightweight solutions and more heavyweight products — and the importance of considering which ones help companies grow.
“Are you willing to risk slowing down your business by living with bad software decisions, especially ones that are overly cumbersome and place undue demands on lean teams? Or, are you going to cut your losses and move fast to implement a better solution?”
9. Report: The Business Value of Design.
This fascinating report by McKinsey makes a convincing case for prioritizing user experience in product development. I was surprised by this fact: “Over 40 percent of the companies surveyed still aren’t talking to their end users during development.”
10. Reviews: G2: Spend Management.
G2 is the gold standard for software review sites because all of its reviews are by verified users. Check out some reviews of spend management platforms to learn how users rate the overall experience of the top offerings in the market.
Find out for yourself why Airbase consistently earns accolades for its intuitive user experience. Ask us for a product demo!
