When you walk or drive along major thoroughfares in your community these days, you will find a number of known local establishments that have temporarily discontinued their operations or have finally closed their doors to the public.
It’s a painful and sad reality that all of us need to accept as the COVID-19 virus continues to spread across the country and worldwide. As a result, continued quarantine restrictions have exposed the weakest and the most vulnerable businesses during the pandemic.
And if you are an owner of a small enterprise, marketing your business traditionally to a wider audience is no longer a walk in the park. Events and gatherings are stopped. Giving away leaflets and flyers is generally no longer accepted for fear of catching the virus in the process.
Truly, these are the days when you need to scale up your digital marketing skills in order to sell more and minimize unnecessary expenses. But the challenges of managing the cash flow of your business is an even more daunting task. That is why an entrepreneur should think twice before relying on manual processes alone in times like these.
As such, the digitalization of business processes is now one of the main keys to entrepreneurial success. Such includes cash management.
What is Cash Management Services (CMS)?
Cash Management Services (CMS) involves managing the flow of funds in an organization or business. Every business has collection and payment needs which if not managed may cause funds to be misplaced, lost, or untracked.
Payroll, digital banking, bills payment facility (over the counter or online), auto-debit and auto credit facilities, fund transfers, cash deposit pick-ups, and check writing (where checks are printed and issued/released in an automated fashion) are just among the products and services under CMS.
As a bank that truly finds ways to help people, BDO has beefed up its CMS or Cash Management Services. This does not only mean adding more products or services to its current suite of offerings but also making them scalable and adaptable to businesses of whatever type, size, and scale.
With BDO CMS, for example, you can receive payments from your customers via the Bank’s online banking channel. You can also explore the use of cashless point-of-sale (POS) terminals to collect from clients.
You can also manage your payments to your suppliers, salaries to your employees, and other expenses such as your rent, water, and electricity.
With BDO, you can choose your CMS solutions according to your specific needs.
What is the role of CMS during the pandemic?
Managing payments, collections, and internal documentation manually can be very risky for many SME’s. Manual processes are always costly, inefficient, and prone to error. This underscores that technology and digital solutions are vital in surviving and flourishing a business during the pandemic.
While an SME may not always be able to afford expensive software, a specialized solution such as the CMS is at hand to help any business to not only survive but rather produce more favorable bottom-line figures even during a crisis.
But how can a business achieve more profit? The answer is clear: simplified collection and payment processes through the use of CMS. Because by using CMS, your costs are controlled and errors are reduced to a minimum acceptable level.
While increasing or sustaining sales volume is always essential during a pandemic, we have realized in the past year that time is imperative to increase collections and control disbursements.
The CMS plays the role of a wake-up call that SMEs focusing on cash flow and liquidity will be in a better position to survive this pandemic.
Photo by Rock to Riches Blog
How is CMS saving businesses and employees during a pandemic?
Cash is the fuel that sets an SME and any business in a continuous motion. Every business must generate enough cash to meet its financial obligations and remain profitable despite the crisis.
It should be remembered that cash management is one of the most critical ones among all the financial management activities that a business undertakes.
Here are some of the reasons why the use of CMS is important:
CMS Guarantees Liquidity and Guides in Financial Planning
- Organizing everything in business gives clarity about the actual cash position of any SME. Using CMS gives a picture of your business through real-time data and available reports. It shows very important items and figures like your bank account balance and inflows (sales) and outflows (expenses) of your account.
- Using CMS can help you decide to invest your funds in assets that yield returns very soon and not in the far-off future.
Avoids Frauds and Scams
- The risk of fraud is very significant and possible in all-cash transactions especially since the pandemic started. With CMS, one can ensure the recording of all transactions which can assist in tracing and flagging any fraudulent activity.
- The BDO CMS is highly dynamic and integrates restrictions that can be set to highlight any discrepancies. This solution can help eliminate internal fraud since every transaction is meticulously recorded.
CMS Can Meet Customer Expectations
- Because many customers today are tech-savvy, they expect that digital options are available for their financial transactions. Customers want to do their activities on their smartphones and mobile devices. The Point-of-Sale (POS) collections also make it easier for customers to transact with their debit cards instead of using cash. CMS ensures that it can provide this to you and to your customers.
- If you respond to your customer’s requests in a timely manner, you will not only create customer satisfaction. Timely responses also generate loyalty. And both can be achieved when you use BDO’s CMS.
CMS Reduces Costs and Generates Accurate Reports
- When you automate processes, you reduce the number of people needed to manage the cash-related functions in a business. Because of this, your operational costs are reduced and profitability is improved.
- With the use of CMS, you can decide better where to invest your funds and ultimately help you in boosting your business’ ROI.
Improves Employee Efficiency
- It’s common fact that many of the employee functions in financial management are redundant. By using CMS, employees can work on more stimulating activities because cash management tasks are automated.
- Employees can help more on connecting with customers rather than do manual routine tasks that can be covered by using the CMS.
- Cash management solutions and sound cash management practices and strategies help businesses. As an entrepreneur, you have to take your business to a new level and enhance your effectiveness in handling digital cash transactions by using the BDO CMS.
How BDO CMS’ Checkout Facility is helping our food kiosk and customers
One of my small businesses in Lipa City, Batangas is an outdoor restaurant cum food kiosk that serves Middle Eastern dishes. It’s called Mumtaz, which is the Arabic word for “excellent”.
More than half of Mumtaz customers are overseas Filipinos who are currently working or have previously worked in the Middle East and other Islamic nations. These are customers who are either craving for dishes that they miss or just wanted to let their families experience the same food adventures that they had back in the Middle East.
Mumtaz – Photo by Rock to Riches blog
Mumtaz is grateful for BDO Checkout as it allows our customers to pay us using their credit card or debit. One of our customers in based Qatar regularly order food for her family in Calamba, Laguna through our Facebook page. She is very thankful that she can now pay online through BDO Checkout and there is no need for her to go to the remittance center to send us the payment.
These cashless transactions are helping both Mumtaz and our customers comply with the health protocols being implemented by the government. Everyone is safe as there is no more face-to-face interaction and physical exchange of cash as we only have to send a unique link online to our customers for every transaction.
Reshare from: Burn Gutierrez of Rock to Riches Blog
