This article contains general information and is not intended to provide information that is specific to American Express, or its products and services. Similar products and services offered by different companies will have different features and you should always read about product details before acquiring any financial product.
Connectivity helps define modern life. Phones sync to cars. Files live in the cloud, accessible from anywhere. Payments clear with a tap.
Yet in some finance departments, getting expense data into the general ledger could still require an export, a reformat, and a manual upload. Teams may know this is a problem — and that the burden could grow as transaction volume increases and the business’s finances get more complex.
For finance teams ready to address this issue, integration may be more accessible than it might seem.
What Connected Finance Systems Actually Do
So what do connected finance systems look like in practice? Instead of finance teams moving data between platforms manually, the systems could handle it themselves.
Consider this scenario: An invoice comes in. It gets processed in accounts payable (AP), and posts to the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) — all without manual exporting, reformatting, or uploading. Payment instructions flow directly to the bank while treasury gains a real-time view of cash position and intraday liquidity. Put simply, status changes are automatically updated without manual intervention.
How organizations achieve useful connectivity could depend on their current technology architecture, transaction volume, and how much technical complexity the team can take on. But ultimately, the method may matter less than a desired end result, in which financial data may move reliably without requiring a human to usher it through.
Fortunately, integration may not have to mean starting from scratch. These days, some business software options could offer connectors that help link existing tools into a finance technology stack that works together. In other words, it’s not about replacing what already works — it’s about trying to connect discrete systems to form the backbone of a unified finance operation.
The Business Value of Connected Finance Systems
Where may finance integration be likely to pay off? Five areas stand out:
- Visibility: When systems are connected, finance may be able to see cash positions, spend data, and exposure as transactions occur without having to wait for manual consolidation or end-of-period reports.
- Efficiency: Automated data flow between systems could help reduce time spent on manual entry and reconciliation. Approvals that once required checking multiple platforms may move through a single workflow.
- Control and governance: Connected systems may help enforce the same policy logic across card spend, expense reports, and AP so rules may not need to be maintained in each tool. This also could mean that policy exceptions and threshold breaches may trigger alerts as they occur.
- Scalability: Integration designed with growth in mind could help make it easier to add new systems over time, such as new banking partners, additional locations, or tools from an acquired company. New connections might be built on the existing framework instead of starting from scratch.
- Decision support: Connected systems that share information frequently may give finance teams a more accurate foundation for scenario modeling, rolling forecasts, and advising the business.
Making Integration Happen: What to Think About
Integration may not require an overnight overhaul. It actually might be helpful not to try to fix everything at once, as this could cause projects to stall. A more practical path to consider may be to start with the pain points that slow the business most, evaluate the results there, then expand once teams gain confidence.
Here are some core considerations finance leaders may want to bear in mind:
Deciding Where to Start
High-volume, high-stakes processes — payments, cash positioning, invoice approvals — could deserve attention first. The greater the volume, the more manual touches there may be, and the more manual touches, the more likely potential errors could slip through. Fixing these areas could show results over time because improvements in high-frequency processes could have a cumulative impact.
Integration designed with growth in mind could help make it easier to add new systems over time, such as new banking partners, additional locations, or tools from an acquired company.
Depending on your integration software’s capabilities, you may be able to connect different tools, where possible, to help automate or streamline procedures. For example, a business may consider connecting its card program to the general ledger via direct feed. This way, transactions may post automatically and finance could see spend in real-time rather than at month-end. Another option, depending on your system's capabilities, could be to link expense reports directly to the AP system so approved expenses may flow to payment without re-entry — helping to reduce a common source of duplicate payments. In either case, it may be possible to track processing cycle times and exception rates to help get a sense of changes over time.
Approaching Integration
There’s no single way to help support a successful integration. What might work could depend on how many systems need to connect, how critical real-time data flow is, and what technical capability exists in-house. The simplest connections may be point-to-point and scheduled to flow in batches. One system sends a file to another, potentially overnight, and data could sync on schedule. This may work well when only a few systems need to talk to each other and that’s unlikely to change. But as a business adds tools or acquires companies, direct connections could multiply and might become harder to maintain.
A more flexible setup could route data through a central hub — such as an ERP or integration middleware layer — rather than connecting each system directly to every other. This may take more effort up front but could make it easier to add new connections later, and could help data to flow as soon as something happens rather than waiting for a scheduled batch.
Some organizations may choose to connect systems incrementally rather than attempting everything at once — starting with one or two high-impact connections, proving they work, then expanding from there.
Finding Common Obstacles
Integration may reveal data quality problems that were hidden inside individual systems, such as duplicate vendor records, inconsistent naming conventions, mismatched chart of accounts coding, and stale master data. Before connecting systems, it could be worth trying to identify and clean up these inconsistencies. Otherwise, the system might just be moving bad data more efficiently. This could involve running reports to flag duplicates and mismatches, then standardizing records before going live.
Technical constraints may also slow things down. Legacy systems, for instance, may lack modern connection options, requiring custom development or workarounds. Scheduling could matter, too. Testing and go-live may need to happen outside of high-stakes periods like payroll runs, month-end close, or quarter-end reporting cycles, when disruption is least affordable.
Note that temporary productivity dips may be normal during transition, as teams could need time to adjust to new workflows.
Evaluating Providers and Platforms
If the integration requires outside expertise, such as consultants, implementation partners, or specialized vendors, consider those with experience connecting the specific systems involved. It may be helpful to ask for references from similar industries with comparable complexity, as this might provide more nuanced, relevant information than generic case studies.
With regard to cost, total cost of ownership — including implementation, training, ongoing maintenance, and potential customization costs — could matter more than the headline subscription price.
Furthermore, you might want to assess whether the newly connected system has the capacity to handle where the business is headed. Support for multiple currencies, inter-company transactions, additional legal entities, or more granular role-based access controls may be needed as the business scales.
Encouraging Adoption
New technology may not encourage adoption on its own. People may resist it for different reasons, including unclear roles, concerns that automation could threaten their jobs, or discomfort with unfamiliar workflows. If these concerns aren’t addressed, staff might find ways to work around the new system instead of using it.
This means implementation shouldn’t be treated as a purely technical project. Change management may be just as important as the connected technology itself. Common approaches could include providing clear communication about what’s changing and why; defining roles, segregation of duties, and approval paths before go-live; and implementing hands-on training that’s built around actual workflows.
Defining Success
Defining success before connecting systems may help keep the project focused and make progress measurable. This may be done through tracking metrics and KPIs. Which to track depends on what’s slowing the team down today. Is too much time being spent on manual reconciliation? Is the period-end close taking too long? Do out-of-balance conditions appear frequently in reports? Do finance teams struggle to answer ad-hoc questions from leadership?
Knowing where you would like to make improvements may be the first step toward getting there, and establishing targets upfront may help make it easier to show value when justifying continued investment.
Postponing Integration Could Cost More Than Taking Action
When leadership needs answers more quickly than manual reconciliation allows, or when a delayed report means a missed opportunity or a mispriced decision, the cost of disconnection could get harder to ignore.
Fortunately, integration may not require a complete business technology or culture overhaul. Many platforms now offer connectors that link existing tools, and organizations may successfully take an incremental approach — beginning with one or two high-impact connections and building from there. For finance teams feeling the strain of disconnected tools, it may be worth evaluating sooner rather than later.
Consider Expense Management
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