The New Standard for Business Expense Management
The financial needs of growing businesses have shifted significantly in recent years. With teams distributed globally and operations becoming more agile, the old ways of managing expenses—shared cards, manual reimbursements, or complex approval chains—are no longer effective.
The modern approach centres on distributed spending, where authorised employees are given access to individual payment tools that are managed through a centralised system. Personalised employee cards represent a major step in this direction. These cards are issued in the name of both the employee and the company, creating a more secure and professional financial identity. They also allow finance teams to set specific controls on spending—such as limits by category, vendor restrictions, or geographic rules—while tracking every transaction in real time.
Moving Beyond Shared Corporate Cards
Traditional corporate card models often rely on one or two cards being shared across departments. This can lead to a host of problems including lack of accountability, delayed reconciliation, and confusion about who made specific purchases.
By contrast, assigning personalized cards to each team member eliminates ambiguity. Every purchase is attributed to a named individual, which improves transparency and encourages responsible spending. The business also benefits from reduced fraud risk and fewer internal disputes over transactions.
Having the company name printed alongside the employee’s name adds an extra layer of trust when interacting with vendors, especially in client-facing or procurement-heavy roles. It reinforces the professionalism of the business and helps standardise brand visibility.
Enhancing Operational Control
The flexibility offered by personalised cards means businesses can tailor spending permissions to match organisational policies. For instance, finance teams can set:
- Daily or monthly transaction limits
- Merchant category restrictions
- Regional controls for international transactions
- Real-time approval workflows for high-value purchases
These features not only prevent misuse but also make it easier to support decentralised teams. Employees gain autonomy to manage their own spending within boundaries defined by finance, reducing bottlenecks and approval delays. This kind of control is particularly useful in dynamic environments such as marketing campaigns, travel-heavy roles, or procurement tasks where responsiveness is key to success.
Simplifying Expense Reporting and Reconciliation
Personalised cards help reduce the administrative burden associated with manual expense reporting. Instead of employees collecting receipts and submitting claims at the end of each month, all expenses are automatically recorded and categorised within the expense management platform.
Because each transaction is tied to a specific cardholder, finance teams can easily audit spending by employee, department, or project. This eliminates the need for extensive back-and-forth communication and accelerates the month-end reconciliation process.
In addition, businesses can build smarter reporting structures that align card usage with budget planning and forecasting efforts. This is particularly important in high-growth environments where visibility into real-time spend can influence rapid strategic decisions.
Supporting Remote and Global Teams
With the rise of remote and globally distributed teams, companies must now manage expenses across time zones, currencies, and jurisdictions. This complexity makes centralised control even more important.
Personalised cards solve this challenge by empowering remote employees with direct access to company funds while still operating under the same policy framework as those at headquarters. Cards can be issued digitally or physically, configured with local currencies, and monitored centrally from one platform.
This ensures a consistent experience regardless of where employees are based and removes unnecessary friction from global operations. Local team leads can also be granted limited administrative access to oversee card usage within their region, reducing the burden on finance teams.
Streamlining Vendor and Subscription Management
Another major advantage of personalised employee cards is improved visibility into recurring expenses, especially subscriptions and vendor payments. When businesses assign a specific card to a service or department, they can immediately detect irregularities, duplicate charges, or underused tools.
For example, assigning a personalised card to the marketing team’s ad spend ensures that those transactions are clearly distinguished from general marketing overhead. Similarly, assigning separate cards for SaaS subscriptions allows businesses to identify tools that are no longer in use and eliminate unnecessary costs.
Vendor payments are also more transparent. Each card can be designated for a specific partner or purpose, enabling clearer audit trails and improved negotiation power through consolidated data.
Improving Employee Experience
From the employee’s perspective, having access to their own personalised card is empowering. It removes the need for out-of-pocket spending and eliminates lengthy reimbursement processes. This is especially valuable for roles that involve frequent travel, client meetings, or project-based procurement.
It also reduces the cognitive load associated with tracking receipts, filling out forms, or waiting for manager approvals on every purchase. Employees can act faster and more independently, while still operating within company guidelines.
In turn, this leads to higher job satisfaction and a more accountable culture, where individuals are trusted with financial responsibilities and supported by systems that make it easy to do the right thing.
Managing Department-Level Budgets with Precision
For finance leaders, one of the biggest challenges is managing and forecasting departmental budgets in real time. Traditional systems often provide lagging indicators—only revealing overspending after it happens.
With personalized employee cards, businesses can allocate budgets more precisely. Each department head can assign limits based on specific roles or projects. Finance can track spend as it happens, enabling real-time budget adjustments and more responsive financial planning.
By using a platform that consolidates these transactions, teams can visualise spending patterns and prepare for upcoming cycles with greater accuracy. Custom reports can be generated by department, function, or employee—ensuring budget holders stay informed and aligned with broader business goals.
Creating More Secure Payment Processes
Security is a key consideration when distributing payment access across teams. Personalised cards reduce the risk of fraud by eliminating shared credentials. In the event of a lost or stolen card, it can be quickly deactivated and replaced without disrupting operations.
Some systems offer virtual card issuance for one-time use or for recurring vendor payments, further reducing exposure to unauthorised transactions. These virtual cards can be tied to the same employee account but used in contexts where added security is needed—such as online advertising or third-party platforms.
Additionally, every transaction can be monitored in real time, with alerts set for unusual behaviour. This makes it easier to catch errors or potential fraud early, before they escalate into larger issues.
Enabling Real-Time Spend Policy Enforcement
Manual policy enforcement is often inconsistent and time-consuming. Personalised cards allow businesses to automate these rules by building them directly into the system. This includes restrictions on merchant categories, per diem limits, location-specific controls, and custom approval flows.
For example, a card issued to a contractor might be restricted to office supply stores with a weekly cap. A card for an event coordinator might be limited to a predefined list of vendors. These built-in controls ensure compliance without requiring constant manual oversight.
This level of automation reduces friction for both employees and finance teams, creating a seamless workflow where the system enforces the rules and exceptions are handled quickly and transparently.
Evolving with the Needs of Scaling Businesses
As companies grow, their financial operations must scale alongside them. What works for a team of 10 may fall apart at 100 or 1,000 employees. Personalised card programs provide a foundation that can expand as the organisation grows—without sacrificing control or visibility.
New hires can be issued cards instantly, with predefined roles and limits. Departments can be onboarded with templates that align with budget and policy goals. Finance teams gain real-time dashboards that reflect spend across teams, locations, and time periods.
This scalability makes it possible to manage complex organisational structures without introducing risk or administrative overhead. Whether a business is expanding internationally or adding new business units, the underlying financial infrastructure remains strong and flexible.
Integrating with Broader Financial Systems
While personalised employee cards are a powerful tool on their own, they also act as a gateway to more integrated financial operations. When combined with real-time reporting, automated reconciliation tools, and accounting platform integrations, they contribute to a holistic spend management ecosystem.
This integration allows businesses to connect expense data directly to their general ledger, align card usage with approved budgets, and streamline compliance workflows. As a result, finance teams can reduce the time spent on manual tasks and shift focus toward strategic analysis and planning.
Power of Seamless Accounting Integrations
Managing company finances is no longer just about recording transactions and generating reports. As organisations scale, finance teams are increasingly expected to deliver real-time insights, streamline operations, and drive efficiency across every department. One of the key ways businesses are achieving these goals is through seamless integration between their transaction platforms and accounting software.
By eliminating manual data entry, reducing reconciliation errors, and providing live updates to financial systems, accounting integrations are transforming how companies approach month-end closings and financial visibility. This article explores the impact of these integrations on modern finance operations and highlights the benefits of syncing transaction data directly into accounting platforms.
Why Traditional Reconciliation Holds Businesses Back
Manual reconciliation has long been a bottleneck for finance teams. Whether it’s exporting transaction records from one system and uploading them into accounting software or manually matching payments with invoices and receipts, the traditional process is often time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient.
As businesses grow, so too does the volume of financial data that needs to be categorised, reconciled, and reported. Without automation, finance teams can quickly become overwhelmed. This not only increases operational costs but also delays strategic decision-making.
Every delayed reconciliation impacts cash flow visibility, introduces compliance risks, and reduces confidence in financial reports. The pressure to close books faster while maintaining accuracy has made integration between operational finance tools and accounting platforms not just a convenience—but a necessity.
Evolution of Connected Financial Systems
In the past, accounting systems operated in isolation. Expense data, bank feeds, and card transactions were imported manually or with basic CSV uploads. Now, the focus has shifted to building a continuous connection between financial data sources and the accounting ledger.
Modern integrations automatically sync transaction data as it occurs, map it to the correct accounts, and flag discrepancies for review. This removes the repetitive tasks that once required hours or even days to complete at the end of each financial period.
Real-time syncing also ensures that the finance team is always working with up-to-date information. Whether reviewing departmental spend, tracking project budgets, or preparing for audits, having accurate data available instantly changes the pace and precision of financial operations.
Automatic Mapping to Chart of Accounts
One of the most significant advantages of seamless accounting integration is automatic mapping of transactions to the company’s chart of accounts. Instead of assigning categories manually after the fact, each transaction can be tagged at the moment it occurs—or even pre-configured based on merchant, amount, or user.
This reduces coding errors and standardises how transactions are recorded across departments. For example, software subscriptions can be consistently coded to the correct expense category, travel costs can be linked to specific projects, and client entertainment expenses can be tracked in compliance with internal policies.
By maintaining consistency in categorisation, companies gain clearer insights into spending patterns and can report financials with greater confidence.
Accelerating Month-End Close
Closing the books is one of the most critical and stressful periods in any finance team’s monthly cycle. The goal is simple: ensure all transactions are recorded accurately, matched with corresponding documents, and reported in a way that complies with accounting standards.
Without integration, this process often requires pulling data from multiple sources, cleaning and formatting it, and entering it manually into accounting software. Any mismatch or missing data can delay the close by days or even weeks.
Integrated systems remove this complexity by pushing transaction data into the accounting ledger continuously throughout the month. Finance teams can monitor progress in real time, address discrepancies as they arise, and enter the close period with minimal outstanding items. The result is faster closings, more accurate books, and more time for higher-value activities like analysis, forecasting, and strategic planning.
Supporting Multiple Accounting Platforms
Businesses operate in diverse environments and use different accounting tools based on their size, industry, and regulatory requirements. Whether it’s cloud-based platforms used by small and medium businesses or enterprise-grade solutions used by large organisations, seamless integration must accommodate this variety.
By supporting multiple platforms, companies can choose accounting tools that best match their internal structure while still benefiting from automation and data sync capabilities. This flexibility ensures finance teams are not locked into a single tool or limited by technology choices.
For example, a company might use one accounting platform in its home market and another in a new region. Integrated financial tools can connect with both, maintaining a single source of truth across the entire organisation.
Custom Data Export for Non-Supported Platforms
While direct integration is ideal, not every accounting platform may be natively supported. In such cases, having the ability to export properly coded and structured transaction data becomes crucial.
Custom export features allow businesses to generate files that align with their accounting software’s requirements, including appropriate formats, categories, and metadata. This bridges the gap between operational systems and the ledger, ensuring that even without full integration, reconciliation and reporting remain efficient. These exports can be automated or scheduled, further reducing manual involvement. Finance teams can focus on reviewing and validating data instead of preparing it.
Enhanced Control and Visibility for Finance Teams
One of the hidden benefits of accounting integration is the increased control it provides to finance leaders. Instead of chasing information across systems, they have a centralized dashboard where all activity is visible and traceable.
This transparency enables better risk management. Suspicious or unusual transactions can be flagged automatically. Spending trends can be identified early, allowing for proactive cost control. Budget holders can be notified of discrepancies before they escalate.
Real-time data also supports collaboration. Department heads can access their own spending summaries without requesting ad hoc reports from finance. Auditors can be granted access to transaction history with full context and documentation. This level of visibility fosters accountability across the organisation and encourages teams to spend responsibly.
Streamlining Compliance and Audit Processes
For companies in regulated industries or with international operations, compliance is an ongoing concern. Meeting audit requirements, tax obligations, and internal policy standards requires rigorous documentation and accurate records.
Accounting integrations make compliance easier by creating a traceable path from each transaction to its final destination in the ledger. Audit trails are automatically maintained, with supporting documentation like receipts or approvals linked directly to transactions.
This reduces the time required to prepare for audits and improves confidence in financial reporting. It also simplifies compliance with internal controls and external regulations, including data protection standards and financial disclosure requirements.
Reducing Human Error Through Automation
Manual data entry is not only slow—it’s prone to mistakes. Typing errors, incorrect coding, and duplicate entries are common in environments without integration. These mistakes can lead to inaccurate financial reports, failed audits, and flawed decision-making.
Automation significantly reduces these risks. When transactions are synced directly to accounting software, the chances of human error are drastically lowered. Consistency improves, exceptions are easier to identify, and overall data integrity is strengthened.
For companies dealing with hundreds or thousands of transactions each month, this can represent a major operational gain. Finance teams can trust the data they work with, allowing them to operate with more confidence and speed.
Enabling Dynamic Cash Flow Management
Understanding cash flow in real time is critical to business health. Delays in reconciliation often mean decisions are being made with outdated information, which can lead to liquidity challenges or missed opportunities.
With live transaction data flowing directly into accounting systems, companies gain a dynamic view of their cash position. Inflows and outflows are visible as they happen, allowing for more accurate forecasting and tighter working capital management.
This visibility supports strategic initiatives such as investment planning, hiring, or expansion. Finance leaders can run cash flow scenarios based on real-time data rather than last month’s estimates.
Simplifying Multi-Entity and Multi-Currency Operations
For organisations with multiple business units, regions, or currencies, financial consolidation can be particularly challenging. Accounting integrations simplify this process by standardising how transactions are recorded across entities.
Each location or department can operate independently with its own transactions, while the central finance team receives consistent data that can be easily consolidated. Currency conversions can be applied automatically, ensuring that reporting at the group level is both accurate and timely. This structure enables more agile decision-making across global teams. Leaders can compare performance, adjust budgets, and allocate resources based on unified financial insights.
Building a Scalable Finance Function
As businesses grow, their finance operations must grow with them. Processes that worked at a smaller scale often become bottlenecks as volume increases. Accounting integration provides the infrastructure needed to support this growth without adding unnecessary complexity.
By automating reconciliation, categorisation, and reporting, finance teams can handle higher transaction volumes with the same resources. This scalability ensures that growth does not come at the cost of financial control or visibility.
It also opens the door to advanced financial tools and analytics. Once data is integrated and accurate, companies can adopt forecasting models, financial dashboards, and scenario planning tools that rely on trusted information.
Empowering Strategic Decision-Making
When finance is focused solely on closing the books and managing compliance, it misses the opportunity to play a more strategic role. Integration allows teams to shift from reactive to proactive, using real-time data to support broader business decisions.
Executives can access live financial reports that reflect the latest activity. Budgeting becomes more accurate, driven by consistent data from every corner of the organisation. Teams can measure ROI on marketing campaigns, capital expenditures, or hiring initiatives with confidence. This shift elevates finance from a back-office function to a central partner in business strategy. Integration is the foundation that enables this transformation.
Simplifying Invoice Management: Automating the Payables Workflow
Invoice management is one of the most essential but often time-consuming processes within business operations. From receiving and approving invoices to executing payments and reconciling accounts, the accounts payable cycle involves multiple stakeholders, systems, and manual touchpoints. As businesses scale, the need for a more automated, centralised workflow becomes critical to maintain control, ensure compliance, and reduce overhead.
We explored how invoice management is evolving with automation, what benefits organisations can expect from adopting smarter bill pay processes, and how integrated platforms enable faster, simpler, and more secure vendor payments.
The Fragmented State of Traditional Payables
The conventional invoice-to-payment process can be broken down into several discrete stages: invoice receipt, data entry, approval routing, payment scheduling, execution, and reconciliation. In companies without automation, these steps often take place across email inboxes, spreadsheets, physical documents, and separate banking systems.
This fragmentation results in frequent errors, duplicate payments, late fees, missed discounts, and a general lack of visibility into company liabilities. Employees spend time chasing approvals or manually re-entering payment information, which increases the chance of fraud and delays.
When teams rely on reactive processes, they lose strategic insight into payables. Cash forecasting becomes inaccurate, suppliers become frustrated with late payments, and finance teams remain stuck in low-value administrative work.
Centralising Invoice Management
The first step toward efficiency is consolidating all invoice-related activity into a single platform. Rather than handling invoices across various systems and email threads, businesses benefit from having a central hub where documents can be uploaded, tracked, approved, and paid.
Centralisation ensures that all stakeholders—from finance teams to department managers—have access to the same information in real time. Invoices can be categorised automatically, assigned to the correct vendor, and routed through a predefined approval workflow.
This eliminates silos, reduces confusion, and builds a clean audit trail for every invoice. It also sets the stage for automation by ensuring that all invoice data lives in one system, ready for processing.
Automating Invoice Capture and Data Entry
Manual data entry is one of the most time-consuming and error-prone tasks in invoice management. Every invoice must be read, interpreted, and coded before it can be processed. Automation significantly reduces this burden through the use of optical character recognition and machine learning.
When an invoice is uploaded or emailed into the system, it is automatically scanned and parsed. Key details—such as vendor name, invoice number, due date, and amount—are extracted and populated into the relevant fields. Line items can be captured and coded based on historical data or custom rules.
This not only speeds up processing but also improves accuracy. Finance teams no longer need to type in every line of data or validate vendor information manually. Instead, they can focus on exception handling and strategic oversight.
Streamlining Multi-Level Approval Workflows
In most organisations, invoices require review and approval before payment. Depending on the amount, type of expense, or department involved, this may include multiple levels of sign-off. Without a structured system, these approvals often take place via email or require manual reminders.
Automated platforms allow businesses to build custom approval workflows based on predefined logic. For example, marketing expenses over a certain threshold can be routed to the head of marketing and the finance director, while smaller routine expenses may only require one approver.
Approvers are notified automatically when their input is needed, and the status of each invoice is visible in real time. This eliminates bottlenecks, speeds up decision-making, and ensures that internal controls are consistently enforced.
Scheduling and Executing Payments in One Place
Once an invoice is approved, the next step is payment. Traditionally, this required logging into a separate banking platform, re-entering invoice details, selecting payment methods, and confirming execution. This creates friction and opens the door to mistakes and payment fraud.
Modern systems combine invoice management and payment execution in a single platform. Finance teams can schedule payments directly from the same interface where invoices are reviewed and approved. Payments can be made via domestic transfers, international wires, or virtual cards, all from a unified dashboard.
This streamlines operations and reduces the need to manage multiple logins or workflows. Payment statuses are updated in real time, so teams always know whether a vendor has been paid and can respond quickly to any issues.
Supporting Multi-Currency and Cross-Border Payments
Global businesses often deal with vendors in different countries, currencies, and banking systems. Paying international invoices adds another layer of complexity to accounts payable, including foreign exchange, compliance checks, and additional fees.
Integrated invoice management systems that support multi-currency transactions allow businesses to manage global payments seamlessly. Invoices can be approved and paid in the vendor’s local currency, with live exchange rates and transparent conversion costs. These capabilities reduce reliance on third-party banks and minimise delays. Vendors receive full payment faster, and finance teams can manage foreign currency exposure more proactively.
Linking Invoices to Accounting Systems
A critical piece of the invoice workflow is ensuring that all activity is reflected accurately in the general ledger. Without integration between invoice management and accounting systems, finance teams must export data manually and re-enter it, increasing the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
Integrated platforms sync invoice data directly with the accounting system. As invoices are received, coded, approved, and paid, corresponding journal entries are created automatically. Each payment is linked to its invoice, vendor, and account code, with supporting documents attached.
This level of integration supports faster month-end closings, more accurate reporting, and easier audit preparation. It also frees up the finance team from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on analysis and planning.
Enhancing Internal Controls and Reducing Fraud
Invoice fraud is a growing concern for businesses of all sizes. From fake vendors to altered payment details, bad actors often exploit weak approval processes and disconnected systems. Automating the invoice workflow adds layers of protection against these threats.
Multi-user permission controls ensure that only authorised individuals can approve, schedule, or execute payments. System logs record every action, creating a detailed audit trail. Duplicate invoice detection prevents accidental or fraudulent double payments. Some platforms also use anomaly detection to flag unusual invoice amounts, frequency, or vendors, helping finance teams investigate potential risks proactively.
Improving Vendor Relationships with On-Time Payments
Late payments damage relationships with suppliers and may result in service disruptions, strained negotiations, or loss of early payment discounts. When businesses rely on manual payables processes, delays are almost inevitable.
Automation helps ensure that payments are executed on time by providing visibility into due dates, approval progress, and payment scheduling. Reminders and alerts can be set for upcoming deadlines, and payments can be automatically queued once approvals are complete. Vendors benefit from faster, more predictable payments, while companies avoid penalties and improve their reputation as reliable partners.
Leveraging Data for Smarter Spend Management
Every invoice contains valuable data. By capturing and analysing this information systematically, companies gain insight into their spending patterns, vendor performance, and budget adherence.
Automated systems allow finance leaders to generate reports across departments, projects, or time periods. They can identify top suppliers, track spend against contracts, and detect trends that inform procurement strategies.
Real-time analytics also support better cash flow planning. With full visibility into upcoming liabilities, businesses can manage working capital more effectively and make informed decisions about timing, investments, and priorities.
Supporting Teams with Role-Based Access and Collaboration
Invoice management involves multiple departments, including finance, procurement, operations, and budget owners. Coordinating across teams without a central system often leads to delays and confusion.
Role-based access allows each user to view and interact with the invoices relevant to them. Department managers can approve or reject expenses, procurement can validate vendor terms, and finance can oversee the entire process.
Communication is streamlined through in-platform comments and notifications. Questions or disputes can be resolved within the invoice record, preserving context and improving accountability.
Scaling with Business Growth
As companies grow, so do their invoice volumes, vendor networks, and regulatory requirements. Manual processes that work for small teams quickly become unsustainable at scale. Automation provides the scalability needed to support this growth.
With structured workflows, data integration, and automated approvals, businesses can process thousands of invoices per month without expanding their finance headcount. New vendors can be onboarded easily, and processes remain consistent across regions and subsidiaries.
This scalability not only supports operational growth but also prepares companies for audits, fundraising, or acquisitions by ensuring that financial processes are robust and well-documented.
Creating a Better Employee Experience
Employees outside of finance often engage with invoices—whether to approve departmental expenses, request vendor payments, or monitor budgets. Without user-friendly tools, these interactions can be frustrating and slow.
Automated platforms make it easier for employees to upload invoices, assign coding, and track payment status. Approvers receive clear requests with all necessary context, and visibility into past activity is always available. This reduces the burden on the finance team and empowers employees to take responsibility for their own spending. The result is a more collaborative and transparent financial culture.
Enabling Remote and Distributed Work
In today’s hybrid and remote work environment, finance processes must be accessible from anywhere. Teams can no longer rely on paper invoices, in-person approvals, or desktop-only systems.
Modern invoice management platforms are cloud-based and mobile-friendly, allowing users to upload, approve, and monitor invoices from any device. Whether in the office, at home, or on the move, teams can stay productive and ensure payables keep flowing. This flexibility also supports business continuity. In the face of disruptions, finance operations remain secure, accessible, and resilient.
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficiency, visibility, and control are essential to maintaining financial health and enabling sustainable growth. The transformation of expense and invoice management from fragmented, manual processes to streamlined, automated workflows marks a significant shift in how companies operate.
Personalised employee cards represent more than a branding enhancement; they introduce clearer ownership, better tracking, and improved accountability in company spending. When paired with smart categorisation tools and real-time reporting, businesses gain deeper insight into where money is going, allowing them to make informed budgeting and policy decisions.
The integration of financial systems with leading accounting platforms is equally transformative. By syncing transactions with accounting software, businesses eliminate double handling, reduce reconciliation errors, and accelerate their month-end closing processes. The ability to import and export data smoothly also empowers organisations using a variety of financial tools to maintain a central source of truth without compromising flexibility.
Perhaps most impactful is the evolution of invoice management into a fully automated, end-to-end process. By centralising invoice capture, automating approvals, enabling one-click payments, and syncing with the general ledger, companies can dramatically reduce processing time and risk. The ability to manage payables from one platform—regardless of vendor location, currency, or invoice volume—provides scalability and control that simply isn’t possible with traditional systems.
Across these advancements, one common thread emerges: automation and integration free finance teams from manual tasks, reduce errors, and create opportunities for strategic decision-making. Employees outside of finance are empowered with clearer visibility and faster processes. Vendors are paid accurately and on time. Business leaders gain real-time insight into spending patterns and liabilities.
For growing companies, the shift toward smarter expense and invoice management is not just a matter of convenience—it’s a competitive advantage. By embracing tools that offer visibility, automation, and control, organisations are better equipped to scale, adapt, and thrive in a global economy.