Finance Departments are Accelerating Their Automation Journey

 Global financial departments are under intense pressure to enhance efficiency, lower costs, and increase productivity while technology advances at a breakneck pace. Indeed, finance departments led by CFOs must now make a significant transformation from traditional, redundant structures to vast, frequently worldwide ones. The automation industry is a significant part of this change, with robotic process automation (RPA) and automated invoice processing playing a key role in strategy and execution to meet these requirements.

RPA automates applications and systems by combining robotic automation and artificial intelligence to perform repetitive, human-executed processes. Intelligent automation is another name for it, and it refers to any software system that can be trained to perform tasks that previously required human intellect.

Key Highlights

·         Companies' digital transformation efforts are increasingly reliant on artificialintelligence (AI) and automation. The financial function, in particular, is well positioned to benefit from AI in terms of productivity and performance.

·         When it comes to changing finance processes, technology should be tested upon the activities it can best handle, allowing humans to focus on their more sophisticated and strategic contributions. A "machine-first approach to automation" is based on this principle.

·         Start with areas that can show more immediate benefits to garner buy-in throughout the function and eliminate doubt about the capability of new technologies like invoice management, AP automation and AI.

·         CFOs can ask: What higher-value tasks should finance workers focus on after automation is in place, as more manual finance procedures become streamlined through automation.

How can CFOs can benefit from artificial intelligence and automation?

Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses a wide range of technologies and advancements that are fast becoming synonymous with modern computing in general, and, for our purposes, with the task of digital transformation in particular. For nearly a quarter-century, AI has been used to describe a variety of domains, including natural language processing, human-machine interaction, information retrieval, graphics and image processing, data mining and robotics, and more.  AI, in its broadest sense, is the use of digital agents' perception, reasoning, learning, communicating, and acting in complicated situations with the objective of creating machines that can do these things as well as humans, if not better.

In the finance and accounting world, AI and automation could entail improved predictive modelling, such as recognising payment patterns or anticipating net working capital, efficient invoice management and profitability, which can help a company make better strategic decisions. Pattern analysis, for example, could be used to spot outlier spending, manage inventories, or expedite the resolution of claims and disputes. AI supported AP automation, in general, should be part of a company's entire digital transformation strategy, offering it the resilience to overcome problems, the adaptability to capitalise on opportunities, and even a better knowledge of and alignment with its real mission as an organisation.

Finance departments are accelerating their automation game with the advanced AP process

Finance teams deal with accounts payable on a regular basis. It takes a significant amount of time to gather all invoices, enter payment details onto bank websites, and obtain the requisite payment permissions, which is usually done once a week or fortnight.

Vendors who use AP automation to permit numerous approvals and pull payment data from accounting software to a banking and payments interface reduce the friction associated with payment runs, allowing them to be completed more smoothly.

Furthermore, many accounts payable providers automatically reconcile payments, saving time that may be spent on higher-value duties.

Better supplier ties are another advantage. Suppliers are less likely to get paid late when they use AP automation, and they can easily transact for late received invoices that are due for payment.

Finance departments benefitting with an efficient purchase order (PO) system

Many organisations require that their spend be above a certain threshold, so POs play an important role in financial control.

The development and approval of purchase orders is a regular source of frustration for businesses. Budget makers and suppliers may be at odds, resulting in invoices being created with inaccurate or fully utilised PO numbers.

The use of an automated PO tool speeds procedures, allowing them to be created on the fly or from forecasts. They can also auto-match invoices to PO numbers as they arrive, reducing the risk of mistakenly assigning invoices and delaying payment to essential suppliers.

Embracing Automation as a Value-Add Service

The finance staff will be able to provide up-to-date reports, provide financial and operational insights into company performance to improve sales, optimise KPIs, and fine-tune acquisition channels as a result of AP automation.

Staff productivity will also grow as a result of AP automation, lowering the need for and cost of hiring new team members. Finance teams who are lucky enough to work for an automation-first company are more likely to stay for the long haul in order to advance in their careers and take on more fulfilling strategic tasks.

Some key highlights of AP automation at work:

·         Errors in compliance are removed more effortfully

·         Account reconciliation is completed more quickly.

·         Scalability

·         Cost-cutting

·         Improved customer service

·         Financial closing and reporting with ease

Almost any business that has adopted or launched an automation project can attest to the fact that once the solutions are deployed, the organization develops. These businesses rapidly recognize that they need to design a plan for prudently increasing and scaling in order to fulfil the rising demand for process automation.

In Conclusion

Automation is already reshaping the future of work in the financial department, and the opportunity to boost performance will accelerate the trend. Adapting to change is tough, but CFOs with a deep understanding of the automated world will be well-positioned to succeed.

For those CFOs who are already using RPA, investing in professional RPA expertise is vital to ensuring that the technology is used successfully and that the department can fully exploit RPA's capabilities.

AP automationsolutions like that of the Skyscend are thus putting in the best effort with the AI supported and cloud-based software which can give the CFOs an upper hand in the rapid digitalization and support the organization with a competitive edge.