Achieving Financial Efficiency with Automation

Introduction

The financial operations of a business are integral to its success. The way finances are handled can be the difference between achieving sustained growth and stagnation. When it comes to financial operations, automation is the key to achieving a high level of efficiency. It helps streamline processes and enables companies to make better decisions and save money in the long run.

Why is Automation a Necessity in Financial Processes?

Automation is the key to achieving cost savings and staying ahead of the competition. Finance process automation involves using technology to complete finance-related tasks with minimal or no human input.

The primary goal of finance automation is to improve process efficiency by reducing or eliminating repetitive tasks or activities that do not add value. Automation can bring many benefits to finance departments, such as reducing errors, streamlining approval flows, enhancing collaboration, and increasing efficiency.

Finance process automation can be achieved through low-code BPA or robotic process automation (RPA). Three examples of finance process automation include automating accounts receivable/payable, expense reimbursement, and financial planning tools.

Low-code vs. RPA

Low-code BPA is an efficient way to create and deploy applications without code. It helps streamline business processes and automate manual tasks by using a drag-and-drop interface. Low-code BPA is ideal for automating simple, repetitive tasks that do not require code or complex integrations.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that uses software robots to automate manual and repetitive tasks. RPA can be used to automate workflows and processes, such as data entry or copying and pasting data from various systems. RPA robots are designed to work with existing systems, and they are capable of accessing multiple applications at once to follow instructions.

Automating Accounts Receivable

Accounts receivable (AR) automation is another example of financial process automation. Some of the common pain points that AR teams face include:

• Manual data entry, which increases the likelihood of errors
• Late payments because of poorly managed billing cycles
• Difficulty in tracking outstanding payments

Finance automation software can help address these challenges by:

• Automating the generation and distribution of invoices
• Using machine learning algorithms to identify payment patterns and potential delays, allowing teams to follow up with customers and ensure prompt payment
• Integrating with payment processing systems to streamline payments and reduce processing times

Accounts Payable Automation

Accounts payable (AP) automation can help streamline and automate the payment process. Some of the common pain points that AP teams face include:

• Slow invoice processing times due to manual data entry and paperwork
• Redundant processes that are time-consuming and prone to errors
• Difficulty in tracking invoices and payments

Finance automation software can help address these challenges by:

• Automating the capture and validation of supplier invoices, including data entry.
• Integrating with banking systems to streamline payment processing and reduce turnaround times.
• Using analytics to identify trends and areas for improvement, allows teams to reduce costs and optimize processes.

Automating Expenses Reimbursements

Another common financial process that can be automated is expense reimbursement. This involves automating the process of submitting expenses and tracking reimbursements. Automation can help streamline the entire expense management process by:

• Integrating with payroll systems to securely store employee data and automatically populate forms
• Integrating with accounting software to save time and eliminate manual data entry
• Creating automated workflows to track and approve expenses quickly
• Providing notifications when reimbursement is due or overdue >

Financial Planning Tools

Automation can be employed in Financial planning to help businesses make decisions more quickly and accurately. Automation can be used to create tailored financial models for various scenarios, allowing teams to analyze different options and make informed decisions. Automation can also help teams stay organized by creating a central repository for financial documents, such as purchase orders and invoices.

Financial process automation is essential to streamline workflows, reduce errors, increase efficiency, and improve compliance with regulations. Automation can help finance departments save time and money while providing better customer service. By using low-code BPA or RPA, finance teams can automate and streamline their processes to maximize productivity and efficiency.

Conclusion

The pursuit of digital transformation has become increasingly important for organizations that want to stay competitive and successful. Automation is key to this process, as it can help streamline processes, reduce errors, increase efficiency, improve compliance with regulations, and save time and money while providing better customer service. Low-code BPA or RPA are two powerful tools that allow finance teams to automate their processes cost-effectively.

In the process of choosing an Automation Platform, there are two essential things to be considered. One, an Automation Platform that is advanced with desktop-less automation capabilities and poweful integrations with most used applications like Excel, SAP, Salesforce, etc. Two, an Automation Platform that offers complete transparency and flexibility with insight driven dashboards that focus in to execution level drilling down. On top of this, if the chosen Automation Platform is cloud-native ready, supports automation across your entire tech stack, has multiple Automation agents tailor made to different scenarios, has a workflow studio BPMN process modeller so that you make the move from GUI operations, then you can be rest assured that you are on the right path at the most important pillar at digital transformation.