The digitalization of companies impacts the finance function. The investment in the automation of financial processes is intended to accelerate and secure the course of procedures. Thus, financial managers, freed from the most repetitive tasks, will be able to devote themselves more to their analysis and validation missions. Robotization, via the RPA (Robotic Process Automation), automates business processes and generates significant productivity gains.

Objectives of financial process automation

a. Improve planning and budgeting, with cloud-based solutions

Harnessing the potential of the cloud for forecasting, planning and budgeting is one of the challenges facing CFOs.

Indeed, many companies still practice deadline planning (monthly, quarterly or even half-yearly). This generates the risk of errors and often slow, dated planning.

The cloud enables the decisive shift to connected planning. Disruptive events, which are not uncommon in the life of any business, can, with cloud-based solutions, be addressed in near real time. The adoption of rolling forecasts based on key indicators is also made possible.

The planning can now be amended and adapted, on a continuous basis, in particular according to market movements and regulatory changes.

b. Automate data reconciliation from a single, reliable source

With the cloud, all finance function teams have access to all projects and data in a single, secure space.

But visibility can go far beyond the finance department. In this way, controllers will be able to visualize and exploit information from all the company’s departments, with a view to enriching their budgeting process.

In addition, collaboration between the different teams will be considerably improved. A broad and precise vision will secure decision making.

c. Standardize reporting

To produce their reports, finance managers are often forced to analyze numerous Excel documents and synthesize information from tools that are not very operational. Automation allows to overcome these difficulties since it is accompanied by a dynamization of the data. It saves time and reduces costs.

In addition, the development of powerful and intelligent analytical tools makes it possible to adapt perfectly to the rules inherent in the business and standardizes the production of high-quality reports.

What is an RPP?

The Robotic Automation Process(RPA) is a tool that automates a certain number of processes that respond to rules and logic specific to the business. It’s a robot making the transition to artificial intelligence.

Many companies have quickly realized the value of RPA for the finance department. This tool offers, in fact, wide and evolving possibilities, such as the emission of automatic responses or the processing of transactions. Its deployment in an ERP system is likely to concern various sectors that carry out activities that obey strict and repetitive rules. Several robots can be mobilized to speed up and secure procedures.

According to feedback from our customers, up to 50% of the activities performed by a company’s employees could be automated by RPA.

Regardless of the department within the company, there are always recurring tasks that involve processing specific information that may be received in email attachments. The employee in charge of the task in hand must then synthesize the data received into a new document.

Programming a robot that specifically performs this recurring task can save a lot of time and energy over time. This relieves the employee’s workload by entrusting him/her with tasks that add more value.

This can be for example to process purchase orders, to do maintenance related to suppliers, customers, employees. Aggregate reports for month, quarter or year ends: when a compilation of different information is required. Indeed, the RPA can gather the various sources of information and compile them. But it can also be for competitive intelligence, or to limit human input errors. To aggregate data and process large flows.

Indeed, the larger the flow to be processed, the greater the advantage of an RPA robot.

What are the benefits of an RPA?

The RPA makes it possible to compensate for possible human failures. Indeed, after several hours of processing and analyzing numbers, it is not uncommon for the concentration level to drop. Automation therefore reduces the risk of human error and improves operational processes.

Thanks to the time freed up, the staff concerned can be usefully assigned to high value-added tasks. In addition, the investment in an RPA solution is usually quickly amortized by the lower costs involved. The ease of deployment and integration varies, depending on the type of robot.

In addition, the RPA is also intended to facilitate exchanges between the various operational departments. It facilitates the determination of priorities and the allocation of resources between the company’s various departments.

With RPA, finance departments expect significant productivity gains, process security and improved quality of service to end users. Cognitive automation is revolutionizing the financial industry. Indeed, RPA can be coupled with artificial intelligence technologies such as voice recognition. In this way, it will help to automate tasks that could not previously be carried out without human expertise.

Sqorus RPA experts have mastered the integration of market leading RPA solutions such as UiPath. They can help you analyze and model solutions (robots) based on your existing tools.

P.S.

SQORUS supports its key account customers in digitizing their finance functions. With a functional and technical expertise of the main solutions of the market dedicated to the finance business, we implement and accompany our customers in all phases of their projects. Thanks to consultants certified on solutions such as Oracle, Netsuite, PeopleSoft, Kyriba or Axway, Sqorus is the preferred integrator of financial solutions on the market.

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