Transform your business with finance automation

Finance and accounting are essential for any business, yet often depend on manual processes that are time-consuming and prone to errors. 

Finance automation aims to replace these tasks with fully automated, modern solutions. By understanding the different levels of automation and key steps towards digital transformation, you can optimise your efforts to achieve the best outcomes for your business.

What Transformation Looks Like

Automation can transform your finance function from improving the quality of reporting and gaining new skills to increased efficiency and overall business growth. Benefits of finance automation include:

• Increased Efficiency: Automate routine processes to minimise manual tasks and reduce risk of human error, enhancing accuracy and operational performance.
• Data Accuracy and Consistency: Integrated and connected systems ensure consistent reporting regardless of the data source, creating a single source of truth for data.
• Improved Customer and Employee Experience: Customers enjoy a seamless experience, while the finance team is freed up from transaction processing to focus on financial analysis and more strategic, value added activities.
• Reduce Costs: Automating processes can increase productivity of existing staff and provide opportunities to develop new skills. 
• Powerful Insights and Transparency: AI and machine learning embedded in finance applications use historical data to offer recommendations that drive strategic decisions.
• Scalability for Future Growth: Modern finance automation solutions, managed in the cloud, allow businesses to scale up or down as needed without additional hardware or software. Cloud applications support a digital workforce, enabling remote talent acquisition. 

Adjusting to Change and Challenges

In addition to increased efficiency and streamlined processes, automation can adapt to trends that may influence your organisation’s finance function. Some examples include:

Some examples include:

• Disruption: Whether it’s changing customer expectations, emerging technologies, regulatory updates, economic conditions, or new market entrants, adopting a fully automated, data-driven finance approach enables you to proactively address unplanned disruptions.
• Regulatory Change: Regulatory agencies are increasingly emphasising  customer protections, data retention policies and fair treatment of disadvantaged communities. Automating regulatory compliance allows for centralised updates, ensuring changes are consistently implemented across your tools and applications.
• Digital Workforce: According to a recent RSM survey, 58% of middle market businesses find hiring “very” or “extremely” challenging, and 68% struggle to attract experienced talent. Automating processes can improve employee retention by engaging existing talent in more interesting and fulfilling work.
• Process Innovation: Emerging technologies like generative AI, machine learning, and big data can transform finance processes. Embracing automation lays the foundation to fully leverage new technologies as they become more widely adopted.

Finance Automation Maturity

Many businesses have implemented finance automation solutions but haven’t fully transformed their finance function.  Teams can feel overwhelmed by the numerous options or struggle to gain necessary stakeholder buy-in which is crucial to progress and build momentum in finance automation.

There are five levels of finance automation maturity which are summarised as:

• Level 1: Manual: Reliance on outdated technologies including Excel and email for collaboration and communication results in inefficient processes, manual errors and isolated data. For example, manual entry of general ledger data and using email for approvals.
• Level 2: Digital: Implementing a foundational layer of technology to enhance visibility, collaboration, controls and standardisation. For example, a cloud based solution for forecasting can be used to capture budget inputs, assumptions and formulas.
• Level 3: Optimised: Stabilise use of digital tools, achieve high adoption rates and best practice with skilled talent. For example, leveraging an existing digital solution to unlock additional functionality by integrating more systems or data sources.
• Level 4: Automated: Maximise automation within specific tools, platforms and integrations to minimise or eliminate manual processes. For instance, automatically generate journal entries for exceptions and post them to the general ledger.
• Level 5: Autonomous: Implement multiple integrated solutions that share data and complete processes without human intervention. For example, a digital solution uses reconciled data to create payment files which are then passed to an adjacent solution to initiate bank payments.

Four Key Steps Toward Maximum Impact

For many organisations, transformation starts with automating a single routine task and gradually expands. Organisations at lower levels of digitisation and automation may achieve modest cost savings but often miss out on improved efficiencies such as revenue generation, profit maximisation and business process reinvention.

A typical transformation involves four key steps:

Making Strides on the Path to Automation

Whether you are beginning your finance automation journey or yet to achieve the envisioned transformation, continuous improvement should remain your goal. As automation technologies evolve, your organisation will need both a clear vision of what is possible and a strategic roadmap to stay competitive.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

If you would like to learn more about the topics discussed in this article, please contact Maria Williams.