Finance and accounting processes follow well defined rules and timelines. These processes are typically supported by automation through the use of Enterprise Resource Planning, Business Process Management, Accounting and Business Intelligence Reporting software. However, a significant amount of work is left for staff to complete.
The work performed by staff within a Finance and Accounting department is often associated with entering or updating information and moving information between systems. This staff workload is often cyclic, with end of month, end of quarter and end of year peaks.
Finance and Accounting Robotics Software is ideally suited to performing this rules based on screen work and as a result, freeing up staff to perform more analytical types of work. Additional Robots can also be deployed to handle peak workloads, significantly reducing the long days and overtime costs often encountered at peak workload times.
Many Finance and Accounting departments have outsourced their simple on-screen, rules based,transaction type work to business process outsourcers with offshore operations in geographies with much lower costs of labor. However, Robots can now perform that work at a fraction of the cost of these low labor geographies, allowing corporations to repatriate the work and achieve even greater cost savings by eliminating the management and contract oversight required when dealing with outsourcers.
Auditing Robotic Software provides another innovative opportunity to take advantage of Robotics within the finance and administration function. These robots can be trained to audit staff or other processes to ensure activities are compliant to company rules and policies, as well as demonstrate compliance to regulatory requirements. Given the speed and accuracy of Robots, 100% of critical activities can be audited in this fashion.
Robots do not make human errors and only perform exactly what they have been trained to do. Each step performed by a Robot is recorded, providing a complete audit trail and a detailed set of process data that can be utilized for product and process analytics.
Finance and Accounting groups often deal with a number of legacy systems, some of which came with the acquisition of other companies. Large IT projects can be initiated to integrate these different systems or to consolidate them all onto one platform. These projects often fall short of expectations, leaving a considerable amount of work for staff to perform on a regular basis. By planning in Robotics as part of the end solution, project costs can be reduce, project timelines can be reduced and the amount of work to be performed by staff can also be reduced.
These are just some of the benefits of Finance and Accounting Robotics Software and Auditing Robotic Software, looking back at current practices. Looking forward, Robotics can provide innovative new ways of performing finance and accounting work and providing new services and business insights to all stakeholders. By implementing Robotics, finance and accounting departments can also set a cost reduction example to other areas of the business looking to achieve annual business plan cost reduction targets.
