Finance and accounting departments are supported with a wide range of software applications to meet their needs. However, a large number of staff are still required to process invoices, accounts receivable as well as the full range of weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual financial reporting requirements.
These processes also have demanding time related service levels and stringent regulatory requirements. Many organizations also have a need to consolidate data from multiple divisions or affiliated operating companies, often with each having a different suite of finance and accounting software and data interface integrations.
To protect against human error and fraud, these departments also include an audit function that perform systematic checks on staff activities to ensure policies and regulations are being adhered to.
This very demanding rules based, error intolerant, time critical environment is an ideal environment for Finance and Accounting Robotic Software.This software emulates the activities of staff performing on-screen, rules based, processing activities. One Robot, for example, can operate at twice the speed of a person and can do so 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without interruption. These software Robots also do not make human errors and are incapable of deciding to perform fraudulent activities.
Typically finance and accounting departments rely on overtime to meet peak workload demands at month end, quarter end and year end.Alternatively, the number of Robots trained and available to perform the work can be increased or decreased by the click of a mouse. Once one Robot has been trained, all other Robots can immediately receive the same training.
Some large companies have chosen to outsource their basic finance and accounting work to geographies with lower cost staff. Typically this results in an annual cost per person being reduced from about $ 50K to less than $ 15K. Now, Finance and Accounting Robotic Software allows companies to repatriate this work at a cost less than $ 7K per year and also eliminate the overheads associated with managing another vendor half way around the world.
Since these Robots operate on a virtual desktop computer, they do not require the office and other human infrastructure required by humans. They also don’t require the coaching and the other human management overheads people require. They are also not susceptible to sickness and other availability issues of a human workforce.
Disaster recovery planning and infrastructure is also much simpler and less costly. A full virtual workforce can be initiated at a backup data center to replace a facility that has experienced a major interruption.
Given the operationally critical role of finance and accounting departments and their demanding regulatory and accuracy requirements, Finance and Accounting Robotic Software represents a transformative new approach that is rapidly gaining acceptance. Business process outsourcers are the first to adopt this technology because their business model is largely based on the lower cost of staff. However, Finance and Accounting Robotic Software is just as accessible to the originating company, which can also eliminate the overheads associated with managing the business process outsourcer contract and interfaces.
