Most economists agree that we are headed toward some form of a recession. In this uncertain environment, it is more important than ever for companies to embrace workflow automation to stay ahead of necessary adjustments and the competition. Automation has proven to be one of the most transformative technologies companies can deploy to ensure their strategies are maintained regardless of their situation.
That is why finance teams led by forward thinking CFOs are embracing workflow automation.
Automation in finance is often seen as either a simple point solution (e.g., how do I automate my AP invoice processing) or as a complete upheaval of an existing IT infrastructure. For finance teams using Paperwise Symphony, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Workflow automation enhances your current systems and strategies. It isn’t disruptive. In fact, our clients find that their management and accounting systems work even more effectively when gaps caused by missing information, disconnected teams and manual errors are filled with custom workflows inside of Paperwise Symphony.
Automation is the glue that connects your people, data, customers, and systems so that work gets done.
Finance teams represent some of the greatest opportunities for automation because they touch so many parts of the organization and they process so many pieces of information. In fact, Paperwise’s own finance team is always one of the first of our own teams to implement and benefit from our own solutions. The results are impressive.
Automation Saves on Cost
Workflow automation allows your team to do more with less. That means that as your company grows, you can scale without adding an equal amount of complexity and cost to your business. The robots end up doing a lot of the manual and repetitive tasks so the finance team can focus on serving customers and driving new profit.
For example, consider how most finance teams must deal with outside information. A vendor invoice arrives, and you must read and categorize it, match it against existing purchase orders, update portals, update accounting systems and more. Paperwise Symphony has been shown to automate 80% to 90% of this tedious work. (Read here how THD reduced manual invoice processing by 90%).
Most studies indicate that the cost of processing an invoice is between $10 and $12. It’s not hard to imagine those costs in your own company if you look at the hours spent on processing, fixing errors, and missed payment penalties. Eliminating 80% of that cost is promising.
There are numerous other opportunities for cost saving in your finance department, from invoice processing to customer payments, to procurement requests, to custom document sharing, to approval tracking and more. You’ll save cost and your team can focus on more complex and strategic activities.
Maintaining Compliance
One of the main concerns of your finance team is keeping up on accuracy and meeting the needs of your corporate governance. This compliance may be due to government oversight, or it may simply be part of your company’s efforts to maintain security and legal compliance.
Research by LexisNexis has shown exposure to financial crime is one of the most costly and the most exposed areas of risk your company faces. Financial crime compliance costs are on the rise. In fact, the average annual cost of compliance for large companies has risen 95% over the last two years.
Workflow automation makes sure that your team follows your guidelines and avoids fraud.
Better Accuracy and Timeliness
If you walk around your office after most people have left work, you will probably find that many of the people still working late are on your finance team. How long does it take them to close the books each month and quarter? How many spreadsheets do they have to process to get answers to hundreds of seemingly simple questions? How much time is spent reviewing and approving or even just routing information? All this work can be improved through automation.
Additionally, workflow automation helps eliminate manual errors, misroutes and incorrect calculations that only add to the workload of your finance team. The robots take over the dull, error-prone work giving your team more time to focus on what is most important like analysis and profitability. Intelligent Capture can eliminate some of the worst tasks in data management.
Who knows, maybe they’ll even get to go home on time?
If you’d like to learn more about how you can save time and increase your accuracy and fraud protection, please contact us for a private consultation and we can get you started right away.
