Today's finance leaders face two critical challenges: an overload of manual tasks and a need to reimagine their operational structure to help their organization meet changing business demands. Your company’s survival can hinge on its ability to evolve, and one key step in safeguarding your organization's future is the strategic adoption of “intelligent automation” for certain core finance functions.
Intelligent automation technology combines automation of manual tasks with artificial intelligence (AI) to glean insights from the data the automation generates. For your finance team, it’s a game-changer that can revamp your financial reporting processes, delivering heightened efficiency while freeing staff to do more meaningful work. For the business as a whole, embracing this automation can be the critical start to a journey that supports innovation and increases competitiveness.
Reporting is one finance function that frequently suffers from outdated manual processes. When upgrading core systems of record, such as their ERP, companies often fail to integrate their reporting tools. This lack of integration adds endless hours to the financial close process. And after manually collecting and verifying data from disparate sources, your finance team can still end up with unreliable reports, introducing compliance and business risks.
This also means your team can’t spend time on more strategic work. Are you able to take full advantage of the accounting and finance expertise that already exists within your firm? Or are your highly trained professionals forced to focus on manual data entry instead of analyzing financial statements for opportunities to improve your bottom line?
Record to report (R2R) automation addresses this challenge by streamlining data collection, speeding up processing and analysis, enhancing reporting accuracy and increasing compliance. If your organization has a high volume of transactions that need matching, reconciling or updating, you can consolidate these disparate data sets via an R2R platform like Blackline. With these automated systems that gather all of your financial and operational data, you can deliver more analysis — allowing for deeper insights and swifter, more precise decisions from leadership.
Blackline's recent global survey finds that almost half (48%) of C-suite and finance professionals don’t trust the accuracy of their financial data, with multiple data sources, a continued reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes, and the rise of work-from-home being the main drivers of this mistrust. At the same time, two-thirds (62%) consider the ability to view their financial data in real time to be a must-have for their company’s survival.
If these findings ring true for your organization, consider what you could achieve with access to faster, more accurate insights. R2R software can help you automate your reporting and compliance processes and deliver these insights through:
Accounts receivable (AR) is another area where an intelligent automation solution can unburden the finance staff while also improving the effectiveness of your processes. Depending on the size of your business, automating your AR can save your team days or even weeks in each monthly close cycle.
A financial close tool like Blackline streamlines and improves your financial processes, removing manual tasks and integrating data insights. The result is a higher reconciliation rate and a more holistic business view, so you can add value to the company through:
Intelligent automation is a critical tool to help your organization improve its operational intelligence and navigate change with confidence. And your finance functions are a great place to introduce this powerful technology. Through automated R2R and AR processes, you can save time, free your finance team for higher value work, achieve data and reporting standardization and provide your stakeholders the real-time insights they need to make strategic decisions that drive lasting business success.
R2R and accounts receivable are typically among the most impactful areas for automation efforts. If you’re struggling with manual task overload, access to real-time insights or shaky confidence in your data, reach out to our Blackline experts to find out how to help your team work smarter, not harder, with intelligent automation for your financial close.
