RPA In Finance: How Much of Automation Is Possible?

The ever-increasing competition in the globalized world is pushing the companies to attain new normal every single day. The companies are trying to reduce redundancies and wastages in terms of efforts, time, and manpower along with making an attempt to automate their processes to the extent possible. This helps the companies reduce their costs while increasing the returns on their investments. The margin between costs and returns has to be maintained by all the companies in order to sustain their performance in the market.

Whatever has been discussed in the above paragraph has a direct reference to the finance of the organization. Though the department of finance is considered to be a support function of the organization, in reality, the finance department ensures the sustainability and growth of the organization by managing the finances well. However, finance is a tricky subject to be managed. Further, the ever-changing market conditions and regular movements in the financial market make the mundane management of the finance department impossible. Therefore, finance management and control require smart techniques and time analysis, and decision-making to ensure the best returns from the market.

RPA for Finance or Robotic Process Automation for finance is one such smart move toward ensuring sustainable returns. The question that one might ask is how? Finance is a subject that manages a huge amount of data. The most important factor necessary to manage such huge data is precision. However, the human interface usually commits human errors such as omissions, duplication, and mismatches in maintaining such data sets. RPA comes in handy in managing and working with financial data, especially where huge data sets have to be used, often in a repetitive manner.

Companies are struggling to increase their ROI by improving their efficiencies. Implementation of automation software such as RPA in managing the finances of the organization would help in doing so. However, the point that needs to be understood is how much automation is possible and to what extent would it be correct to implement automation? The answer to this is that most of the functions of finance can be automated such as:

∙         Preparation of Mandatory Financial Reporting such as the end of Financial Year Reports of the company which requires pulling in data from huge ledgers and documents created all through the year

∙         Management of Account Payable and Account Receivable Statements which usually do not follow any set template. RPA UI Path is an RPA Tool that helps in settling this issue safely and collecting the requisite data efficiently. The RPA BOTS can help in services like invoice creation, invoice validation, monitoring outstanding dues, and can even be helpful in sending reminder messages to customers whose dues are outstanding

∙         Managing Financial Reconciliations which have been a lengthy, time-consuming, and cumbersome process for humans because of the amount of data required. RPA UI Path helps in setting up software robots that can help in collecting and interpreting data from huge data sets and do the same with high accuracy. Therefore, the RPA BOTS can easily manage the same easily.

While we are discussing in-depth how RPA for finance can be useful to reduce cost, increase efficiencies, and easy to scale-up operations, it is important to understand the cases where RPA might not prove to be beneficial. RPA would not be useful if implemented in processes that require cognitive analysis and decision-making because it doesn’t have the thinking ability of its own. It cannot even manage to change its process to suit the changing market scenario. Therefore implementing RPA for process improvements might not be a good decision.

Varistha Infotech can be your RPA Consultancy and Solutions Company providing you optimum solutions for maximizing your ROI and minimizing the redundancies of your financial processes.