The automation of finance processes offers opportunities for enhanced efficiency across various business areas. Through the strategic adoption of automation technologies, finance leaders across a whole range of industry sectors can expedite routine tasks and even streamline certain cost driven decision-making processes.
In the dynamic landscape of modern-day business, finance professionals encounter a multitude of challenges. But amid these challenges, transformative technologies like AI also stand as fundamental elements in the ongoing digital evolution within the world of finance.
Today, with the advancements in automated processes and artificial intelligence (AI), a new era in Finance is being ushered in. This technology is set to revolutionise finance teams, their functions and their workloads! It’s time to get familiar with document management solution providers like DocuWare, whose strength is in providing the most advanced technology tools that finance professionals need to succeed.
Automation in finance
Let’s look deeper into finance and consider the example of invoice payment processing. Tasks that previously required days or weeks for individuals or teams to complete manually can now be accomplished within hours or minutes through automation. For instance, DocuWare’s automated invoice processing software streamlines accounts payable workflows, enabling rapid approvals and error-free payments – attributes that are critical for modern finance operations striving for efficiency and compliance. By automating processes and workflows like order review, approval routing and data posting, finance teams can reduce processing times and improve operational agility.
Another significant benefit of automation for finance teams is its capacity to help audit preparedness. As regulatory scrutiny increases, teams must prioritise accurate reporting and adherence to industry standards. Document management solutions empower finance teams to confidently prepare for audits by facilitating easy access to accurate information and ensuring compliance with data security protocols. Using this technology to establish clear audit trails and enforce rigorous access controls, finance teams can effectively mitigate the risk of non-compliance and protect sensitive financial data.
From accounts payable, verification, approval processes and real-time data-driven decision-making, automation offers many different opportunities for greater accuracy, compliance, efficiency and strategic insight into financial operations and decision-making processes across many finance functions.
By digitising workflows and implementing automated solutions, finance professionals can unlock significant time savings, enabling them to channel resources towards critical, high-value endeavours such as strategic budget management, trend monitoring and navigating federal or international regulations. This shift not only enhances operational efficiency but also fosters a culture of forward-thinking within an organisation.
AI in finance
AI and Intelligent Document Capture (IDP) promise a future of reduced manual processes and a more error free finance environment.
Finance roles will continue to benefit from the positive influence of AI. This technology’s ability to process massive amounts of structured data in real-time is a game-changer! Structured data is information that fits into data tables and includes data types such as numbers, short text, and dates. Examples of structured data include web form results, SQL databases, Excel files. and employee data.
However, what finance professional should watch out for is that AI doesn’t do as well with unstructured data because it is not organized in a predefined way – and the finance industry produces a lot of it. Examples of unstructured data include reports, invoices, emails, PDFs, and social media posts. Currently, AI algorithms can’t extract meaning from this data as well as a human can.
It’s time to get ahead of technology – research what’s out there now and what’s coming. Sign up for webinars on AI technology and its use in finance so you can understand how it can improve your work life. Technology isn’t going to replace you, but someone who can use AI technology to manage finance processes better than you, could eventually replace you! If you’d like to read more about how AI can and cannot help your finance processes, check out our blog post Will AI Replace Finance Jobs? The Future of Finance Professionals.
