How AI-powered Autonomous Finance Technology Helps Connect the CFO’s Office and Ensures Finance Transformation
Strengthening and energizing your business model requires a lot more than refining supply channels. Modernizing and streamlining the Financial value chain operating through the CFO’s)Office is just as essential. If the CFO does not participate in an ongoing integration project, they lose an excellent opportunity to shape how those integrations will impact work.
Research shows that 1 in 3 Financial leaders prioritize having an integrated, single source of data as the biggest change they expect from digital transformation. Autonomous Finance technology takes you closer to the goal of Finance transformation with an integration-first approach, among other benefits.
RPA Alone Is Not Enough
When companies adopt traditional robotic process automation (RPA) for Accounting and Finance, a lack of integration within the CFO’s Office is a common challenge. Initiatives to modernize Procure-to-Pay (P2P), Order-to-Cash (O2C), and Record-to-Report (R2R)— three key financial processes—can quickly fall through the gaps when Marketing and Sales teams – and not the CFO’s office – drive almost every aspect of digital transformation.
Other departments simply “leave it to the CFO,” assuming that the CFO’s Office possesses the inherent expertise to drive automation, integration, transformation and other initiatives. The problem with this approach is that while everything else is being digitally transformed and optimized, Financial integration within the CFO’s Office is often left behind.
According to a recent study, CFOs are eager to embrace the digitization of nearly every Finance & Accounting (F&A) function. Seventy-four percent of global CFOs are looking to accelerate into an era of enhanced reporting, moving beyond traditional R2R. Advanced analytics is a top priority with more than 1 in 3 CFOs investing in related technologies over the upcoming years. Without integrated Financial systems, these projects will fall short of expectations.
What Happens When Finance Systems Do Not Speak?
Most businesses rely on different systems to meet various operational requirements. Different architectures prevent these disparate systems from interacting. In the absence of data interactivity, information silos form, inhibiting growth and holding back opportunities for automation or more advanced autonomous decision-making.
This problem is further compounded in large organizations. The greater the size of the business, the larger the number and intricacy of its components—spanning numerous departments, sub-entities, and stakeholders. This complexity permeates the CFO’s Office, where work involves sourcing and procurement (part of P2P), financial analysis and planning (R2R), risk mitigation and regulations, as well as reconciliations (part of O2C).
To administer these complex processes, most F&A teams use a mix of point solutions, including spreadsheets, RPA bots, and ERP and CRM tools, among other technologies. In addition, the treasury employs a separate system because it requires an intricate structure to oversee settlements, legal compliance, liquidity, and cash.
With the ecosystem built on independent, siloed solutions piled on top of each other, extracting data in a timely manner becomes tedious and time-consuming. The pivotal P2P, O2C, and R2R processes remain disconnected, the back and front office systems do not speak to each other, and the entire environment is unsuitable for Autonomous Finance, which is far more mature and streamlined than traditional RPA.
For example, if an important transaction such as procurement in P2P goes awry, the CFO does not have immediate insights into the issue, because the relevant data resides in a system to which only the procurement staff has access. By contrast, R2R operates separately and without real-time synchronization.
This means the CFO must traverse a labyrinth of solutions to garner, review, and share an accurate perspective of the issue to other stakeholders. As such situations can arise on a daily basis, the CFO gets encumbered with daily transactions, and is left with less time for strategic decision-making.
How Can Autonomous Finance Technology Help Accelerate Finance Transformation?
Autonomous Finance technology can play a vital role in addressing these issues. Powered by Generative AI and built on no-code technology, an Autonomous Finance platform can help to complete digital transformation in the CFO’s Office and make it meaningful for every stakeholder in the F&A ecosystem.
The technology ensures that the P2P, O2C, and R2R processes are straight-through and streamlined, brings autonomous decision-making capabilities to F&A processes, and also makes sure that the front and back offices can speak to each other and exchange data. It demolishes information silos and reduces overreliance on coding and IT efforts.
Autonomous Finance helps CFOs to adopt a micro-innovation approach; the platform provides building blocks to create intelligent self-learning and evolving apps to streamline various use cases – from price blocks and cash allocations, to cash flow, payment prioritization, and many more. These apps come with pre-built data models and system connectors designed to overcome the lack of interconnectivity within the CFO’s Office, and between Financial processes and the rest of the enterprise.
3 Ways an Autonomous Finance Platform Connects and Speeds Up Financial Processes
Implementing an Autonomous Finance platform is a quick and effective way to overcome integration challenges and achieve autonomous decision-making capabilities. It helps CFOs facing system and information silos in the following ways:
1. Empowers business users to build rapid solutions
Traditionally, RPA automation relies on detailed scripts and extensive coding efforts. In the face of exceptions, this approach further adds to cost and operational overheads. On the other hand, Autonomous Finance empowers business users to build their own solutions involving complex third-party interconnections by leveraging their domain knowledge and understanding of the business. As it is a no-code platform, accountants, procurement professionals, and other executives in the CFO’s Office can quickly turn their visions into action.
2. Makes use of pre-built models and workflows
Autonomous technology goes beyond RPA in Finance, providing users with pre-built modules based on industry knowledge. This includes data models, workflows, Finance widgets, and system connectors that allow the different nodes of the CFO’s Office—P2P, O2C, and R2R, – to talk to each other. Integrations can be built faster without compromising the quality of app development, and also without too much technical dependence.
3. Opens up opportunities to integrate Generative AI
Generative AI has unlocked new frontiers in Finance transformation. It can cut across system and data silos to accelerate app development and facilitate insights-driven decision-making. For example, an Autonomous Finance platform powered by Generative AI can be used to build Financial apps (or any other apps) 10X faster, by providing real-time suggestions, intelligent recommendations, and best practices for creating or customizing AI-powered hyper-automated apps. The platform also streamlines the flow of data between these processes to seamlessly connect disparate elements of the CFO’s Office.
The Age of Autonomous Finance is Here
Tedious manual processes impede the speed and efficiency of critical F&A tasks such as invoice processing, and managing the collection and reconciliation of receivables. This, in turn, extends Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) metrics and reduces net revenue resulting from delayed payments and inefficiencies in cash management. Even though automating these processes partly helped to curtail DSO to a certain extent, human involvement has still been necessary to ensure the right outcomes.
In 2023 and beyond, CFOs should no longer struggle with the age-old problems of data deficiency and disconnected systems. CFOs advocating for Finance transformation through end-to-end automation in their organizations should consider switching to AI-powered Autonomous Finance technology. It helps them to achieve “touchless” F&A, significant cost reductions, and lower average DSO figures, while enhancing resilience and transparency in the face of unforeseen cash-flow challenges.
