The proportion of companies ramping up globally on automation technologies will at least double over the next two years.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Finance chiefs are considering hastening investments in automation initiatives to better manage their companies’ finances and operations, despite facing revenue declines stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
While many finance executives are slashing costs to weather the downturn, some view investments in technology as essential to better equip newly remote finance teams or strengthen other parts of the business.
“For many, the crisis is accelerating the vision that they’ve already had for a long time,” said Michael Heric, a partner in consulting firm Bain & Co.’s technology, media and telecommunications practices. “While it could have taken years or even decades to make that shift, I think you’re going to see it much faster now.”
According to PwC, CFOs are weighing how technology will help ease their transition back to on-site work. Overall, 46% of CFOs say they will accelerate automation and other new ways of working; at least 60% of CFOs in Germany and in Mexico cite automation and remote work among their top-three actions.
Better flow of information results in better decisions
An area that can greatly benefit from automation is data consolidation.
Top-level finance executives typically don’t have direct access to the numbers. If they want to extract a report from their BI system, they turn to a manager or someone from the BI department. If they don’t have a BI system in place, they typically export numbers to an Excel spreadsheet. CFOs are always depending on someone else to get the numbers they want.
The same goes for lower level workers who put together reports. For example, as part of the FP&A function’s monthly or quarterly efforts to produce income statements, balance sheets, cash flows and basically any monthly reporting package, data is exported from various systems. This can be data from an ERP, CRM, GL, HR data, etc.
After downloading CSV files, data is copied and pasted into spreadsheets. Usually additional data that comes from other spreadsheets that were filled in manually such as forecasts, budgets etc. is added. Lots of time is spent manually consolidating data sources into one dataset, and this process is repeated often. Once all data is consolidated, it is manipulated and prepared for final reporting.
The little to no time that is left is spent on the part with the greatest added value- analyzing data, trying to understand the obstacles standing in the company’s way, and identifying what can be done to help the company excel.
Adapt in order to keep up.
Organizations must adapt, especially now when the economic and business climate demands it. Financial analytics and automation can greatly assist in this. Despite pervasive fears of automation, if there was ever a time to embrace it, it’s now.
