Why It Matters, And How To Make It Work
We have formally evolved into an automated civilization due to advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and robotics. Finance management is crucial to a company’s growth and success in any industry, enterprise, or organization. You can’t ignore the role that automation will play in the future of finance, whether you’re a business owner, a CFO, or a member of the finance team. Several proposals have been proposed for how finance automation could replace human finance personnel. However, it has become obvious over time that financial automation supplements rather than replaces the work of finance specialists. Although automating your payroll is a wonderful idea, financial automation extends beyond that. Few of the many components involved in automating financial activities include risk assessment, auditing, and compliance, are just a.
NetSuite Finance Automation tool is just the thing you are looking for to solve your financial automation problems. Financial management solutions from NetSuite can offer various benefits. NetSuite can speed up transactions and shorten budgeting and forecasting cycles, making it easier to stay on top of rules and regulations. Using our cloud-based program, you can monitor your company’s financial health at any level, from aggregated to individual transactions.
What is Finance Automation?
Finance automation refers to the process of automating critical finance processes such as bookkeeping, spending management, bank reconciliation, and so on with minimal human interaction. It is feasible to automate specific manual activities that can be done more effectively and at a reduced cost. This notion encompasses creating a series of tasks (referred to as workflows) and the use of technology to trigger pre-determined events. Humans will no longer have to perform some accounting functions. Financial automation is becoming a reality because of AI, Blockchain, optical character recognition (OCR), robotic process automation (RPA), and other cutting-edge technology.
According to a McKinsey Global Institute’s automation research study, existing technology can automate 42% of financial procedures. Even though many people believe financial automation and intelligent software are the future, organizations are already adopting cutting-edge tools and technology such as sophisticated analytics, process automation, Robo-advisors, and self-learning programs.
Benefits of Financial Automation
If you employ financial automation software, you won’t want to go back to the old way of doing business. By integrating all of your systems, you may improve overall performance.
Smart Analysis
A finance automation tool offers a comprehensive perspective of a company’s financial ecosystem. It provides robust business reports that contain critical company data automatically. These reports are profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, income statements, payment performance reports, etc. They may monitor and act on crucial business growth parameters by utilizing financial automation tools. You can use these instruments to collect financial ratios such as current ratios, interest-coverage ratios, asset turnover ratios, gross profit ratios, and so on.
Reducing Human Error
No matter how much experience an accountant has, they can’t avoid making simple human faults. Accounting errors can have serious implications, yet human error is forgivable. A typo or an additional zero can cost a company a lot of money when it comes to money. If you reduce the amount of manual data entry you have to do, you won’t have to deal with conflicting entries in your system. As a result, your employees and business partners will be happier with the services you offer. You will identify anomalies more easily as reports can be prepared and compared quickly through automated processes. As a result of automation, you will analyze your company’s overall financial situation more easily and detect potential issue areas.
Enhancing Collaboration
Automated software makes it much easier for diverse departments to collaborate by improving overall productivity and unifying the technology they employ. It allows the finance department to track the expenditure of money within a project team rather than creating an overall budget and delegating it to the project manager. It greatly simplifies project work. An accountant conducts arduous chores such as manually entering data and completing accounting tasks. These tasks include reconciling accounts payable and receivable on each given workday. Automating such time-consuming tasks can save the entire team both time and money.
Greater Efficiency
The amount of time that this finance automation saves a company is one of its most significant benefits. Tighter restrictions result in a more efficient supply chain. Hence, with the support of digital workflows, data entry, bookkeeping, and other manual activities will take less time to complete. Data does not need to be entered more than once, and any adjustments are quickly propagated across the system in an automated system. This technology makes managing payroll, expenditures, and other activities requiring inter-departmental coordination is much easier. Employees are free to apply their talents in a more creative and analytical approach to assist your firm because they are spending less time on data entry. Furthermore, they may exchange information more easily and quickly access records as needed.
Increases Levels Of Growth
Scaling up traditional multi-part systems is more challenging than scaling up automated alternatives, and you’ll still be able to scale up individual components (for example, databases). Still, your system will have a significantly greater ability to expand naturally as data sets grow and processing demands rise, and you can considerably minimize expansion expenditures in this manner. A business can utilize automated finance services in various countries to comply with local legislation, provide multi-language and multi-currency support, and automatically handle accounts owned by local subsidiaries.
Consistency
Finance automation ensures consistency at every stage of the process. Every time a computer does a task, it does so in the same manner. As a result of established protocols, all departments, tasks, teams, and consumers provide shared services in the same manner.
NetSuite Finance Automation Tool
Many businesses struggle to provide timely and accurate financial statements. If a firm expands, it may wish to invest in or acquire other companies. These other subsidiaries will very certainly continue to use their current accounting or ERP system, at least for the time being. NetSuite is a cloud-based financial management solution for multi-entity businesses that automate the consolidation process, eliminating the challenges of working with several accounting tools and ERP systems. NetSuite’s single platform is where all of its customers’ data is stored. As a result, corporate accounting teams can concentrate on a single data set rather than juggling several sources and formats. Moreover, NetSuite gives you an upper hand by providing several other benefits such as:
- NetSuite can help you automate everything from bank reconciliation to asset management to receivables payments and revenue management.
- Using NetSuite financial, one can quickly and easily develop budgets and projections, simulate what-if scenarios, and generate reports.
- Accounting criteria must be met while the financial close is accelerated. NetSuite allows you to determine the source of the problem and how it affects your business.
- With real-time access to financial and billing activity data, billing operations can be optimized. Consolidate invoicing, automate rating processes, and support a variety of pricing philosophies and techniques. Subscriptions can be conveniently controlled with automatic renewals.
- Budgeting and financial planning can be done for the entire organization and specific departments with the same collaborative, scalable solution.
- You can make better decisions when accessing role-specific dashboards, reports, and KPIs. According to US GAAP, IFRS, and other accounting standards, financial statements and reports are generated.
- Accounting processes, data, and reporting should be centralized across several corporate divisions, subsidiaries, and countries for the benefit of all stakeholders. Automatic consolidations allow you to expedite the closing process while conforming to all applicable accounting standards, tax rules, and regulations.
- With a wide choice of audit-ready products, you can support and empower your company’s GRC activities. Built-in capabilities enable various reporting options for a variety of regulatory, operational, and compliance requirements.
Future Of Finance Automation
A bright future for financial automation has already begun to change the way financial services are provided in large and small enterprises. You have to make many adjustments in the activities and the organization to deploy new technology and procedures, which makes financial automation difficult. When it comes to moving to new technology, there are a few more things to consider. Security is one of them. Because so many companies now permit employees to work from home, it is more vital than ever to safeguard the data sent back and forth between the workplace and the residences of those who work there.
In the financial sector, artificial intelligence is a natural fit. Automating your financial processes can save your employees numerous hours of wasted time. It is possible to eliminate errors and free up personnel for more strategic operations by automating repetitive tasks. These tasks include manual data gathering and input, document authentication, and reporting. Your staff has more free time to focus on work that will help your organization develop.
Conclusion
With each passing year, automated financial analysis and projections become more accurate. As a positive net motivator, Artificial intelligence will make everyone’s job easier, but it will not eliminate the need for strategic human efforts. Stakeholders will be satisfied, and the company will expand due to financial efficiency and accuracy. Remember that digital transformation is a continuous process, not a one-time event. As organizations evolve, so does technology. The entire process is streamlined for you with NetSuite’s financial automation platform. To reap all these benefits and more, you can have Folio3, certified NetSuite partners, assist you through the process of customizing, integrating, and implementing the NetSuite Finance Automation tool to your financial operating model.
