By David Brightman, Director of Product Marketing at BlackLine

There’s a stark disconnect between the promise of the cloud connected, AI-driven future of finance and the day-to-day reality of most finance and accounting (F&A) professionals. Even though there is a wide offering of technology solutions available, many F&A teams still spend hours upon hours closing the books every month.

This raises the question: are rank-and-file employees fully utilising solutions available within their organisation? Or, are they fully aware of the advanced capabilities at their disposal? While it is great to see many business leaders have embarked on their journey to adopt automation and digital transformation, if F&A teams are not reaping the benefits of such solutions, then there may be another issue at play.

A confidence check for F&A teams

A recent survey commissioned by BlackLine and conducted by Capstone Insights found that most F&A leaders expressed a high degree of satisfaction with their technology solutions. Around 52% of executive managers reported a high degree of confidence in their current and future F&A capabilities, with only 16% showing concern about their current processes.

But this rate of confidence among F&A leaders is in stark contrast with the number of organisations that reported issues with their data accuracy, internal communication, and impossible-to-scale workflows; with as many as 70% of F&A leaders reported to be making decisions based on data that was later determined to be inaccurate or incomplete.

Adding to this worry is the lack of confidence in existing finance processes among those in lower positions – in other words, those who have hands on experience with handling the data. This is highlighted by the fact that 72% of SVP+ respondents believe their systems are ‘easy to use’, while only 39% of individual contributors said the same.

Based on these statistics, it is clear that there is a breakdown in communication between F&A leaders, and rank-and-file employees, which could be adding to the challenge of having to close the books each month.

Identifying the root of the communication issue

Each month while compiling reports, F&A professionals at the coal-face are aware of the manual manipulation, complicated spreadsheets, multiple sources, workarounds, and late nights required to prepare data for upper management. The process may look seamless to the C-suite because their employees are doing a good job and because the C-suite never experiences the pain required to pull it all together.

As a result of the sheer effort it takes to successfully complete a month-end close, many employees simply do not take the time to communicate their heavy workload to senior members of the finance department, as it could take away precious time from completing the actual task. However, not communicating time pressures can lead to rushed results prone to errors, which can take even more time to fix, as teams try to manually trace back the original mistake. Over time, this will inhibit growth, as teams aren’t focusing their energy on value-adding tasks, while also increasing the risk of failing audits.

Furthermore, there are also mental health implications to consider. Workplace satisfaction is likely to fall if workloads continue to overwhelm teams. That is why it is often best for the management team to take the lead on creating transparency through open communication.

Increasing visibility and communication

With a lack of communication over workloads and pressures, teams could become dissatisfied and seek other jobs as a result. To avoid high employee turnover, businesses should look for ways to create efficiencies, and reap the benefits of technology solutions, especially those that are readily available within their organisation.

To do this effectively, many businesses would benefit from investing more in internal communications that highlight the benefits of the solutions on offer. For instance, many organisations are piloting AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), but they may not offer training on how this will streamline work, offer seamless access to remote working systems, reduce manual processes, automate routine tasks, and generally simplify the administration of the close.

During audits, tracing any transaction will also be streamlined with automation, as most if not all necessary supporting evidence will be digitally recorded, along with the owner of the task. Automated software will also be useful for reducing errors and giving a snap-shot overview of where the transaction is currently at.

With less time being spent on delivering reports, F&A teams can focus on those value adding tasks that lead to growth and increase employee satisfaction. So if you haven’t already, perhaps now would be a good time to talk to your F&A teams to see how good your financial processes really are.

 

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