Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on December 1, 2023
Revolutionising digital accounting and finance with intelligent automation
By Concetta Yates, VP Customer Strategy and Industry Solutions, SS&C Blue Prism
As business processes become increasingly complex, accounting and finance experts are now at demand across all business operations, ranging from employee management to data analysis, collecting financial insights, and streamlining workflows.
With changing organisational demands, and evolving accounting operations, organisations should seek to incorporate Intelligent Automation (IA) to meet corporate governance requirements, growing regulatory, and audit. Although IA can be advantageous to businesses, it can also be complex, and organisations might not always know where to start.
As many accounting and finance operations are composed by tasks which often follow a clear set of rules, such as filing and organising data into financial software, and procedural day- to- day tasks, makes them well suited for automation. By focusing on structured data, employees can target processes that use well- defined data formats such as invoice form fields, and allowing IA to be leveraged for unstructured data formats.
Processes that are leveraged over multiple applications and interact with other departments make good candidates for automation. These operations often have defined workflows, but may have inefficient manual tasks that need to be improved for compliance, regulatory, and improved servicing of clients.
When determining which automation to launch first, single-out a high volume and low complexity process that will deliver compelling ROI and quickly prove the value of IA. Some cyclical business operations only happen occasionally such as an unexpected audit. Processes and tasks like this can often be assisted — if not replaced — by intelligent automation.
Typically, ideal automation candidates include:
As your intelligent automation practice advances, the scope of automations expands considerably, including processes involving decision-making, utilizing unstructured or semi-structured data, those poorly defined with multiple variations and much more.
However, it’s not all about reducing time on processes, it is about improving your financial focus. As your intelligent automation matures, finance professionals can utilize their valuable strategic skills once relieved of their rules-based, procedural tasks. The core functions of the business continue, allowing the company to maintain its trajectory. And still, people are free to help the company make better investment decisions, setting the business on a greater path to growth.
Automation for big and for small
While “Big Four” firms* are leading this trend, many small independent chartered accountants,
mid-size accounting firms, and in-house finance teams are still using traditional software packages to manage contract and payment analysis, payroll, or tax record retention, and oversee employee tax IDs.
Today, while most average main street accounting firms still manage annual tax assessments for self-employed workers and book-keeping services, they’re also multi-faceted business champions in all areas, from delivering essential accounting and compliance issues to offering tax planning advice and long-term strategic consultancy.
Equinix, for example, which provides interconnected digital infrastructure for its customers, including 248 data centers located on six continents, used IA’s digital workers as part of its end-to-end automated source-to-pay (S2P) process. Each year, $3 billion flows through purchase orders handled by this process. Digital workers pass work to one another as purchase requests, from first request and purchase order creation to validation.
Digital workers also close aged orders and help resolve emailed invoice disputes from over 6,000 global requestors. Executing 98% of vendor, employee, and intercompany payments, digital workers have enabled the finance payables team to focus on issue resolution and strategic initiatives instead of mundane manual work.
These changes have improved data accuracy, reduced errors, and help Equinix pay vendors faster. Equinix’s intelligent automation program has reduced operational costs (currently estimated at $7 million) and improved customer satisfaction.
The savings have been invested into strategic initiatives to enhance the business and employee experience, giving around 175,000 hours back to employees, so they can focus on improving their skillsets and contributing to the business in new ways.
By adopting IA, finance teams are also able to shift focus from chasing paper to providing advisory – and more profitable services – such as financial planning, tax planning, or business strategy. Firms can offer better value and are more cost-effective when it comes to business planning advice, finance raising, forecasting and management strategies.
Securing the money with intelligent automation
Another largely untapped area for intelligent automation is fraud detection. While detecting fraud often sits within special financial crime or operation controls units, particularly within the FSI industry, there is still opportunity for accounting firms, in-house teams, or operations-led functions to consider how they can benefit from using IA.
The latest PwC Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey reveals that – in 2022 – 51% of respondents experienced fraud in the previous two years, the highest level in 20 years of research. Globally, financial fraud is a $42 billion issue for large financial organizations, corporations, and enterprises alike.
With identity theft, employment, and insurance fraud on the rise, forensic accountants use their finance with legal investigative techniques to look within organizations for fraud, or financial irregularities, trace funds and identify assets, or validate losses.
lA is also an additional weapon in the accounting armory following the financial crash of 2008. Sometimes involved in valuing a business, forensic analytical skills are increasingly used in commercial negotiations. With greater demand for accountability and regulatory reform, forensic accounting has become more prevalent as the business environment has become more complex.
An example of this is Prudential plc, headquartered in London and Hong Kong, providing life, health insurance, and asset management to around 19 million customers in Asia and Africa.
The company uses bespoke fraud detection digital workers created by SS&C Blue Prism to analyze transaction data and detect fraudulent activity, across its 34 life businesses in 23 markets, served by more than 530,000 agents, 170 bank partners and 27,000 bank branches.
The digital workers can perform the same number of 100% approval check authorizations it would take 40 people to do in a year. Improving security for customers and ensuring Prudential’s 1,000 daily claims – worth around $100,000 – are 100% audit compliant, it has also drastically reduced losses due to fraud.
By using IA to automate mundane highly repeatable tasks, Prudential’s finance and customer teams can spend more of their time focused on higher-impact high-value business activities.
Streamlining accounting in remote teams
By making data instantly accessible and flexible in real-time for business owners and accountants, cloud-based automations are also impacting hybrid or remote accounting teams.
With secure user authentication and an internet connection, cloud-based accounting teams can better access and view financial data, and monitor transactions, making accounting possible and profitable from anywhere.
With IA performing automations or generating reports for teams, clients, and contractors alike, timely financial analysis and strategic planning is error-free and more focused, leaving financial experts to make greater – and more profitable – use of their expertise across every area of any business.
The accounting function of the future
While accounting principles and processes have changed little in the last 200 years, automation and cloud has transformed it from siloed function to strategic driving force.
Assisted by intelligent automation, artificial intelligence, and real-time data-driven technologies, finance teams who are able to benefit from more efficient workflows will reap greater benefits from streamlined accounting processes and play a greater role in their organizations.
By implementing and adopting these technologies, companies enable themselves to be more resilient, agile, and productive contributing to have a stronger competitive advantage in the market.
*The four largest global accounting firms measured by revenue are Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG).
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