CFOs harness the power with Intelligent Process Automation

Today, some companies emerge stronger than others thanks to the power of Intelligent Process Automation. This innovative technology enables CFOs to successfully navigate an organization's growth path through uncertainty and contribute to strategic planning to drive future growth.

According to Gartner, “Only a quarter of CFOs today meet the CEO's expectations in contributing to short-term financial performance and driving the company's operations for sustained growth in revenue and profit." 

With this article, CFOs can grasp how to harness the power of IPA, thereby increasing agility and flexibility to adapt to rapid market changes, control financial processes. In other words, the IPA “overhauls” the entire business process and financial system of the organization.

The Power of Intelligent Process Automation

At its core, IPA is a collection of emerging technologies that combine fundamental process redesign with AI, RPA, and machine learning. It is a suite of business process enhancements and tools that help users by eliminating repetitive tasks, improving performance, and speeding up processes.

The financial accounting department can fully benefit from the application of IPA. As Delloite reports, “Intelligent process automation presents a huge opportunity for organizations' financial strategies by delivering information and value to the business faster, more accurately, and at low cost. than."

With the power of IPA can bring practical value that business leaders are looking for as efficiency can increase to 25% within 12 months and increase to more than 50% within 2-3 years. However, IPA frees up the CFO to evolve from head of data processing to deliver financial analytics and manage risk to a strategic leader that adds financial value and drives growth. enterprise.

With the help of technology and artificial intelligence, CFOs can automate financial processes such as payment processing, financial reporting, and budget forecasting. This reduces manual work and repetitive work, helping finance staff focus on more complex tasks and making strategic decisions. Intelligent process automation provides accurate data and information and quick response.

CFOs can use automated tools to collect and analyze financial data, giving them a holistic view of the company's financial health and making more accurate predictions and forecasts about the future. . This helps the CFO make strategic decisions based on reliable information and reduces human error.

CFOs need reliable, easy-to-deploy solutions like IPA to help automate smarter and faster workflows to drive business performance. Smart automation not only empowers businesses and people to do better — it also helps them cut costs in the long run.

• Cost savings: IPA helps businesses cut down on manual labor and manual work to boost speed and accuracy. As a result, large parts of the organization can reduce errors and optimize costs.
• Improve work efficiency: Intelligent process automation frees finance and accounting departments from manual tasks so they can focus on strategy building and creating more value .
• Increased real-time visibility and control: Intelligent process automation provides real-time data for financial processes and operations. CFOs quickly review and evaluate the overview, making better decisions to control the financial performance of the organization.
• Regulatory compliance and risk management: All financial processes of the organization are compliant with regulations and industry standards, reducing unnecessary risks and other losses.
• Enhance competitive advantage: Organizations adopting IPA can gain competitive advantage by becoming more efficient, effective and flexible than competitors.

The CFO needs to work closely with the finance team and other stakeholders to assess the potential of the IPA for the organization and to implement an effective IPA strategy that is aligned with the organization's business and operational goals. .

Now, with the capabilities of Intelligent Process Automation, CFOs have a solid view of the big picture, so they can set goals to achieve what Deloitte describes as Risk Management. In this way, “the CFO can help the CEO and management team understand the risks they may face. With a good vision and a more strategic approach, a CFO can also help an organization accept and deal with risk more effectively and increase its ability to minimize risks.”

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With intelligent process automation, strategy is key

While Process Automation has the potential to simplify your operational processes and keep costs low, this can only be achieved when applied strategically. Each organization has its own needs and operations, so it is important to ensure that the application of an IPA will be tailored to the requirements of each business.

Deployment framework

Intelligent process automation (IPA) strategy implementation can be approached using the following framework:

This implementation framework provides a structured approach to IPA implementation, helping organizations ensure that their process automation initiatives are well planned and working, and deliver the benefits as desired. It should be noted that the specific steps and details of the implementation framework may vary depending on the specific needs and goals of the organization.

Steps to take

Intelligent process automation leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the efficiency of processes by reducing manual work, increasing speed and accuracy, and enabling decision-making better.

A typical IPA strategy includes the following steps:

• Process analysis: Identify business processes that can benefit from automation and specific tasks that can be automated.
• Planning automation: Develop a process automation plan, including the technology and tools used.
• Deployment: Implement automation technology and integrate it into existing systems and processes.
• Monitor and optimize: Continuously monitor the performance of automated processes and make necessary adjustments for optimization.
• Extend: Gradually expand the scope of automation to include additional processes and tasks.

The use of AI, RPA, and machine learning in IPA allows automation of time-consuming manual tasks that negatively impact process efficiency and accuracy.

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“Most IPA projects will fail” – KPMG . report

According to the report “Ready, Set, Fail? Avoiding Setbacks in the Intelligent Automation Race” by KPMG says that most projects that implement smart process automation or in preparation will fail. That's because business leaders and CTOs aren't ready to deploy top-down and scale-out process automation.

Deploying intelligent process automation requires commitment and willingness from business leaders and chief technology officers. This is because process automation often requires a change in traditional ways of working and requires support and involvement from stakeholders. If leaders and chief technology officers are unwilling to change and fail to secure stakeholder support and commitment, a process automation project can struggle and fail.

In addition, the lack of readiness to deploy process automation can also be related to a lack of understanding of automation technology and processes, lack of a clear implementation plan and strategy, or lack of management. risk and performance assessment.

Some common reasons why IPA implementations fail:

• Lack of clear goals: According to KPMG, 50% organizations say they are having a hard time defining clear goals for automation deployments. They feel intelligent process automation is something they should have but are unsure why and what to do about it. Furthermore, they are also uncertain about how automation will impact their employees.
• Technological and technical barriers: IPA involves the integration of many systems and technologies, and it is considered quite complex to implement and maintain. More than a quarter of the survey respondents said that they still lack the skills to handle and apply advanced technologies well. The slow pace of adoption or internal rollout, along with other challenges, could prevent CFOs from reaping the benefits of this technology, the KPMG report adds.
• Fear of change: Employees' "afraid to change" mindset is one of the top barriers to technology implementation. Process automation can disrupt established ways of working. The simple reason is that they don't want to waste time, effort or take the risk of switching to a new way of working when they don't know what benefits they will get in return.
• Lack of preparation: With IPA, it requires careful planning and preparation by CFOs to ensure that processes are automated, technology is integrated into existing systems, and automation initiatives are beneficial. desired benefit. More than 20% organizations say they plan to use the technology without testing or pre-validation.
• Lack of admin: IPA is closely related to sensitive data and information. It is important to have the right governance processes in place to ensure that technology is used appropriately and data is protected.

In the long run, Intelligent Process Automation will not only help organizations overcome economic challenges, but will continue to boost employee morale as it relieves them of the burden of day-to-day tasks. . To overcome challenges and successfully implement IPA, it is important for organizations to approach with a clear plan, strategy, engage all stakeholders and allocate resources. resources and expertise required to ensure correct application and performance.