Finance teams have always had to deal with constant communication and follow-ups with customers and vendors, but throw a pandemic into the mix, and finance teams can no longer accurately predict if payments will be received on time.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) was once thought of as the silver bullet in the world of corporate finance. At the heart of ERP is a ledger that records financial transactions, and the advent of ERP meant that there was a system designed to deal with multiple transactions.
Businesses no longer needed to run processes using just a pen and paper. In today’s world, finance departments now need a system that can do more than just ERP. While ERP was designed to be the system of record for financial data, it was never expected to be the system of engagement or the system of automation. Other types of software are now needed to help reduce the burden of the corporate back office.
While basic automation has been used across the corporate finance function for years, Hyperautomation and the combined automation of task execution, algorithmic analytical forecasting, and automated interactive responses have yet to be fully embraced by CFOs.
Since our launch, Auditoria has made strides to transform the corporate back office. I’m pleased to announce three new product capabilities that will further our mission of being a pioneer in AI-driven automation solutions for corporate finance teams.
Let’s dive into the new capabilities and what it means for CFOs and corporate finance teams alike.
Auditoria.AI Transforms the Corporate Finance Back Office with New Intelligent Automation Capabilities
In today’s world, people think of virtual assistants, bots, and self-driving cars when they think of automation.
True finance automation and innovation lie in the introduction of predictive analytics and forecasting, having clear insights into the hidden forces that affect cash flow, and dynamically prioritizing workflows so finance teams can focus on the high-value activities to give the company a competitive advantage—or at least a shot at survival. With advanced automation, finance leaders can now mine vast volumes of data and find that proverbial needle in the haystack without thousands of wasted hours.
Auditoria’s new Intelligent Automation capabilities— Intelligent Vendor Management, Intelligent Collections, and Intelligent Planning—reinvent how CFOs and corporate finance teams interact with collections and payments. The three new capabilities significantly expand Auditoria’s approach to Hyperautomation for the recovery of time, removal of friction, and improved cash flow performance across the corporate finance function.
Our Automation in ERP and the Finance Back Office Survey indicated that most companies are automating 40 percent or fewer back-office tasks and processes. Almost half of accounting and finance teams say that repetitive, manual work is a significant burden on the organization, with Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable suffering from the most manual processes. These new capabilities put the finance team in the driver’s seat, unburdening them from the hours spent on collections, vendor management, cash flow forecasting, and more.
New capabilities include:
Our new capabilities introduce far more sophisticated automation than ever seen before. For example, let’s say a particular account has made payments on time (or maybe even ahead of time) for ten consecutive quarters. However, now the 11th quarter payment is five days overdue.
AI and machine learning now have the opportunity to mine data, to mine patterns, to mine transactional events, and then come up with dynamic recommendations. From there, recommendation analytics can suggest specific actions that could be taken for delivering incentives or proactively presenting measures for such accounts.
These new capabilities include natural language processing and the ability to dynamically detect intent, including seeing traits that indicate potential support challenges that clients may be facing. Other indicators include factors causing concern, which might then unintentionally trickle into the collections lifecycle.
Finally, we have advanced the notion of driving intelligence into automated business processes. This new capability includes intelligent notifications and bidirectional interaction. Bidirectional interaction is more than just a collection notification with a reminder and set of rules that trigger when messages go out. It also encompasses the ability to seek feedback if there’s input coming in, to respond intelligently, and to bring in the human operator as needed.
The inverse is also true, where the technology or the AI component can initiate interactions. Down the line, the collections manager or a finance executive can know how many automated conversations have taken place, where an account stands, and more.
The Future of Hyperautomation in the Finance Back Office
Auditoria’s Hyperautomation approach, with the automation of tasks, analytics, and responses, can increase productivity, accelerate the monthly or quarterly close, reduce time spent in manual tasks, and improve the company bottom line. However, our new capabilities have only scratched the surface of what Hyperautomation and the advances in artificial intelligence can elevate.
Check out our three-part blog series on Hyperautomation:
We hope you enjoy these articles and feel free to reach out with any questions or comments!