The Ledger

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Tag Archives: finance automation

The End for Manual Accounting Processes

September 3, 2020

“Manual processes present too high a cost for accounting teams, CFOs, the broader business, and investor confidence. They sap time and resources, elevate risk, place a shadow over audit and compliance processes, and burn out talent. But more than that, in today’s fast-moving landscape—where companies are rolling out new business models, conducting mergers and acquisitions, and looking to direct more resources into planning and analysis—they can stymie business performance.”

Read more at Strategic Finance magazine >

A Systems Approach to Navigating Process Complexity

September 17, 2019

A system, at its most basic, is the interaction of various discrete components or parts. It’s easy enough to visualize and consider each of these parts in isolation; however, business leaders almost always underestimate the difficulty in predicting the outcomes and behavior of the system during the design stage. While the engineering and business fields have developed several methods (including root-cause analysis, scenario planning, etc.) to try to understand and address these issues, they still rely heavily on teams calculating or forecasting outcomes of systems. However, even systems with few elements create outcomes that cannot be calculated or predicted. Modern finance teams have found that leveraging existing technology solutions can increase process visibility and reduce risk. When considering how to approach different problems, key systems-thinking concepts need to be applied – considering that the impact of internal and external factors and changes can help address a challenge more comprehensively and in a timely manner. This approach also allows businesses to become increasingly agile in meting ever-changing customer demand.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

 

Automated Technologies Could Be the Key to Agility

March 5, 2019

Today more than ever, finance teams are examining how agile methodologies can improve productivity, reduce market entry time for products, and increase profitability.  One of the ways that finance departments can improve their agility is through the adoption of new technologies that offer many opportunities to automate repetitive and manual departmental or enterprise-wide processes. When applied to these types of problems and scaled across multiple sites or groups, large cost savings and additional process improvement benefits can be achieved. These savings can help the finance team become more agile and focused on higher-value-added work, resulting in improved performance and job satisfaction.

Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >

 

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