There are major dramatic changes happening in working practices as there is a rise in the need for the digital transformation. Many institutions have been forced to export quickly and asked to virtualize or digitize since the previous year saw huge changes in how the businesses operate in an increased and uncertain economic landscape. Just as much as providing challenges, this crisis is also providing many unique opportunities for business transformation. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer once stated, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The desire to adapt new ways of working is the thing you need to look for always, especially at these times. Old departed teams are coming together now to work on collaborative solutions to resolve the current issues. The way teams are approaching the problems and the way they are working together to provide business value can change for better. There is a perfect time of opportunity for the finance teams to this digitization, provided by the current business climate to reduce the amount of the time and effort put by the employees on the expansion in manual process, as they can increase their focus on managing core business issues and make more well thought decisions.
This year is going to prove to be a catalyst in important organizational changes. Savings are becoming more crucial for the company’s survival and slightest false alignment of the resources across the finance sector can’t be ignored for a longer period. This digitization is going to help many financial institutions to modernize and become more effective and efficient. Andrew Foster, VP Consulting EMEA, AppZen said that, Finance is a business function that can be radically improved through automation and the use of intelligent software in decision making. But it can be arguable that if the finance function of the future is being born out of the present-day necessity.
Since the finance teams are adopting new ways to work, they should also focus on personal transformation and the efforts to be put in areas which can help make fundamental and long term changes. Accelerating the existing digitization programs is one such measure. With the Financial sector there is an increased need for agile forecasting and reporting the processes that depend on live data instead of extracts, spreadsheets or manuals. Even though institutions are making these changes, this year calls for an urgent need for real time metrics to reflect on the evolution of the rapidly changing business environment. With the trend of remote working, finance teams have been driven away from the standard practice of accumulating paper based documents and receipts and application of AI in this trail based processes has saved a lot of time and effort.
Most of finance’s resources and time are traditionally spent performing transacting, record keeping, reporting, and compliance duties. Many finance procedures have three features in common that AI is well suited to change: they are built on paper trails, require relative information and operate at high volume. Many companies are still dealing with largely labor-intensive processes that are very time consuming and inaccuracy prone. AI can understand unstructured finance documents, like receipts, POs and contracts. Unlike general purpose OCR systems that make basic errors, like confusing a ‘$’ and an ‘S’ or a ‘£’ and a ‘6,’ finance focused AI is much more precise.
By the implementation of AI drive systems the finance teams are rebalanced again, being able to focus more on their strategic finance initiatives instead of focusing on manual and tedious tasks. With digital transformation programs being accelerated, financial sectors can look at making this as a permanent change and add more value to the areas of business which needs more attention.
