Streamlining finance and accounting by using RPA

Processing and collecting data is daily routine of well-versed accounting and finance departments; yet repetitive manual work, large volumes of data can pose a challenge for enterprises.

All industries are widely embrace automation. An increase in the use of software robots in organisations means they are realizing benefits such as the optimization of logistics, particularly in managing inventory and finance functions.

From a recent report done by Ernst and Young, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is estimated to reduce business costs 50 to 70 percent. Finance processes is rapidly transformed by automation. Credit limit request underwriting, optimising end-of-month accounting and streamlining accounts payable are just a few of the benefits RPA offers.

A new beginning for end-of-month accounting

Accounts departments often suffer from a crippling end-of-month run of transactions, with many manhours being swallowed up by increasing average transaction handling times. Because of some departments requiring multiple applications for different parts, lengthy rules-based processes can consume a great amount of time.

Businesses can use RPA to automate these lengthy processes and eliminate process errors and drastically reduce processing time, removing significant pressure from accounting teams. This will lead to an increase in energy and empowerment, allowing staff to focus on more strategic and engaging tasks. Businesses are quickly experiencing return on investment due to this increased productivity within their accounting departments, with employee engagement rising through a reduction in hours spent on repetitive tasks.

Automated accounts payable

One of the biggest productivity killers for accounts teams is arguably processing invoices. A solution featuring intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is offered by RPA, which creates a fully automated process. Data can be autonomously extracted from invoices via email and validate information by OCR, for example the cost per item or number of items, against the purchase order and goods received.

Streamlining accounts payable with automation allows businesses to shift the operational focus of accounts to processes of higher importance. Autonomously processing invoices allows more manpower to be dedicated to improving the customer and the supplier experience and leaves more time to work on other accounting tasks and new initiatives.

Automatically underwriting

Despite credit limit request underwriting being a key process for several organisations, it is also an expensive and highly repetitive process. Time and cost can be dramatically reduced by RPA because of collecting, assembling and presenting data automatically on a dashboard, ready for underwriters to assess.

On occasion, RPA can process the data for credit limit requests within just an hour of receipt. The time saved allows underwriters to focus on higher value customer interactions, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

Transforming global finance delivery

Global finance delivery processes often include several sub-processes such as foot, cross-footing, checking for internal consistency, recalculating balance time sheets and PY tie outs. The completion of reports can require complex and time-consuming solutions but is largely repetitive.

Using an RPA solution that includes natural language processing (NLP), businesses can analyse textual contexts, extract tables in PDFs, and validate primary balance sheets and other financial data.

Only efficiency in RPA

Because of significant gains provided by RPA, including increased productivity, precision and speed, the speculation over robots ‘stealing jobs' is lessening as it is more widely implemented. However, it is not just immense cost savings that RPA provides. More importantly it relieves staff of monotonous activities involved with collating and exchanging data between systems. With RPA, staff can focus more on valuable, strategic and interesting work, which will inspire energy and empowerment in the workplace.

By introducing an RPA system that integrates intelligent OCR and NLP tools, the strains of end-of-month accounting, accounts payable, credit limit request underwriting and global finance delivery services can be significantly lessened. Businesses, staff, suppliers and customers are all able to reap the benefits of the RPA platform.

About us:

TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,400 engineers. Our engineering team was selected from a large pool of Vietnam IT resources; they are well-trained and have successfully completed many large and complex projects. Visit us at: https://www.tmasolutions.com/