The role of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in this new age has changed significantly. It requires an additional skill set along with their traditional skills.  Previously, it focused only as controller, treasurer and managing ROI.  Recently, planning, advisory, forecasting future, interaction with other divisions (IT, Supply etc.) and has morphed CFO into a powerful position.

The CFO is committed to understand the firm’s past and provide a profitable strategy for the future.  For getting the desired results, unison with innovation and finance gives viable solutions.  CFOs use their unique position and expertise to bring the best technological advancement to their firms.

CFOs leading the digital transformation in their firms are appreciating the new age wonder, RPA (Robotic Process Automation).  The benefits from deploying RPA bots are:

• Financial (profit, cost savings)
• Operational (time, speed and accuracy) 
• Human resources (employee morale and customer satisfaction)

What is RPA?

In simpler terms, RPA is an agile software tool that is very easy to deploy and operate.  It records the tasks performed by humans on their PC and replicates them without supervision from humans.  Those tasks need to be

• Rule based
• Repetitive
• Defined inputs and output
• High volume

If these processes are following a logical sequence, then RPA will replicate the tasks eliminating time waste, increasing accuracy, enhancing speed, and reducing cost.

Why CFO’s handle automation (RPA) initiative in most companies

RPA is not an emerging technology, but actually an additional capability.  CFOs as budget holders are entrusted to convince management, the benefits of implementing RPA.  Additionally, they manage

• Fiscal discipline : address the stakeholders about the health of the organization
• Budgeting & Forecasting : responsible for present and future years, including cost reduction, hiring etc.  So, they can be responsible for implementing RPA too.
• Benchmark : between human and digital workers (RPA), decide the best fit for the firm
• Recruitment : understanding the line and tune of the firm as far as hiring goes, so RPA as digital software is an addition to the existing workforce.
• Investment in RPA : cost or saving
• Implementation : Finance &accounting handles a lot of repetitive tasks with high volume.  So, the right division to begin the RPA journey in the firm.

What steps are followed by CFOs in RPA Implementation?

The CFOs understand RPA implementation is about people, not about technology.  Therefore, they mandate the following steps to begin with

• Standardize : before starting the automation process
• Find and Search : manual process people are doing
• Small and Easy : process to start with and build success from there
• Processes : what is mundane and can be made digital
• Recognize : the linear nature of process helps to understand where to start and where to end automation
• Identify : the adjacent technologies used in the process
• Faith : in the leadership of the firm
• Pick : the right kind of people for the task
• Select : the appropriate partners to work with
• Do : proof of concept before implementing

How do CFOs evaluate the success of RPA Implementation?

CFOs slogan starts with ‘Hours back to businesses’.   To achieve that RPA automation is not in isolation, but by participation.  Its success is evaluated through

• Leadership willing to cooperate in attaining the objectives
• Automation program first should save someone’s time, from there build other measures like speed, accuracy etc.
• Periodic functional meetings discussing the situation, problem, action and result.
• Penetration road map to monitor and track by departments
• Finally, report management on return on investment (ROI).

Are you an accounting firm interested in accounting automation? Our accounting automation solutions are easy to start, quicker to learn and guarantees ROI in months. Please call us or book a demo to find how our accounting automation solution can fit with your practice’s processes.