Regulatory complexities in the governance operations are on the rise. Equally increasing are the customer demands and expectations out of companies to perform internally.

Accounting and finance is one of the most adaptable and fast-moving departments where there is always a need to devise new strategies to cut back-office cost and bring more accuracy in the reports. This becomes a problem when record numbers keep growing exponentially and just adding more people to handle things doesn’t solve the problem.

The focus of companies needs to be on analysis and how to increase productivity, not tangling up resources in menial, time-consuming tasks.

Accuracy is the cornerstone of finance and accounting to maintain compliance. Research conducted by Genpact revealed that only 40% of companies can close the quarterly general ledger within a week of closing period. It simply means these 40% of companies are capable of reporting numbers faster and getting them analyzed and recorded, whereas 60% of companies are not that agile.

How Can Companies Improve Performance Measurement?

The classic benchmarking metrics such as – how much time it takes for the company to close the ledger, or how many manual journals they maintain – fall short in recent times. Many correlated things remain unreported, and that does not give the complete picture of the transformation that companies go through during closing.

Some of these factors could be the little use of automation, using very complicated charts in accounting, and insufficient measures taken in handling high work pressure. They all can result in a closing cycle that is slower than it needs to be and can generate unreliable statistics. They also cause the cost of accounting to get higher.

The only way for companies to remove the unpredictability of the classic accounting methods and increasing performance is by introducing automation. This will introduce speed, accuracy, and reliability to the workflow and streamline the operations.

How does it benefit the accounting process?

Faster closing time

The shorter the closing process gets, the higher is the possibility of getting ahead of competitors. The reports logged in will be much more accurate and timelier, and will allow for a longer time to conduct a thorough analysis that can lead to better decisions. Improving speed, accuracy and reliability can be done by automating the manual tasks and transactions that happen in huge numbers daily.

This can be done by creating smart workflows, creating rules and configuring them in various business processes, creating roles that give controlled access to groups, validating journals automatically, and so on.

By doing this, companies allow themselves to become free of large manual tasks and help teams to become much more efficient in implementing their skillset in business objectives where strategic thinking is needed. In addition to that, companies also need to create real-time reporting facilities, easy to understand dashboards, a standardized process that can be replicated in all scales. In the end, the goal can be achieved by constant monitoring and evaluation of the established process and making adjustments wherever required.

Reducing human error

An automated routine that takes daily repetitive manual tasks, and automates them not only improves speed but eliminates the margin of human error. It also frees up resources that could be redistributed in other work, benefitting the organization as a whole.

Creating rules for implementing the standardized practice, building templates for reconciliation as well as certification is the right way to target automation. This can be easily implemented for accounts that are low risk, journal entries posting, handling any exceptions or alerts, leading up to more time and resources for conductive better analysis.

Create centralized data

It allows organizations to import data of transactions from every source possible. Smart rules for automating the task can provide a much better process of handling accounting tasks that can be otherwise time consuming and arduous.

Journals and ledgers can be pre-validated, and results can be posted, which is then matched with transactions happening across the business. This eliminates the need for human error and manual efforts that reduce the speed and accuracy of the business process in accounting.

Build stronger governance

The purpose of creating roles is to curtail access to certain data for certain people. When there is an approval process configured with the help of a real-time workflow of how business works, it establishes a strong governance hierarchy and removes the mishandling of data.
It can streamline the entire financing process and eliminate chances of mismanagement, and failure to control standards. The best thing about automated processes is that they can be constantly measured and checked. If there are any issues, teams can be alerted very quickly, so, they can take action to ensure all compliance is being observed.

Manual financial processes are crippling businesses. Have you got manual processes that are drowning your employees, taking way too long for something you feel can be done in 90% less time and systems are built to take care of the same thing? We can help. Connect with one of our process automation experts today!