If there is one technology today that is changing the game for most industries by increasing ROI, improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and automating business processes to function round-the-clock, it is Robotic Process Automation.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is seeing extensive adoption across various industries to make use of the accurate, reliable, automated, and consistent results that this technology offers. The best way to start using RPA is in structured procedures that have listed rules, are repetitive, and have a window for human error. For this reason, finance and accounting are the sectors that most use RPA in their daily organizational functioning. They automate financial tasks like account reconciliation and financial statements with minimal human intervention.
In this article, we aim to explore a few more such use cases of this innovative technology in the finance and accounting industry.
Contents
Customer Service
RPA modifies how financial institutions interact with their clients. In particular, it considerably speeds up and simplifies the resolution of problems and queries. Instead of manually seeking information for clients, it is easier and time-saving to automate it through RPA. Businesses also use it to automate each stage of a customer profile’s data validation process and combine the essential data sets, eliminating the requirement for a human worker to transition between apps. Thus businesses are gravitating towards using RPA for customer service interactions.
Employee Onboarding
When a new set of employees are taken in, their onboarding process takes up the time and effort of the HR and IT analysts to ensure they can transition well into the system. It includes tasks like creating a new email address and business profile for them and giving them access rights to documents, etc.
Plus, these tasks are repetitive and rule-based. Therefore, financial institutions prefer to assign them to RPA. This way, they can automatically send notifications, give access, and follow all other required steps once a new employee’s account is created.
Procure-To-Pay
Procure-to-pay is a procedure that involves obtaining invoices and payment information from a variety of networks. Typically, these networks offer more complex integration techniques but are manually done. When RPA is employed to complete them, the existing integration gaps are filled, and the process becomes swifter. RPA automatically collected vendor invoices and allocates tasks based on set rules.
Analytics
The volume of data in banks and financial institutions offers insightful information for important decisions. Decision-makers use this data to make essential and even risky decisions. But incorporating RPA in banking for data collection is crucial when using data analytics and insights. Manual handling of this data opens the scope for human error and inaccurate data. It can do a lot of harm to the organization if the decision-makers use inaccurate data.
With RPA, these human errors are eliminated. We can design RPAs to recognize data that is helpful to people as well as systematically sift through massive amounts of data.
This is a task that bots are excellent at, and it guarantees that your financial reporting is of high quality and adheres to the rules you have established.
System Migration And Integration
Seamlessly connected systems are essential for automating entire financial processes and not just specific activities. Adding upgrades to traditional or old systems is often a hassle because they are mostly incompatible with contemporary projects and apps. Thus, extra attention, effort, and resources are needed when such upgrades happen.
When we do system migrations manually, personnel must perform many laborious tasks. This can lead to mistakes, inefficiency, and low morale. However, manual labor is frequently used in the integration process. But RPA can simplify and automate integrations too.
Conclusion
Robotic process automation enables businesses in the finance and accounting sector to gain and keep a competitive edge. Utilizing the technologies at their disposal, which quickens financial tasks and cuts expenses, enables businesses to operate more efficiently while providing excellent customer service. Mentioned above are only a few applications of RPA in the sector when its use extends to several tasks in most industries.
