July 24, 2023
How Minimizing Manual Tasks Can Add Value To Your Role
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Stay informed with the latest trends and best practices in finance and procurement.
July 24, 2023
Stay informed with the latest trends and best practices in finance and procurement.
We live in an age of tremendous technological advancement. For example, we’ve witnessed dramatic improvements in AI and automation, enabling results that seemed impossible just a few years ago.
These developments are not only theoretical. If harnessed correctly, they can make a tangible difference to our everyday work experience.
We’ll look at practical examples of these benefits, including ways to leverage them in your role and across your organization right now.
Human beings are amazing. However, we also have limitations – we get tired, we have bad days, and it can be challenging, especially in a finance and accounting environment, to ensure that we’re constantly in compliance when it comes to record-keeping, given increasingly complex accounting rules.
That’s where technology – specifically AI and automation – has such a major role to play, especially when it comes to taking over tasks that were previously performed manually.
Minimizing manual tasks through AI and automation offers several significant benefits:
Automating manual tasks eliminates the need for time-consuming and repetitive activities, such as data entry, reconciliations, and report generation. This frees up finance professionals to focus on more strategic activities. It also allows them to work more efficiently and effectively, leading to overall productivity gains.
As an example, let's consider the case of a retail company that manually processes a huge volume of invoices from its suppliers. By implementing AI and automation in their accounts payable process, they can minimize manual tasks and experience increased efficiency.
Before Automation: The company receives numerous paper invoices from suppliers, which need to be manually entered into their accounting system. The accounts payable team spends a significant amount of time on data entry, validating invoice details, and matching them with purchase orders and receiving documents. This manual process is time-consuming, prone to errors, and creates a backlog, leading to delayed payments and strained supplier relationships.
After Automation: The company decides to implement an automated payment solution. This provides a single solution for everything from fund requests, to issuing corporate cards, payments, and reconciliations.
There’s no more receipt chasing, as the platform can instantly issue cards, be they virtual or physical. Users can set up rules and limits, and receipts are automatically captured for easy reconciliation – all with a full audit trail. What’s more, approval flows can be customized and automated, from employee expense requests to PO creation. Suppliers are happy as everything is seamless and smooth, and employees can focus on high-value activities as they don’t have to stress about reimbursements or expense reports.
Manual data entry is prone to errors, which can have significant consequences. By automating data entry and processing, AI reduces the risk of human error and improves data accuracy.
Writing for Inside Big Data, April Miller notes that “Manual data entry is riddled with inaccuracies. You could accidentally hit the wrong key or misread the data you’re trying to enter, which can seriously impact the accuracy of the data. However, machine learning algorithms are changing that by detecting errors in your data sets that humans might miss.”
Miller further notes that “AI can also learn from your data and improve over time. As you enter more data, AI will better detect errors and suggest corrections. It’s like having a super-powered proofreader that never gets tired or makes mistakes.”
She concludes with: “AI’s impact in fixing human error in data analytics is undeniable. It can eliminate and prevent all kinds of mistakes you make when working with data, and it can do it much faster than anyone could ever hope to accomplish.”
AI and automation, when part of automated payment solutions, can integrate regulatory requirements and accounting standards into their processes. This helps ensure compliance with legal and financial reporting obligations.
As EY puts it, “in 5 years, compliance without AI will be unthinkable.” The article notes that “Real-time compliance is becoming increasingly difficult for risk and control functions to manage due to the accelerating digitization of the world, and the adoption of a data-first approach by global regulators.”
Algorithms can perform calculations, cross-check data, and identify discrepancies more reliably than manual processes. This reduces the chances of errors that could lead to financial misstatements or regulatory compliance issues.
By reducing manual tasks and thus minimizing errors and streamlining processes, organizations can avoid the costs associated with error correction, rework, or other friction-filled processes.
Take automation company Mend: by implementing PayEm’s automated payment solution, they eliminated virtually all manual work for the finance team, and saved an average of 5 days each month – as well as saving money on unused and overlapping SaaS subscriptions.
Clearly, there are significant benefits to adding automation and AI to reduce manual tasks. From increased efficiency, to improved accuracy, more precise accounting, and impressive cost savings, among many others.
Implementing a comprehensive, connected finance and procurement solution like PayEm ensures that you can automate everything – from requests to requisitions, approvals, purchase orders, accounts payable, payment methods, and reconciliation and ERP sync.
To access this automation and gain all the benefits of reduced manual tasks, speak to a PayEm product expert today.
