Impact of Automation for a Fast Month End Close

The common adage in terms of speed, quality and cost states that you can only pick two. In other words, if you want something done faster and better, you will have to pay for it. If you want something fast and cheap, you need to prepare for a reduction in quality. However, this blog will detail how automation enables you to achieve a high-quality yet fast month end close — i.e. you get to have your cake and eat it too.

Best-in-class companies are managing their reconciliations with…

• Up to a 95% reduction in errors
• Up to 99% of routes automatically reconciled before the day begins
• All at reduced costs today and tomorrow

Reconciliation Investigation

When employees are stuck on manual data management and matching, there is little time left for investigating exceptions. Automation can change that. Focusing attention on identifying core issues, as to the reasons for the exceptions, and identifying potential initiatives can improve the close process so these exceptions decrease over time. To achieve a fast month end close, all of the pieces must come together.

Repetitive Constants

Journal Entries (JEs) are a constant within the office of finance; most companies will be managing hundreds if not thousands of these a month. Automation dramatically reduces this repetitive burden. While aiming toward a fast month end close, you have increased visibility on only the JEs that need attention and are able to save your employees’ time for tasks that require high-value decision-making.

When viewing issues in isolation, it’s often hard to detect larger patterns. An automated solution enables you to discover if certain divisions or locations of your business have high task counts, why they do and how you can help them to be more efficient. This in-depth investigation ultimately makes the entire organization more productive and able to help move the business forward.

Improving the Close

Change is always difficult, especially without a strong catalyst. However, staying ahead of the competition should be incentive enough. Automation enables companies to keep their existing technology landscape and have robots listen, monitor and react to any developments.

Adjustments are always easier to swallow when you get to retain some semblance of familiarity. Employees can enjoy increased efficiency and accuracy through automation without disruption to any ERP systems already put in place.

Automation for the Long Run

Similar to any change to the status quo, automation becomes justified through a solid ROI, and it enables you to present these efficiencies and savings to convince your organization of the need and ease to implement change. One ­final point to bear in mind though is that it’s not only about cost control today, but also about cost avoidance tomorrow. If you are looking to grow your business, automation helps you do this far more efficiently and effectively as you expand and develop as an organization.

Now we shall return to our starting adage of choosing between cost, quality and speed. As detailed throughout this blog, automation enables you to have the best of all three worlds. You can save money by identifying exceptions, which increases the quality of your value-added activities and leads to a faster month end close.

To learn more about automating your month end close, check out our solutions.

Written by: Chelsea Downey