In any organization, there are very few who do not feel pressured. Yet, everyone assumes that all departments are under the same level of stress, if not a little less – the ‘grass is always greener’ psychology.

Contrary to what some may think, finance departments must produce more than just a profit-loss statement and balance sheet. Because all managers throughout a company rely on financial data provide to adjust their own personal strategy and meet their goals, there is a lot more that needs to be produced as a result of the financial reporting process.

However, from their perspective, the financial reporting process is little more than simple data entry and a few spreadsheet calculations. In today’s modern age of automation, how much easier could it be?

A lot, actually.

Finance managers face very different operation pressures than their neighboring organizations. In addition, these challenges must be resolved before considering their strategic and tactical efforts. For example, finance managers must consider these important factors before they can even get started on their tasks.

• Legal demands, such as compliance, tax and regulation
• Demands from the Stock Exchange
• Accuracy of the numbers they’re producing
• The progress of complex financial processes, usually done manually, such as disclosure management and intercompany reconciliation.

Only when these issues are considered can financial managers start to provide data, strategic insights, and guidance to other department managers. Though finance departments would relish the opportunity to provide more expertise to other departments, tedious data-processing occupies a large amount of their time.

For these reasons, more CFOs are considering automating as much of the office of finance’s manual and time-consuming operations as possible. In fact, studies have found that investing in automated financial software is now a priority for 82% of financial leaders, leaving more time for inter-departmental tactical recommendations.[1]

Are you interested in learning more about automation and the future of financial reporting process? Visit our solutions, or contact our team.

Written by: Ashton Mathai

[1] Ryan, V. (2018, March 26). Tech Priorities for CFOs: Data Management, Analytics, RPA -. Retrieved from http://ww2.cfo.com/applications/2018/03/tech-priorities-for-cfos-data-management-analytics-rpa/