Business Drivers to Automate

Following a high growth phase of its retail locations, it struggled with a very manual, fragmented, Excel-based reconciliation process that only became more complex as it expanded into international markets. This created a huge bottleneck at the month end close period because, as the store numbers increased, so did the amount of work needed to be completed. This resulted in a lot of overtime to continue to meet reporting deadlines with a highly manual workload. Additionally, numerous technology platforms existed in different areas of the business which required reconciliation. So, for users to work cross-functionally across departments and locations, they were forced to learn a different process and technology for each of the areas. With a lack of consistency and standardization across the overall reconciliation process, the retail organization experienced extended training periods for staff in new roles. Overall, their financial close process was described as inefficient, time-consuming and error-prone.