Automating R2A processes goes beyond digitalizing finance

Indeed, the goal of the continuous financial close is becoming a CFO objective that is putting greater responsibility on record-to-analyze (R2A) teams to reduce financial close cycle times and enhance the accuracy of reported figures.

While digitalization can speed up processes, eliminate errors and manual effort, and provide information quickly in real time, it isn’t the sole the remedy for overcoming frictions in your R2A processes.

Implementing automation drives value-added activities

Finance and accounting (F&A) processes are mainly automated to eliminate manual effort and errors, and shift employee focus onto more analytical, value-added activities.

But while many organizations have already implemented tools and technologies to automate transactional activities such as journal postings or reconciliation, the results haven’t always been what they expected.

Seven key points for automating R2A processes

To ensure digitalization generates the results you expect, it’s important you consider the following points when selecting the right solutions to automate your R2A processes:

• Ensure the processes scheduled for automation have been standardized
• Remember that the better, more complete, accessible, and consistent your data, the better the results
• Adjust your policies to the new digital environment – what worked in the manual world may not be needed in the automated one
• Look at your clients’ ERPs and leverage their functionalities to the maximum. In many cases this requires rethinking or cleansing the master data structure or activities inventory
• Select solutions that enable monitoring and control, give integrated visibility into the process, and provide more transparency around your data
• Integrate technologies that enable real-time data flow to provide constant access to process and finance information, while also giving you the ability to make rapid decisions on the fly
• Select the right tools to connect departments across your organization and break down siloes. For example, when you remove the data flow barriers between finance, procurement, marketing, legal, and HR, processes become more streamlined and give a more comprehensive view of what’s happening across your organization.

Finally, it’s important to remember that sometimes less is more. Automate the R2A processes that have already been standardized, put data front-and-center, and automate those that will drive more transparency to your finance function.

Discover more about how Capgemini’s AI.Controllership – part of our Frictionless Finance offer – helps bring more automation to your R2A processes, while taking you one step closer to realizing a continuous close, contact malgorzata.bateup@capgemini.com