Drive strategic change in CFOs office with autonomous finance

By Ron Jethani*

Ron Jethani

The Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO’s) role continues to evolve as the business and the markets remain dynamic and organisations continue to grapple with the aftereffects of the pandemic. This indicates both an opportunity and a challenge for the CFO, for it expands the scope of work and at the same time paves way for new ways of working. At an organisational level, financial leaders are expected to play a crucial role in formulating, evaluating, and implementing strategic policies that impact the performance of the organisation. This has forced leaders to revisit company-wide processes and deploy the latest technology to ensure digitisation and financial transformation.

Drivers of financial transformation

With this new evolving role, CFOs need to ensure an equal amount of transition for the front office and back office of finance. Leaders are now looking for ways to mold their teams to be productive and efficient with the help of robust, integrated technological infrastructure. As per a recent Gartner Survey” Digital Technology Use Cases in Finance” organisations need to invest in six digital capabilities: robotic process automation (RPA)-driven finance process automation, routine business decision automation, intelligent (hyper)finance process automation, business decision augmentation, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled analysis and decision support, and AI-enabled nudges to achieve their ambitious business goals. Leaders across the globe are now seeking the best combination of technological innovation to meet the requirements of their respective enterprises.

New Dawn: Autonomous finance

As CFOs need to think of out-ofthe-box ideas to manage, analyze and extract insights to yield maximum business growth, new age technological software comprising of RPA, AI & ML technologies AI has been a game-changer to ensure business agility and scalability at a global level. AI- and automationenabled ERPs are acting as catalysts to harness data and processes within the ERP system to reshape financial processes and strategies to reap benefits.

One such new innovation is that of autonomous software – a dynamic data-driven platform whose behavior continuously morphs as the underlying domainspecific data changes. To explain further on, autonomous software is the same technology that has disrupted the B2C space through apps like Amazon and Netflix. Amazon uses autonomous software to provide recommendations to customers while they shop based on their preferences. It is also used by Netflix to provide its viewers with a customised entertainment list as per their viewing patterns. Similarly, using autonomous software for the finance function ensures processes and activities are partly governed and majority operated by self-learning software agents that optimise front and back-office operations.

An ebook by Gartner “Achieve Autonomous Finance” states that 64% percent of CFOs believe autonomous finance can become a reality within the next six years, but few are making progress toward it. Autonomous finance is an emerging technology, which is now being considered by various CFOs when talking about digital transformation in the office of the CFO. Autonomous finance is driven by technologies such as the cloud, robotic process automation (RPA), advanced analytics, natural language processing (NLP), and AI. Companies that are thinking of incorporating autonomous finance in their organisations are bound to have a competitive advantage over peers for they will be utilising a combination of RPA and AI to yield greater business insights, improved financial accuracy, predictability, and significant reduction of mundane manual tasks in the finance function. It will also help in increasing efficiency by automating FTE-heavy finance processes such as order-to-cash, accounting, and cash operations. This ensures important financial metrics are constantly monitored and cash flow is in check. ➤

“As CFOs need to think of out-of-the-box ideas to manage, analyze and extract insights to yield maximum business growth, new age technological software comprising of RPA, AI & ML technologies AI has been a game-changer to ensure business agility and scalability at a global level.”

Not only this, autonomous finance enables finance managers to extract actionable insights from complex data for forecasting and planning future initiatives. Moreover, it enhances employee productivity by mimicking human intelligence and providing more time for value-added tasks across the finance department. It also allows financial leaders to get a holistic view of revenue realisation by identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses in the business processes.

Empower your financial processes

With the CFOs office encompassing multiple processes catering to various requirements of the organisation, Autonomous Finance has been able to cover multiple financial processes including order-to-cash, record-to-report, and treasury. Highradius with its AI-enabled autonomous software supports organisations across all three domains by optimising cash flow, improving cash forecasting, and achieving zero-day close. HighRadius processes 4.7 trillion dollars in financial transactions annually and has 13+ patented use cases that bring real-time intelligence to automate clerical, repetitive work and help users make timely and accurate decisions.

With Highradius’s Autonomous Receivables enterprises get a chance to witness the magic of AI-powered software for accounts receivables which helps the finance team across all aspects of invoiceto-cash starting with credit, billing & invoicing, collections, cash app, and deductions.

It helps enterprises by creating working capital impact, reducing DSO, and checking for revenue leakages. Credit risk management software leverages AI to predict blocked orders based on past order volumes and payment patterns, alerting credit analysts about customers whose credit

“With the CFOs office encompassing multiple processes catering to various requirements of the organisation, Autonomous Finance has been able to cover multiple financial processes including order-to-cash, record-to-report, and treasury.”

balances are close to maxing out. Also, the Global E-Invoicing and Payment Software comes with the functionality of completely automating invoice delivery across multiple platforms and eliminating bottlenecks for receiving payments across the globe.

Moreover, the software uses a template agnostic AI-based data capture leading to an almost 100% success rate in capturing electronic data from multiple sources. This helps in achieving 90% invoice automation rates, reducing manual labor. Autonomous Receivables also supports collections analysts by predicting payment delivery dates with AI and worklist prioritisation to act proactively and ensure faster receivables recovery with AI-Based Collections Software Solution. It also helps in customising dunning strategies with AI-recommended actions and promise to pay analysis in collection. This eliminates time spent on checking payment statuses and sending out past-due notices. The deductions team can also utilise Deduction Management Software which aids in improving the Net Recovery Rate using an AI-Based dispute validity predictor. It predicts potential invalid deductions using past resolution trends and deduction amounts so that analysts can focus on resolving and recovering invalid deductions.

Highradius’s Autonomous Treasury helps cash and treasury professionals across the globe to automate critical processes which are linked to important business-related decisions such as borrowing, investing, and moving money. It utilises the latest AI and cloud technologies to guide finance professionals in areas of cash forecasting and cash Management. This helps them in doing proper data-driven analysis to take decisions that impact their company’s overall cash situation and strategy.

In the space of account reconciliation, Autonomous Accounting aids accounting professionals in achieving zeroday close with the help of end-toend financial close automation. It also uses AI-based anomaly detection which saves teams from manual work during the monthend, ensuring smooth review and process continuity. It also helps in optimising account reconciliation by identifying and resolving variances ensuring efficiency and accuracy in reconciliation.

Highradius with its autonomous software technology helps organisations in utilising the power of humans and machines to create immense business impact in the organisation. It aids the CFO to strengthen his position as CFO of the future which utilises the bestin-class technology to extract financial data and use it to influence operational decision-making and strategy.

“Autonomous Receivables also supports collections analysts by predicting payment delivery dates with AI and worklist prioritisation to act proactively and ensure faster receivables recovery with AI-Based Collections Software Solution.”

Conclusion

As CFOs adorn new responsibilities, it is quite clear that Autonomous Finance is poised to handle most of the manual financial tasks and more. AI is going to play an influential role in this new technology used by financial teams and will be an imperative part of an organisation when thinking about financial transformation. This will open a new chapter in the finance department where professionals will not just be proficient in the fundamentals of finance such as number crunching and accounting but also in interpreting data and business analysis. This will ensure that the CFOs office plays a crucial role in risk management, data-based storytelling, and strategic policy making in the times to come.

*Ron Jethani Senior Director, Solution Engineering HighRadius, APAC www.highradius.com

“As CFOs adorn new responsibilities, it is quite clear that Autonomous Finance is poised to handle most of the manual financial tasks and more. AI is going to play an influential role in this new technology used by financial teams and will be an imperative part of an organisation when thinking about financial transformation.”