The Path to Finance Hyperautomation

Automation is changing the face of finance but take one step further to hyperautomation and you have arrived at the future of modern business.

Defined as the integration of multiple technologies, tools or platforms, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation, hyperautomation streamlines as many processes as possible.

In the recent CFO Magazine Lunchtime Live WebCast, Stuart Hogben, Executive Leader at FUJIFILM Business Innovation Australia, Jason Abbruzzese, Vice-President Finance, APAC at Abercrombie & Kent and Phil Raso, General Manager Finance at FUJIFILM Australia talked to host James Solomons, Global CFO, Xref, about what hyperautomation means for CFOs and the future of finance, it was a fascinating live discussion and here are my key takeaways:

CFOs taking the transformation lead

A major role for any CFO is taking up opportunities to transform finance processes through automation. Hogben said this is where CFOs can really shine.

“It’s the role the CFO plays in actually driving an innovation agenda as well and leading from the front,” he said.

“It’s great to be able to make improvements in the finance operation space, but the role of the CFO as that driver for innovation and change within the broader business is such an important factor.”

The innovation journey will lead many finance leaders to automation, which can help free resources up to drive additional revenue. While the CFO may lead this journey, it’s ultimately a team effort, said Abbruzzese.

“I believe a CFO can benefit from really close business partnering within the business,” he said.

“I sit on the executive leadership team and as part of that, you’ll start looking at the monthly results and the performance and when things aren’t great, you start looking at gap analysis and how you can close that down.”

“Again, that enables you to talk to the different partners in the business. You can talk to your sales team, you get exposure to your marketing team, and it’s those opportunities of digging into how we are going to close the gaps, how are we going to do things differently?”

Spying hyperautomation opportunities

It’s important to know what can be automated and when. For Raso, this comes through close communication with other departments within the business, particularly IT.

“I see my role as trying to identify areas that we could automate that would give benefit to the business,” he said.

“Working closely with my business partners and leadership team, but also our key stakeholders, from different divisions within the business, one of those being the IT team.”

“Once we’ve identified an area with the key stakeholders – with the CEO, with the senior management team, and get their buy-in, we can investigate the solutions further that we could use to help with some of those pain points.”

Investigating automation processes to ensure it really will benefit a company is essential. This is where research and broader team involvement is critical, said Hogben.

“Automation can help free up resources that can then help drive additional revenue. I mean, that’s ultimately the goal of most companies, to drive the revenue stream and to do that, you need people and brain power behind it,” he said.

“So, with the goal of revenue generation, by actually freeing up resource you can support and enable your team to come up with the creative ideas.”

Building up

Automation goes well beyond accounts payable and can be integrated into procurement, order management, customer service and accounts receivable, however, automation doesn’t need to be all-encompassing to begin with.

Start small and build up. This layering approach will help staff within an organisation become accustomed to how automated software works and the benefits it can bring.

“The beauty with this is you don’t have to think enterprise-wide,” Hogben said.

“A lot of hyperautomation can start with just simple tasks and processes. One of the myths out there is you buy an ERP solution and it can do everything that the business requires. We know that’s not the case.”

“And so, what we need to do is look at what we are doing outside of the ERP that’s requiring human effort, typically what we find is documents and unstructured data that people are still manually putting into the ERP.”

“So, it’s all of the ancillary work outside of the ERPs and that really is where the low-hanging fruit is for automation.”

It’s helpful to set automation goals for your finance systems. Identify the manual work staff are doing and begin to assemble a list of tasks automation could take over.

Communication is key to automation introduction

Meeting and talking with key stakeholders outside of finance to win buy-in is a critical step in the hyperautomation journey.

“Here at FUJIFILM, we’ve been on this automation journey probably for over 10 years, and we’ve introduced automation to a lot of areas,” Raso said.

“I suppose the main thing is obviously to get people engaged and to assure them that it’s going to make their job better. Obviously, a lot of people get concerned that automation is going to take their jobs, but it can make your job better and more interesting, and it’s all a matter of communicating with your staff and getting them involved in the project.”

Winning over a leadership team is also incredibly important in any automation strategy, Hogben added.

“I think the exciting part for me is where the leadership team is championing automation and that gets a real buzz of change going through a business,” he said.