The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March this year serves as a sobering reminder of the 2008 financial crisis. It underscores the importance of sound financial management in keeping a company afloat.

As a CFO, your office is like the control tower at an airport during a storm; organizational transformation is like navigating through turbulent weather; your office is critical in guiding the company through this change. Shareholders expect that a CFO’s strategic thinking ensures the organization stays on course and thrives. Hence, financial process automation is needed to keep your house in order. 

The need to automate and streamline financial processes transcends industries.

In professional services, you can improve billing and invoicing by automating your financial processes through automation. In financial services, it improves compliance and risk management; and in high-tech manufacturing, it enhances supply chain management capability and inventory control. 

This blog post explains financial process automation and introduces AgilePoint, a low code/no code development platform that can help CFOs automate their financial processes.

What is Financial Process Automation?

Imagine your finance team can focus on strategic decisions instead of manual data entry and processing. That's the power of financial process automation. You can automate routine financial tasks, improve accuracy, and reduce costs by leveraging technology and software. It's like having a financial assistant that never sleeps, makes errors, or takes a break and has a much more robust capability for data analysis!

Financial process automation refers to using technology to streamline financial processes and tasks. It can include automating tasks such as invoicing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, and financial reporting. Financial process automation can involve software, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics.

Examples of Financial Process Automation

• Accounts payable automation - to streamline invoice processing, approval, and payment.
• Automated expense management - to simplify the submission, review, and reimbursement of employee expenses.
• Robotic process automation (RPA) - to automate routine tasks such as data entry, reconciliation, and report generation.
• Automated payroll processing - to simplify payroll calculations, deductions, and tax filings.

AgilePoint Powers Up Financial Processes

AgilePoint is a low code/no code development platform that can help CFOs automate their financial processes. The platform integrates with popular business software like Office365, SAP, Salesforce, Anaplan, and other enterprise systems.

It empowers finance teams to create custom workflows and automation using a visual drag-and-drop interface. It allows users to automate complex financial processes without the need for coding expertise or customizing their enterprise systems.

A Fortune 100 firm used AgilePoint to extend its Anaplan workflows. For example, AgilePoint can automate the approval process for purchase orders or invoice payments, ensuring that the process is compliant and efficient.

Some customers also use AgilePoint to automate their vendor payment process, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. The automated workflow can include steps such as invoice receipt, validation, and approval, and can be integrated with the organization's accounting software for seamless processing.

Top Features of AgilePoint for Financial Process Automation

Financial process automation is an exciting new frontier for accounting and finance professionals. What used to require a team of developers and months of work can now be done in a fraction of the time with AgilePoint low code / no code development platform.

Here are some of the key features that make financial process automation easy and fast with AgilePoint:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AgilePoint's AI-driven execution and machine learning capabilities can help automate real-time financial processes. This feature can be handy in cases where processes need to adapt to changing business conditions, such as risk management or fraud detection.

Event-Driven Software Architecture

This feature can help improve the scalability and responsiveness of financial applications. It provides access to the data and context needed for better business decisions, enabling organizations to make informed decisions quickly.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

AgilePoint's connectors for popular RPA tools like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Power Automate, and Blue Prism enable employees to focus on higher priority tasks and increase their productivity—by allowing the automation of routine, monotonous tasks.

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

The platform's iPaaS capabilities enable organizations to easily integrate with essential business software, such as ERP and accounting systems. It gives businesses a more comprehensive range of functionality and reduces stress levels.

Low-Code Development Tool

The AgilePoint low-code platform allows users to develop, integrate, and deploy new financial apps with no or minimal coding—and the result is an accelerated automation process that reduces costs and improves efficiency.

Financial Processes you Can Automate With AgilePoint

Accounts Payable

Accounts payable is a financial process that involves managing vendor invoices, processing payments, and maintaining accurate records. With AgilePoint, organizations can automate the accounts payable process by creating workflows that capture invoice data, route invoices for approval, and process payments.

Accounts Receivable

Accounts receivable is a financial process that involves managing customer invoices, tracking payments, and collecting outstanding balances. AgilePoint allows users to create custom workflows that automate the accounts receivable process, reducing manual efforts and improving cash flow management.

Budgeting & Approvals

Budgeting is a financial process that involves creating and managing budgets for an organization. You can also automate the budgeting process using AgilePoint workflow recipes (capture budget data, send it for approval, and monitor actual expenses against budgets). You can also automate your approval requests using AgilePoint.

Benefits of AgilePoint for Financial Process Automation

The benefits of using AgilePoint low code / no code development platform for financial process automation include:

Regulatory Compliance: Automating financial processes with AgilePoint can help finance executives ensure that monetary transactions comply with the company's policies and regulatory requirements. Automated workflows can enforce business rules and audit trails, making tracking and managing financial transactions easier.

Improved Collaboration: AgilePoint's workflow automation tools can enable CFOs to collaborate with other departments and stakeholders. For example, you can extend Anaplan workflows and include finance, sales, and operations teams or stakeholders, allowing for better coordination and alignment.

Scalability: As organizations grow and evolve, their financial processes must scale to meet the demand. AgilePoint's low-code platform enables CFO Officers to quickly build and deploy new workflows as the business requirements change.

Key Takeaway

Just as in the aftermath of the crisis, the fallout from SVB's default is a cautionary tale for companies of all sizes and industries. Bankruptcies and buyouts triggered by the SVB crisis call for vigilance and prudence in financial decision-making, as the consequences of lax financial management, can be devastating.

AgilePoint is a low code/no code development platform that can help CFOs to automate their financial processes. With AgilePoint, CFOs can create custom workflows and automation without the need for coding expertise. CFOs can gain real-time visibility into financial data by automating processes with AgilePoint, enabling them to make better-informed decisions for their business.

To learn more about how AgilePoint can help with your financial process automation, schedule a personalized demo now!