Finance and Accounting
The evolution of financial reporting through automation
Financial reporting is one of the foundational building blocks of a successful business, offering critical insights into the company’s performance and financial health. These insights are critical in today’s highly competitive, dynamic, and complex digital landscape, helping businesses be agile, build a competitive edge, and achieve sustainable growth.
The traditional practices of manual reporting are often error-prone, time-consuming, and resource-intensive, which can hold you back in the digital economy. Embracing financial reporting automation can help overcome these challenges and elevate the overall financial reporting efficiency.
Financial Reporting Automation is no longer optional but a necessity for businesses navigating the fast-paced market landscape as technological advancements are making automated reporting feasible. Financial processes are time and resource-intensive to begin with, making reporting slower and error-prone. As a result, finance professionals cannot focus on value-added activities, like spend analysis or strategic financial management, which can be a significant hindrance in achieving a competitive edge and sustainable growth in the business environment today.
However, leveraging financial report services to embrace reporting automation can help automate different aspects of the reporting process, including:
- Data collection
- Data consolidation
- Data analysis
- Data visualisation
- Report generation
Automating these key aspects of the reporting process can make it faster, more reliable, and more accurate, ensuring you do not miss any data source to facilitate reporting integrity. As a result, the reporting process not only becomes error-free but also faster, freeing up the finance professionals to focus on more strategic aspects of financial management. In essence, financial reporting automation is not merely about keeping pace with advancing technology but leveraging it to build a competitive strategic position.
Advanced techniques for automation of financial statements
The evolution of financial reporting through automation means that strategic decisions are no longer based on intuition or historical information. As various advanced techniques have changed how companies handle and process financial information, helping companies make data-driven decisions for enhanced efficiency and growth opportunities.
Here are some of the key advancements that are facilitating the automation of financial statements:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Blockchain
- Data visualisation tools
- Data consolidation solutions
- Security and governance solutions
- Generative AI
AI and ML tools excel in identifying patterns in vast datasets and uncover previously unattainable insights. This simplifies the complex process of predictive analytics and financial forecasting, ensuring data-driven strategic financial decision-making.
RPA solutions can automate tedious, repetitive tasks like data entry, reconciliation, and ledger management to enhance reporting efficiency and allow finance professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.
This tamper-proof distributed ledger technology enhances transparency and security in financial transactions. These translate to the enhanced integrity and traceability of available financial data, facilitating auditable and error-free records while minimising fraud.
Gone are the days when only experienced financial professionals could interpret financial reports, leaving other stakeholders dependent on the finance team for insights into the company's performance and financial health. Modern data visualisation tools facilitate the development of intuitive and interactive dashboards—accessible to all stakeholders—enhancing the company's collaborative decision-making capabilities.
Data consolidation solutions, like master data management platforms, simplify accounting for every data source and ensure completeness of financial data. This provides comprehensive analysis and reporting for accurate and actionable insights.
Security and governance solutions—comprising advanced encryption, access control, and monitoring protocols—play a critical role in ensuring data security and compliance with internal policies and regulatory standards. As a result, companies can leverage technology with confidence, laying a framework for reporting and data security compliance.
A recent advancement in AI solutions, generative AI has simplified the report writing step in the financial reporting process, ensuring accurate and concise reports reach all stakeholders on time.
Financial report services can help companies leverage these advanced techniques to achieve greater accuracy, efficiency, and strategic value in financial reporting. They also ensure insights are accessible to all the relevant stakeholders, opening up more opportunities for innovation and improvement.
Challenges of embracing financial reporting automation
Financial reporting automation helps simplify the reporting process to streamline the reporting process, improve efficiency and accuracy, offer real-time insights, enhance risk management, and ensure compliance. However, adopting reporting automation comes with its own set of challenges, including:
- Concerns for data integrity and security
- Compatibility and integration with existing enterprise systems
- Managing the skill gap
- High implementation cost
Financial report services can help you overcome these challenges and embrace automation as you navigate the data economy and leverage financial reporting to achieve sustainable growth.
Enhancing Financial Reporting Automation with Infosys BPM Services
Automation is the present and future of financial reporting, and financial report services can harness the power of data to grow. Infosys BPM enterprise reporting, analysis, and planning services have everything you need to stay competitive in today’s rapidly changing markets. Enhancing outcomes across the business lifecycle, we help simplify processes, enhance productivity, and elevate reporting for 30-45% efficiency improvement. So, embrace financial reporting automation with Infosys BPM for accelerated reporting timelines, enhanced compliance, and superior stakeholder experience.
