Digital transformation in the finance department has never been more exciting.
Often regarded as the most conservative echelon of the modern enterprise, today’s CFOs and CPOs are embracing new technologies, deploying automation, deep analytics, and the forefront of machine learning techniques to take control of processing costs, spend and overall financial performance.
As technology advances into the workplace, the traditional roles of finance personnel are changing as more processes are automated and data “crunching” takes the heavy lifting out of the day-to-day routines.
That’s not to say that overall workloads are now lower. Technology has also created greater expectations, from management, suppliers, clients and customers alike.
This change, however positive, does not happen automatically. A major challenge for the modern CFO and CPO is to teach finance and procurement staff to take advantage of the new technologies. Failure to do so would leave the company hanging on to the old conventions while competition adopts automation and AI. The change challenges professionals too, whose once core competencies are now the primary remit of the AI algorithms.
At the heart of financial digital transformation is, of course, data. By consolidating information into next-gen cloud provisions like Basware’s, the power of machine learning can be deployed to create impactful results – from deriving powerful intelligence and reporting to creating finance departments which turn from a cost center to a revenue generator.
The cloud is at the heart of Basware’s offering. As well as being the platform which drives its users’ insights and efficiency, it provides the basis for the world’s biggest open financial network, which encompasses a million organizations in 100+ countries.
The network lets enterprise send and receive orders, invoices, and credit notes to newly-discovered or existing suppliers, while maintaining compliance standards wherever on the globe transactions take place.
Once onboarded (a simple and clear process), suppliers can self-manage, with online catalogs available to enterprise buyers.
Orphaned invoices and non-PO payments can be handled either by robotic processes or referred for human intervention. The mean effect is a massive lowering of human errors, typically caused by manual entry, repetitive tasks, and traditional paper-based financial processes.
“With its proven customer activation program, Basware helps companies to quickly set up a connection with as many trading partners as possible in a structured and qualitative way. It’s a win-win situation. The main advantages for us are the cost savings, the international legal compliance and the ease of outsourcing.” Arcelor Mittal, Flat Carbon Europe.
Clearly, a transforming financial division will need a full raft of advice and a coherent, stepwise roadmap, as befitting the department’s pivotal role in the organization.
But by partnering with Basware, the transition to the cloud of procurement and finance operations will not impact ongoing processes – Basware’s long financial experience ensures a business-focus at all times.
The change to becoming an insights-driven company is a desirable one for many. In order to finance and procurement to set up for future competitiveness and growth, technology and personnel will need to form new relationships. Basware calls this #SuperFinance – a mind-machine partnership.
As artificial intelligence becomes a new colleague to people, finance and procurement professionals will adopt new skills. Managing behavioural change in personnel doesn’t happen overnight, but by having staff learn to recognize biases and heuristics in their current ways of working and decision-making, they can begin to critically review the AI’s suggestions, and connect information from the real world to financial supply chain data. This enables them to adopt a new, more strategic role.
Transactions management on a daily basis will gradually stop, and epidemic problems can be clearly and objectively addressed as the collaboration with AI becomes the norm.
With Basware’s P2P cloud solution, your finance department can:
- Control your spend from a single PO to large-scale MRP-led procurement activities
- Improve visibility into data sets to make smarter decisions
- Deploy process automation, massively reducing costs and complexity
- Optimize payment terms and take advantage of early payment discounts
- Improve supplier relations going forward
- Automate 100 percent of orders and invoices
- Streamline supplier evaluation and onboarding processes with a collaborative, networked sourcing solution.
“We told Basware what we wanted, and were impressed by their proven technology and best practices. One of our requirements was that the solution had to integrate seamlessly into our existing financial back end. Basware’s solutions are easy to combine with existing standard AP modules. That’s one of the reasons we chose Basware. Over the years, SITA has switched from British accounting software Sage over to SAP, but Basware has stayed.” Serge Flantua, Director of Shared Services, SITA
To learn more about Forrester’s Report on the Total Economic Impact of Basware’s Purchase-To-Pay Cloud Solution please follow this link or alternatively, you can contact Basware directly.