Yooz AP Automation Blog

The State of Automation in Finance: What Comes After Digitization?

Written by Yooz | Aug 17, 2021 6:42:31 PM

 

DALLAS, Texas - August 12, 2021 - Yooz, the simplest, most powerful, and easiest-to-use Cloud-based Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) automation software company, commissioned the first edition of their global report based on the largest exclusive survey of over 1,000 Finance and Accounting decision-markers across eight countries (US, France, UK, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium). The findings will be unveiled on August 18, 2021 with a sneak peek webinar in partnership with IOFM on August 17.

 

"The State of Automation in Finance 2021" report takes stock of Accounting and Finance practices and identifies the expectations, fears, and vision of these decision-makers for 2022, as well as the technologies that will enable them to move into automation now.

 

More than 30% of the companies surveyed said it will take over two years to absorb the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and 15% estimated between one to two years for recovery.

 

Companies Have Identified the Top Post-COVID Challenges as Process Optimization and Cyber Security

 

Before the health crisis, companies had already identified three major challenges:

 

  1. Adapting to changes in their environment (particularly regulatory changes
  2. Digital transformation
  3. Increasing productivity

 

While these three challenges are still relevant, two new internal issues have emerged:  optimizing financial processes and strengthening cybersecurity.

 

Persistent Obstacles to the Automation of Accounts Payable Despite the Identification of Risks

 

Three main obstacles to automation adoption in the P2P process have been identified:

 

  1. The complexity of the processes
  2. The multiplicity of channels (paper, e-mail, EDI, scanning, etc.)
  3. Change management

 

According to the companies surveyed some of the major side effects of the delay in implementing automation to the AP process include: increased delays in payment, deterioration in relations with suppliers and additional costs, errors, loss of documents.

 

Additional risks to the lack of automation is the inability to work remotely. 52% of companies have found themselves unable to manage accounts payable effectively from home.

 

Accelerating Technology Investment

 

Three-quarters of companies acknowledge that the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the digital transformation of the accounting/finance department, yet only 20% of companies will be using a solution to automate and dematerialize their supplier invoicing processes in 2021.

 

Beyond the need to automate, there are real performance requirements the post-COVID environment has that accelerated the need for technological investments for most businesses.

 

At the top of the list companies are looking for secure solutions capable of integrating with other software (accounting, ERP, etc.) and platforms that are capable of extracting and analyzing massive data in real-time while remaining simple to use.

 

Discover the exclusive results of the first worldwide research project that investigates "The State of Automation in Finance 2021" during our live webinar on Tuesday, August 17, 2021, with the accounts payable experts Mark Brousseu, President of Brousseau & Associates, and Nimia Amaya, Senior Marketing Director, Americas of Yooz.

 

In this webinar, we will continue to add to the ongoing dialog of their impact Covid has had on the Finance function and how it changed the top priorities for Finance leaders globally.