Living in the high paced digital world of today, one thing is certain: the nature of the BPO market is all set to fundamentally change because of the robotic automation of businesses and its processes. The truth is, most of the success stories of the modern world are somehow linked to industry verticals like telecoms. Thus, if we believe that robotic automaton will live up to its full potential, then it should have a significant impact on the all business processes across all industries. And, it should particularly have an impact on the fields of accounting and finance, especially accounts payable.

Until now, the biggest improvements in the processing of accounts payable have been possible due to the following three approaches:

• Inputting manual information into systems electronically, such as optical character recognition and scanning
• Using workflow to automate processing of the information as much as possible
• Standardization of the data fields so that the interfaces are improved, such as electronic data interchange

With the help of robotic automation, we believe, there will be many more new opportunities open to us. These include but are not limited to data gathering, cross-system manual processing, data reporting, monthly account closure, and reconciliation, data updates in bulk, and IT and ERP processes.

Let us take a plunge into the opportunities provided by robotic automation and discuss them in detail.

Reconciliation of Matching Errors

Reconciliation of errors is perhaps one of the most daunting tasks when it comes to accounting and finance. Since the process requires data from a number of different sources and systems, which is non-standard in most of the cases, people resort to carrying out this function the human way. However, with the use of robotic software automation, the inputs from different data sources, matching the documents and then applying to them systematic reasoning, can reduce the need for reconciliation tasks tremendously. And, in addition, the number of people you need to get the task done will also be greatly reduced.

Cross-System Manual Processing

Normally, it is humans that are responsible of serving the purpose of being an intermediary for different systems and processes. The data is to be read by one person on a system and is then to be transferred to another system. And, there are a number of steps in between as well. With the help of robotic automation, implementation of the interface becomes much easier. They will be essentially doing the same thing that the humans did, but in much lesser costs and with increased efficiency. It will also provide 100% adherence to the process requirements while at the same time, minimizing the risk of intrusion into the systems.

While in most of the cases, it is still humans who are managing the accounting and finance for businesses, it is not far away that robotic automation will be the leading choice. This is because not only does robotic automation increase the efficiency of work, it is also going to be much less costly than hiring and entire team of accountants and finance professionals. As a business, it is important to be prepared for what the future will bring. And, for software vendors, this is one great opportunity that they can cash on as this is going to be the norm in the next few years to come.