Podcast: What is the Finance Automation Gap and How Do You Plug It?

In this episode from our series of finance podcasts, we discuss the so-called ‘automation gap’ for finance and accounting, and the problems it causes.

In the podcast, writer and editor Andy McCue talks to Devin Gharibian-Saki, chief solution officer at Redwood, about what causes this finance automation gap, what the impact of that is on both finance and IT and, more importantly, how to plug it.

Listen to the full podcast to find out:

• Why plugging the automation gap is critical to achieving the wider CFO goal of elevating the role of finance from number crunching to a strategic adviser to the business
• Why a huge amount of the work involved in finance processes still has to be done outside of ERP systems
• How adding point solutions to automate each individual finance process not only adds cost and complexity for IT, but also fails to significantly reduce the manual effort for finance staff
• How workflow engines and RPA have failed to deliver on finance automation promises
• Why a broader perspective on automation is needed to tackle the inherent complexity of finance processes

Gharibian-Saki explains how the inherent complexity of finance processes is the root cause of why ERP systems and add-on solutions are unable to easily automate everything. “The first set of complexity is being able to automate a single task,” he says. “The second dimension of complexity is bringing all these different types of tasks together that are supposed to be automated, whether it’s pulling data, matching data, reconciling data, getting approvals, putting data back into another system, and keeping an audit trail of all these things. And the final dimension of complexity is that you don’t just have one process, you have hundreds of processes in the finance function that all have to be automated in a very similar fashion.”

Find out how plug your finance automation gap. Listen to the Redwood Finance Podcast now.