Financial Shared Services

A few years back, if you would talk about the future of RPA to finance professionals, they would picture an army of robots taking over their offices. Today, CFOs around the world feel greater pressure than ever before for the need of RPA now!

In 2016, Deloitte examined Robotic Process Automation and its roles in shared service centers and GBS since more than 74% of finance departments are planning to investigate RPA next year. The findings are truly remarkable.

With all the myths surrounding RPA, it is not a surprise that only 9% of GBS and SSCs have actually implemented RPA for their financial benefit. What is surprising however is the fact that 42% of financial leaders in SSCs have only heard about it.

So if RPA is still doing baby steps towards taking over the world of financial shared services, why do CFOs want it now?

Robotic process automation (RPA) can meet or exceed expectations when it comes to financial benefits delivery. It can help employees with processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems in a more efficient way. Even though some organizations are still skeptical or even disappointed with RPA implementation costs, each company needs to follow a different and well-thought-out strategy before adopting RPA.

Yes, you need to act now but remember that the best way to transform RPA processes is continuous improvement. So if you are thinking of implementing RPA, here are 4 processes to follow – straight from experienced SSC leaders:

1. Education: Invest in educating your employees in order to help them familiarize with RPA. Keep the human factor in mind.
2. Agree on how to measure results: Agree upfront on the benefits of RPA and how to measure them.
3. One step at a time: Introduce robots gradually in production or in the finance department, allowing our employees to get used to the new approach. This will give you time to monitor the quality of the outcome.
4. Select the right process: Just because you heard of it and your CFO wants it, doesn’t mean that RPA is the best solution for you. Make sure that the process you selected can be emulated by a robot and do tests regularly.

RPA is an innovation that will transform the landscape of transaction processing. In order to unlock all the benefits and potential value across multiple functions, organizations need to think big. In SSCs, RPA can not only deliver higher quality at low cost but also improve efficiency and reliability.

To learn more about Robotic Process Automation, join EBCGs Robotic Process Automation Excellence in Bratislava on November 8th.

Earlier this year Deloitte has released its 2015 Global Shared Services survey revealing the latest insights and trends on the growth and evolution of SSCs.

According to the findings from this survey organizations are not only increasingly expanding their Shared Services organizations, demonstrating benefits to the broader enterprise and overall success, but most of the respondents are also looking to increase the number of functions within their SSCs in the future.

As all of them tend to recognize strong value from leveraging a Shared Services model, we decided to provide you with key findings of the 2015 survey. Why is SSC model a good decision for your organization? Check out the infographics below and find out more.

For more information, please visit Deloitte.