RPA In Finance: A Comprehensive Guide

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. It’s a recent trend of hyper-automation that enables organizations to automate specific recurring tasks. The process involves using low-code software bots that understand the rationale behind such time-consuming business processes.

RPA can seamlessly execute various digital tasks in finance, including invoice processing, data entry, updating records, and generating financial reports. Therefore, as a business owner, you’d want to invest in this software suite to improve efficiency and productivity in your organization. Here is a comprehensive guide to RPA in Finance.

Types Of Automation

RPA can further be organized into specific categories, including attended robotic processes, hybrid robotic processes and fully automated robotic processes.

Attended Robotic Processes

In this case, a robot will perform specific tasks but await end-user input. For example, a user may have to validate elements like a digital signature before a bot processes the data.

Hybrid Robotic Processes

Only requires a human to initiate the automation process, and the bots will take care of the rest unattended. For instance, you can trigger the RPA to verify a particular customer, and it automatically captures the necessary data, evaluates, and finishes the verification process.

Fully Automated Robotic Processes

Specific business processes, such as invoice management, can be fully automated. For example, when a supplier sends an invoice via email, the bots will read and scan the invoice. If it contains accurate data, it shares it with the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, where data is uploaded for processing. However, if the invoice data is incorrect, the bots will send the invoice back to the supplier, informing them of the wrong details.

In light of that, choosing an RPA solution that suits your business needs is best. Fortunately, there are top RPA vendors you can partner with to implement RPA solutions successfully. For example, hiring 1Rivet’s RPA services can provide you with a smooth transition from manual to automatic processes. With their solutions, you can transform how you do business by improving the accuracy and efficiency of your workflow.

How To Identify Potential Activities For RPA

Some characteristics make a specific financial process suitable for RPA, including:

• Large volumes and repetitive
• Time-sensitive
• Susceptible to errors, primarily if manual approaches are used
• Clear performance rules and procedures
• Mainly employs structured digital data

In that case, you’d want to identify and prioritize financial operations that qualify for RPA and begin the implementation process.

How RPA Can Be Applied In Finance

RPA can be applied in finance differently; continue reading to get our overview below.

Account Opening

It may take much time to open and validate a new bank account. Therefore, you can use RPA software to automatically verify customer identity, past credit record, or address details to quicken the process. Also, it validates if a client meets the compliance rules.  Afterwards, the bots open a new account and send the relevant details to the customer.

Invoice Automation

Invoice processing is an essential financial task in every organization. However, manually processing a high volume of invoices requires a lot of time and effort and is prone to human error since one can miss details or enter incorrect data. Luckily, using AI (artificial intelligence), RPA can extract data from various scanned or editable invoices and process invoices faster. Therefore, you can avoid financial penalties associated with late or incomplete payments.

Loan Processing

Loan processing is a tedious process that involves a lot of paperwork and data checks. The good thing is that with RPA, you can easily automate loan initiation, document processing, quality control, and post-closing.

The bots can work with applications faster than humans by automatically extracting data, downloading files, analyzing, and filing. This speeds up loan processing while leaving no room for error. Financial institutions leverage RPA in mortgage lending to systemize, validate, and standardize all processes.

Tax Reporting

RPA bots can execute recurring tax processes, such as submitting tax filings to tax authority web portals. This saves you time and reduces errors associated with manual approaches.

Record Journal Entries

RPA software can extract journal entries from emails, PDF files, or Excel sheets shared by suppliers or customers and post them in relevant journals. Also, the bots can automatically attach supporting documents.

Reconciliations

Bank reconciliations can significantly challenge many organizations, especially during the closing. Luckily, RPA bots can match payment data with bank records helping you to reconcile your accounts automatically. Also, it can flag any inconsistencies or variations for further investigation.

Fraudulent Activity

Compliance officers must sort through many suspicious reports to identify fraudulent activities. Fortunately, RPA software can sift through large volumes of suspicious activity reports and detect risks such as transactional fraud.

Benefits Of Using RPA In Finance

What are the benefits of implementing RPA in your organization?

Drives Growth

RPA optimizes various business processes, including financial reporting. This ensures high productivity enabling organizations to scale efficiently.

Transforms Customer Experience

With RPA implementation, you can improve customer experience by ensuring faster processing times, responsive customer support, and more personalized services.

Effectively Manages Regulatory Compliance

RPA can help businesses manage regulatory compliance by automating processes related to compliance reporting. This way, you can eliminate risks, such as regulatory fines or reputational damage associated with non-compliance.

Boosts Operational Efficiency

RPA solutions streamline business workflows without compromising quality. Ideally, the bots execute tasks consistently based on a specified set of rules and procedures. This ensures higher accuracy and productivity and reduces the cost of operations.

Helps Fight Financial Crime

RPA bots can detect and flag potential fraudulent activities. Ideally, it confirms if data uploaded into the systems aligns with the anti-money laundering (AML) guidelines and thus helps organizations fight financial crime.

Enables Financial Planning

With the help of RPA bots, you can capture data and generate reports to track present and past trends and predict the future. For example, current financial data can help forecast future expenses. This facilitates effective planning to orient financial activities toward the future.

Saves Time

Bots automate time-consuming routine tasks. This frees workers to focus on other vital tasks, such as building stronger client relationships.
Therefore, investing in RPA is vital to drive efficiencies and create value for your organization.

Conclusion

Robotic Process Automation is essential for automating high-volume repetitive tasks and rule-based business processes in the workplace.

Above are its benefits and significant applications in finance. Altogether, you’d want to choose a reputable RPA service provider for intelligent automation and to scale up your earning potential.