Trintech
, the Dallas headquartered multinational Fintech service provider announced the release of its 2020 Global Record to Report Benchmark Report. According to statement issued by the firm, Trintech had surveyed nearly 200 enterprise companies from 31 countries across the globe during January 2020 to assess and estimate of the rate and level of Record to Report (R2R) process automation across these firms. Some of these firms have fully automated process, while others are in the process of automating their R2R process. But there are also those finance and accounting (F&A) firms which have no automated process for Record to Report process at the moment but are considering adoption of automation in future.
Some of the valuable findings derived from this survey on trends in R2R automation are
- The #1 biggest challenge for these firms in current market conditions is reconciliation process
- A large group of firms from among these 200 companies have stated that clear lack of standardisation across their processes has become a main roadblock affecting the efficiency of their performance.
- In the coming years, to foreseeable future of up to 2025 – these firms believe that another one of the biggest issues they face will be related to personnel management as all firms are targeting at attracting and retaining talented executives.
As per current data, among these firms only 20% of participants have some form of established and advanced automation process currently in place. However, many firms have expressed interest and are moving to automate at-least several parts of financial processes while few firms continue to show hesitance and delay in considering implementation of automation process. The statement from the Fintech provider also mentioned that it is hosting a joint webinar alongside Hackett Group on May 14th, 2020 to dig deeper into results of this benchmark report. During the webinar, participants can gain an insight on how to prepare their organisations for financial automation in the future. Key points which are expected to be addressed during the webinar include:
- Biggest challenges for month end process
- Roadblocks which prevent achieving highest level of efficiency in process
- Maturity of Financial Close Automation
- Some of Key Areas that require focus for improvement in next five years
To those unfamiliar with Hackett Group, it is a NASDAQ listed intellectual property based strategic consultancy service provider which focuses on smart automation and enterprise cloud application implementation.
Speaking about their survey report, David King, Chief Marketing Officer at Trintech said “Automating low-value, repetitive tasks completed by the office of finance is finally starting to gain traction – we see the interest in the benefits of financial automation growing each year. These insights show that there is a huge potential for organizations to achieve significant ROI through the implementation of automation technology. Now, more than ever, organizations are looking for ways to be more efficient, while increasing transparency and ensuring data integrity as part of their month end or quarter end close. The office of finance is providing insights almost daily now that are crucial for business decisions across every industry”.
Speaking on same note, Jim O’Connor, Managing Principal Advisory Practice at The Hackett Group added “Organizations need to spend more time understanding risk and less time managing data – approaches that deliver that efficiently and effectively, and drive quality into the process, have immense value”.
