Can robotics help CFOs
improve their financial
processes?
October campaign 2017
The better the question. The better the answer.
The better the world works.
Contents
Can robotics help CFOs improve their financial
1 processes?
2 About EY
Page 2
Can robotics help CFOs improve their
financial processes?
Page 3
A rising demand for robotics
All around the world, CFOs, financial controllers and treasurers are pressured to
create opportunity from complexity. As their role evolves, they rely on their finance
and accounting function to stay one step ahead.
Furthermore, finance leaders are expected to play a much bigger role in strategic
and operational decision-making in organizations. Under pressure to streamline
their financial processes, many financial leaders are considering investments in
finance automation.
Page 4
A rising demand for robotics
Organizations, and particularly CFOs, are being asked to adapt to the ever-changing finance
landscape and to create innovative, low-cost and efficient working models. With robotic process
automation (RPA) playing an increasingly important role in driving efficiency and cost
rationalization, embracing this disruptive technology is becoming a cornerstone on the
CFO’s agenda.
RPA has the potential to not only help companies remain profitable and maintain a competitive
advantage, it might also be able to help build the connections between IT, innovation and
business operations and can be an effective entry point to enable the adoption of further
technologies.
Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS) teams can help you to identify the areas within
your financial processes that could benefit from RPA and support you as you implement these
changes. Within a short development time frame, you may be able to achieve reductions in
costs, increases in quality and reliability, and improved customer and employee satisfaction.
Page 5
Managing external expectations
Due to an increase in the number of reporting systems, globalization and changes in regulatory
requirements, finance teams are facing greater complexity. Furthermore, stakeholders have high
expectations from the business, and as a result, they are demanding better margins, business
growth and strategic contribution from the operations and finance departments.
RPA may be the right solution for you to address these challenges, as it can not only help to
streamline processes to effectively respond to those external regulatory and compliance
requirements, but could also turn out to be a highly effective tool to control your costs and
increase the efficiency of your organization.
And, with organizations laying greater emphasis on business changes and a healthy return on
investment (ROI), investing in RPA might also be a competitive advantage for you and your
organization. RPA may help you to:
1 2 3
Further standardize your
Enhance transparency in
finance processes and Reduce investments on
your financial reporting
automate financial internal risk controls
and reduce exceptions
reporting
Page 6
How RPA can fit into finance
RPA …
is enterprise-class software automation
that mimics human execution of tasks One robot is a curiosity.
via existing user interfaces. A virtual workforce is a
differentiator.
can be adopted to act as an interface
Monetizing robotics capabilities
between various financial reporting
systems and to automate repeatable value = speed x scale
finance processes.
has many applications in the financial
services industry, where the
combination of high transaction
volumes and increased regulation
places a premium on an organization’s
ability to streamline operations and
ensure appropriate levels of control.
Page 7
How RPA can fit into finance
Areas of application
Tax planning and accounting Policy, controls, governance and
► Prepare tax returns and file compliance
electronically (e.g., goods and ► Entity updates and master accounts
services, VAT, tax returns) ► Vendor and client onboarding
► Tax workbooks including tax
schedules Capital management and investments
► Journal entry processing
► Prepare tax provision by jurisdiction
► Asset migration
► Bridge provision data for tax
compliance ► Data capture
General accounting Treasury
►
►
Intercompany transfers
Reconciliations
RPA ►
►
Cash flow high volume management
Collateral management/reports
► Accruals ► Liquidity monitoring
► Month-end close ► Monthly analysis
► Journal entry processing
► Bad debt write-offs
► Allocations and adjustments
Procure to pay
► Data capture
► Vendor and client onboarding
Page 8
Robotics can enable organizations to
automate tasks as if performed by humans
This means no re-engineering, which is often
Robots use, rather than replace, existing technology
messy, expensive and disruptive
In-house Cloud Robots:
mainframe
► Link existing IT assets together to simplify,
► Core account ► Third-party
management capabilities accelerate efficiency and provide flexibility
► Transaction ► Industry utilities
► Sit atop of existing technology
processing ► Internet and intranet
► Core accounting capabilities ► Operate unattended by people
► Reporting ► Data storage
► Access systems the same way as people
► Perform repetitive tasks rapidly and reliably
► Scale up and down to match peak loads
RPA ►
►
Emulate the best user behavior
Deliver ROI in cycles measured in weeks
Enterprise Desktop
automation automation
► Workflow and rules ► Spreadsheets
► Imaging ► Word documents
► Digital channels ► PDFs
► Analytics and reporting ► Emails
► Collaboration tools ► Collaboration
► Data and
analytical tools
Page 9
Robotics administration center can enable
organizations to operate at industrial scale
IT roles Operations roles
Application hosting Business vision
Test and learn
lab environment
Organization
Interfacing system Business Skilled and
design
governance sponsorship knowledgeable
and workforce
engagement
Governance model
IT system support and maintenance
IT security
RPA Delivery
methodology
Robotics administration
center and managed
Value Repeatable
services model
realization methods and
framework processes Service model and
Scalability
agreements
Program and
governance
Auditability of the Engagement model
processes with virtual workforce
Page 10
Robotics applicability in typical finance
areas
Robots provide flexibility and connectivity between applications, increase the effectiveness of
applications and complete routine activities that previously required manual effort, but they do
not replace existing computing capabilities, and they do not generally replace entire roles.
Opportunity drivers Areas for consideration
Identify where your teams are manually … ► Intercompany transfers
► Accessing and gathering data from multiple systems ► Reconciliations
► Moving data from one system to another ► Accruals
► Checking data consistency in multiple systems ► Bad debt write-offs
► Updating the same info in multiple systems ► Month-end close
► Remediating data across several accounts ► Journal entry processing
Select processes that are … ► Entity updates and master accounts
► Well-defined, relying on rules rather than judgment ► Allocations and adjustments
► Time consuming, while being time-critical ► Vendor and client onboarding
► Executed very often (i.e. daily or weekly)
Examples:
► Using multiple systems that are not fully integrated
► Needing improvements in quality and control Trial balance for month-end
Automate extraction of monthly entity-level information from
SAP GL, and load into tax provisioning system (Corptax)
Subledger reconciliation
Monthly reconciliation of 44,000 subledger accounts,
handling thousands of disbursements valued in the billions
of dollars
Page 11
Potential benefits of RPA
RPA is likely to play an increasingly important role in driving efficiency. Not only can the
technology provide lower-cost process automation, it can also enhance customer satisfaction by
reducing manual errors.
The RPA implementation burdens (e.g., costs and timelines) for your company tend to be
relatively insignificant, compared to major IT platform updates. Therefore, it is likely that RPA
could quickly convert from a differentiator providing a competitive advantage to a standard
practice.
Increased consistency Cost savings Improved audit trail Improved scalability
Performing processes and Reduced human effort and Fully maintained logs of your Increased ability of your
tasks identically can implementation times may RPA system can be essential organization to match
eliminate potential output contribute to a decrease in for compliance monitoring demand peaks and valleys.
variations. your baseline FTE costs. and reporting.
Higher ROI Right shoring Higher productivity Better retention
Typical RPA projects can be Geographical independence Freed-up human resources Increased focus of your
completed in 9 to 12 months can reduce your need to can be utilized for higher employees on knowledge
with a potential ROI of less offshore jobs. value-added tasks. and value-added tasks might
than one year. help drive better staff
retention.
Page 12
Successful examples of RPA usage
EY has experience in managing RPA projects across the world and was recently involved
in the following engagements:
Telecommunications industry
We helped a client to apply RPA to automate the bill reimbursement process during salary computation. The
client had formerly done this manually. The use of RPA lead to significant automation and cost savings.
Construction industry
In this industry, the equipment leasing process is complex, as it is based on various leasing rate cards, leasing
rules and multiple systems (e.g., time-recording system and asset standard rates in ERP). For one of our EY
clients, this resulted in significant delays in the monthly closing cycle. The use of RPA brought significant
efficiencies and time savings to this process.
Banking and finance
We supported a bank as they were streamlining their customer acquisition process for a particular product. In the
old process, multiple departments were involved in the process chain, which caused delays and revealed a lack
of transparency. The introduction of RPA led to major process efficiencies with significant time savings.
Telecommunications industry
The finance and billing departments of one of our telecom clients were facing delays caused by their SIM card
activation processes. The use of RPA helped realize significant efficiencies and eradicated manual interventions
in the process.
Page 13
How to succeed in robotics adoption
Organizations should X Organizations should not
Use an agile and business-led approach Overdocument the existing process
An agile approach allows rapid benefit delivery, Traditional IT development is based on thorough
incremental improvement and rapid response requirements, definition and documentation.
to change.
Act now, go fast and remain nimble Overthink where to start automating
Establish metrics but solve for the obvious first, Avoid solving problems that nobody cares about;
breaking up larger solutions into manageable pick an issue that, once solved, will generate
pieces. excitement.
Focus on scale and frequency, not just Forget to start preparing for long-term
end-to-end success
Think like a robot — it’s O.K. to automate only A pilot helps make the case but is not the
parts of a process and then move onto the next objective. Organizations should prepare for rapid
process. change and to sustain the capability.
Page 14
Why EY
Our highly integrated, multidisciplinary teams are experienced in supporting clients improve their
finance function and reporting efficiency and effectiveness. We can work with you to identify
processes that can be automated and then help you to implement these changes to improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of your reporting.
Established methodology
We use a proven methodology for the RPA strategy formulation and deployment.
Experience on leading RPA tools
Our strong experience and relationship with leading RPA vendors enable us to provide RPA services with a
compelling proposition.
Future and vision
We are moving toward smart robotics. To do so, we are building industry use cases, thought leadership pieces
and collaborating with leading and disruptive technology providers.
People capabilities
Our teams include highly experienced professionals across the spectrum of RPA strategy and
deployment tools.
Certain services and tools may be restricted for EY audit clients and their affiliates to comply with applicable
independence standards. Please ask your EY contact for further information.
Page 15
About EY
Page 16
Financial Accounting Advisory Services
EY contacts
FAAS Global Innovation
Leader
Detmar Ordemann
detmar.ordemann@de.ey.com
+49 711 9881 15438
Americas Global and EMEIA
Robotics and RPA Robotics and RPA
Myles Corson Khurram Siddiqui
myles.corson@ey.com khurram.siddiqui@ae.ey.com
+1 212 773 3232 +971 4 7010418
Asia-Pacific Japan
Robotics and RPA Robotics and RPA
Bryan Peng Li Takao Minami
bryan-peng.li@cn.ey.com takao.minami@jp.ey.com
+86 10 5815 2342 +81 3 3503 1100
Page 17
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