Autonomous Finance – A CFO’s Power Tool in 2023

Finance technologies today have evolved beyond automation with capabilities such as adaptive learning, data-driven decision-making, and AI-ML powered features. The technologies that constitute autonomous finance are undergoing rapid innovation to improve their capacities to manage finance functions without human intervention. Autonomous finance is now proving to be a boon which helps CFOs streamline their finance operations as they shift focus to maintain cash flow and preserve their bottom-line.

Source: Forrester

While most CFOs surveyed (64%) believe autonomous finance will become a reality within the next six years, only a few are making progress towards it. CFOs will need to broadly experiment with various technology based finance solutions to realize what works best for them. For example, predictive analytics driven cash flow forecasting models can help businesses gain visibility into their cash inflows and outflows by using statistical computations that collect information such as invoice data, past payment trends, etc.

Here’s why 64% of leaders think they should invest in autonomous finance:

CFOs now need to create a definitive workflow that unlocks the potential for autonomous software for their teams to use and drives up the ROI of the organization. Businesses are also expected to incorporate data-driven insights and advanced analytics into their autonomous finance systems to operate effectively. 

Aligning business growth with technology

The complex market conditions are forcing businesses to undergo rapid change. With an increase in demand for products and services, businesses might face a cash crunch. To keep cash flowing, it is important to implement the right technology which will give a realistic cash flow plan based on the delays in the collection of receivables.

360 degree visibility into your finance functions

Customer account portfolios are the key to decision making for every business. A unified view of all customer accounts would help your teams to set appropriate credit limits, send correspondence based on payment history, and auto-send invoices for multiple accounts, creating a better customer experience.

Tech-powered human workforce

Manual accounting functions often lead to human errors. Finance functions such as remittance aggregation and invoice matching take up nearly 70% of the analysts’ time. Autonomous finance solutions can help the finance team improve operational  efficiency and maintain accuracy by automating these processes.

How can autonomous finance propagate the growth of your business?

Autonomous finance can help you optimize your front, middle, and back-office operations, yielding real-time insights and better flexibility for financial planning. It will allow your team to spend less time and effort on clerical activities and focus more on strategic tasks.
Having an autonomous finance solution in place will: 

1. Improve business KPIs : Big data and automation together helps improve the key performance indicators of your business. For e.g., automated AR collections process helps your analysts stay on top of payments and collections practices to reduce days sales outstanding (DSO).
2. Increase efficiency : Autonomous finance solution fast-tracks business processes with better accuracy. It increases the efficiency of your systems by auto-aggregating data, tracking notes, reminders, and funneling your aging buckets based on customer past-dues.
3. Reduce operational cost : Autonomous finance enables customers to address queries faster, interact with your systems at any time, and get onboarded quicker. The use of chatbots and other interactive technologies will help businesses lower their expenses spent on customer service and reporting. 
4. Provide competitive advantage: Autonomous finance enables you to stay ahead of the competition by devoting time to high-value activities such as customer relationship management, creating credit policies, and resolving deductions.

Source: Salesforce

3 steps to help CFOs make the most of autonomous finance solutions

CFOs must transform their understanding of finance in order to fulfill the demands of driving growth and innovation. They need to acknowledge a steady partnership between humans and technology, which will bring significant changes to workflows and resolve its associated risks. 

Enabling autonomous finance at your office with HighRadius

HighRadius is a top-tier autonomous finance platform provider with a proven track record of optimizing cash flow, reducing DSO, and increasing operational efficiency to help companies achieve a stronger ROI in just a few months. HighRadius processes over $4.7 trillion in receivables transactions annually, and is trusted by 700+ enterprise and mid-market companies worldwide. 

HighRadius’ autonomous receivables management solution enables faster receivables conversion due to connected AR processes of invoicing, collections, credit, cash app and deductions. With AI and RPA powered technology, the software helps you reduce your DSO and provide real-time visibility across your AR teams.

HighRadius’ autonomous treasury solution powered by the Rivana artificial intelligence platform enables you to forecast with the highest accuracy across all cash flow categories. It connects seamlessly with all major banks, ERPs, and independent market data sources with global cash visibility and positioning. 

HighRadius’ autonomous accounting solution enables you to make a day-zero financial close through immediate and accurate decisions with AI powered accounting anomaly transaction detection. It provides a reconciliation platform to identify and resolve variances for general ledger accounts through configurable matching rules and algorithms.

To learn more about HighRadius solutions and how they can benefit your business – talk to our experts today.