Digital Transformation and Automation: Tips for Finance

By 2026, the global investment for digital transformation is expected to reach $3.4 trillion. With all the investment, it’s safe to say that organizations are focused on digital transformation and automation for good reason. 

Let’s take a look at the nuances between digital transformation vs. automation, and most importantly, how your organization can benefit from process automation.

Coming Up

What is Digital Transformation?

What is Automation?

How Can Digital Transformation and Automation Grow Your Company?

What is the Difference Between Digital Transformation and Automation?

How are Digital Transformation and Automation Connected?

How to Improve Digital Transformation and Automation in Finance?

Closing Thoughts

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the implementation of digital technology within a business to drive greater value for customers and dramatically reshape how you get work done. 

Put simply, digital transformation is the mindset, approach, and strategy to how the organization plans to utilize its people and technological tools to streamline business processes and enable stronger decision making capabilities. 

Digital transformation may involve any type of modernization in IT, from the creation of digital business models to cloud computing software usage, for example. 

What is Automation?

Automation is the application of software to execute processes and workflows without the need for human intervention (or with minimal human intervention, depending on the technology). Through automation, digital transformation is achievable. 

With automation software like SolveXia, you can streamline entire finance functions and connect otherwise disparate data. In turn, you gain a centralized source of truth for the business with increased accessibility and accuracy. 

Since automation technology helps to move processes along, your team can allocate more time to high-level tasks, without having to worry about key processes being completed properly. 

How Can Digital Transformation and Automation Grow Your Company?

Digital transformation and automation enables efficiency, promotes scalability, and increases capacity. 

Typically, constraints like time and money can hinder a business’ growth. With automation, you can continue to carry out tasks 24/7 because the technology doesn’t have to sleep. 

With automation you remove manual errors so you can save money and resources by reducing mistakes, removing key man dependency and boosting productivity. This enables finance teams to accomplish more and deliver greater insights to the business.

By adding automation solutions and modernizing your tech stack, you can:

• Automate and streamline workflows
• Remove key person dependencies 
• Integrate data systems and information 
• Minimize or replace redundant manual data entry 
• Properly route documents 
• Boost customer satisfaction 
• Increase employee satisfaction 
• Expedite approval processes 
• Enable accessibility 
• Promote standardization and internal control 
• Reduce manual errors

What is the Difference Between Digital Transformation and Automation?

It’s easy to confuse digital transformation and automation because they are often spoken about together when planning to achieve business goals.

You can have automation without digital transformation, but not the other way around. This is because digital transformation is the broader umbrella of what you wish to accomplish through the use of technology and automation tools. 

Digital transformation is the lens by which you look out at your business to improve and modernize your operations with the help of the right tools and people. Automation is one of the types of technologies used in digital transformation. 

How are Digital Transformation and Automation Connected?

Digital transformation and automation are inherently connected, as described above. When pushing for digital transformation, you’ll have to take a look at your existing tech stack and find the right solution to evolve it into the future. 

It takes an investment in people, tools, and overall change management to successfully make digital transformation come to fruition. 

The two are connected because they both:

1. Focus on Customer Value

Ultimately, every business is centered around providing value to the customer or end user. After all, that’s what drives sales of goods and services. 

While there are all different ways to produce an outcome, operational effectiveness occurs when there is limited waste and smooth workflows. Automation software, such as SolveXia, empowers process standardization, supports process improvement, and removes bottlenecks. 

2. Prompt Innovation 

With low-code platforms, companies no longer need to build in-house and proprietary solutions to make digital transformation feasible. 

Low-code platforms can be rapidly deployed and customized through drag-and-drop visual editors. This allows for innovation to stem from within a business. 

3. Require Investment 

Digital transformation means that you have to invest in the vision of change alongside those who work within your business to make it happen. Automation solutions also require their fair share of investment, but the low-code platforms make it relatively cost effective to implement. 

Additionally, automation software that integrates with existing systems makes digital transformation easier to achieve because you may not have to rehaul every aspect of how you’ve gotten things done up until now. 

You may just need to make some tweaks and updates, connect systems together to use centralized data, and involve your team to make use of the tools you select to use. 

How to Improve Digital Transformation and Automation in Finance?

When it comes to finance teams and finance processes, data accuracy and timeliness is absolutely critical. 

With the heavy volume and fast flow of data coming into a business at any point in time, it’s necessary to have a centralized repository of information to execute processes, standardize workflows, and perform analysis properly.  

No matter your business, finance functions can be improved greatly with the aid of automation and the application of digital transformation. 

Here’s how and where you can put digital transformation and automation software into action:

1. Identify Inefficiencies

You’re already running countless processes, but there are surely areas for improvement. To begin getting the most out of automation software, it’s imperative to locate where it will be more impactful. 

You can do this by conducting a thorough review of your current workflows. Process mapping tools prove to be very helpful at this point.

Seek to identify the processes that tend to be repetitive, data-heavy, time-consuming, and critical to other tasks. This is where finance automation software can deliver the stronger ROI. Look for processes that require up-to-date data, data transformation, and standardization, like key finance functions. 

Finance automation software like SolveXia  can help you streamline: reconciliation, expense analytics, rebate management, APRA reporting, regulatory reporting, etc. All the while, you’ll be able to complete processes 85x faster with 90% less errors. 

2. Dive into Data

You can use existing data to also see where inefficiencies reside. In the same vein, you should create a focused data strategy and plan to manage your organization’s data as it tells a story. 

Your data is only as good as what you choose to do with it. With the right tools in place, you can derive insights from data to make key business decisions. 

Finance automation software like SolveXia connects all your systems, including legacy technology, so you can run models and receive detailed analysis on customizable, digital dashboards. 

You gain deeper insights for informed decision-making, without the need for an IT team to implement. 

3. Automate!

Gone are the days where paper-based processes and disparate spreadsheet-driven data is the norm. 

These manual processes are error-prone, time-consuming, and result in upset customers and disgruntled employees. Not to mention, when someone is out sick, you have key person dependencies that can wreak havoc within a business. 

With automation software, you no longer have to worry about a piece of the process getting stuck, being overlooked, or suffering from errors. 90% less errors results in time and cost savings. 

4. Involve Your Team 

Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Like any type of transformation, it takes planning and time to make a reality. That being said, one of the best ways to make it happen correctly is to involve your team and key stakeholders. 

By showcasing the advantages of automation software and addressing their hesitation, you will be more likely to get everyone on the same page to adjust things from how it’s “always been done.” 

5. Leverage Analytics 

Robotic process automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have all helped to make incredible strides in what kind of analytics are readily available and useful to teams and enable different types of automation. 

By using advanced analytics, finance teams can forecast with utmost accuracy and make decisions today to optimize the business’ tomorrow. 

6. Remain Cost Effective 

It used to be the case that many businesses couldn’t digitize or automate because the solutions were out of budget. Nowadays, there are software solutions left-and-right that are designed to be cost effective. 

Solutions like SolveXia are customizable without needing a dedicated IT team. Low-code finance automation software like SolveXia is intended for anyone to be able to deploy and use within hours. And, the ROI is almost immediate. 

Plus, should your team require any assistance before, during, or after implementation, they can rely on a broad suite of resources to aid. 

Closing Thoughts 

Digital transformation and automation are reshaping how businesses operate for the better. While digital transformation looks at the overall strategic approach of how to leverage technology, automation makes digital transformation come to life in practice. 

Because of digital transformation in finance and the use of automation software like SolveXia, finance teams function differently than they used to. Finance professionals can now focus more heavily on strategic advising and broader picture goals for the business, rather than being bogged down by data-heavy, repetitive, error prone manual tasks. 

Interested to learn more about automating your organization’s key finance functions? Take SolveXia’s demo for a spin!