Automating Financial Responsibilities

How LMI’s Performance Optimization and Adaptive Digital Operations Lines of Business are Streamlining Processes by employing Robotic Process Automation

Over the past year, artificial intelligence has occupied headlines throughout industry and will probably remain hotly discussed and debated for some time to come. However, robotic process automation (RPA) cannot be ignored as a source of innovation. Think of a world where you have a tireless, mistake-proof helper to take on all the repetitive tasks in your financial work. RPA provides that using software “robots” that can mimic the actions humans take on a computer. RPA takes over repetitive processes, creates efficiencies, increases accuracy, and enables operators to focus on in-depth analyses of trends and outliers, revolutionizing how businesses operate.

RPA offers a powerful solution by automating many of the mundane and repetitive tasks that burden analysts year after year. For instance, in the 10 months since the LMI RPA team implemented a bot with one customer’s financial reconciliations, the bot has processed more than 7,100 checklists and saved over 265-man hours. The team has another six bots in various stages of development, demonstration, or implementation with other customers that will help financial analysts or project managers reconcile schedules, develop invoices, and build deliverables.

Financial Tasks

Financial reconciliation is the process of comparing financial data sets for accuracy and consistency to provide insight into the financial health of an organization and improve decision-making. Historically, financial reconciliation involved manually extracting data from various sources and entering it into reconciliation software or spreadsheets.

Automating financial reconciliation using RPA to identify and eliminate repetitive tasks makes it more effective and efficient. RPA has emerged as a crucial tool for enhancing the accuracy of financial operations. Finance departments often must complete repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as:

• Bank Reconciliation: Matching bank transaction with different sources can be a lengthy and frustrating task.
• Processing: Manually entering invoice data is a tedious and error-prone process.
• Data Entry: Inputting large amounts of data can be unexciting and prone to human error.

RPA has transformed the way finance departments handle these tasks and reduced human error by avoiding manual processing. RPA frees up time by completing the more tedious chores, which allows human teams to focus on more important tasks. Automating these tasks leads to a cost saving in the long run, minimizing the need for additional personnel or overtime hours.

Changing the Game for Financial Automation

RPA bots follow a pre-programmed script. They can extract data by automatically pulling specific information from emails, documents, or spreadsheets, saving huge amounts of time and eliminating the risk of human error during data entry. Bots can also fill out expense reports and other forms or initiate account creation, ensuring consistency and freeing up employee time. The bots can also compile data from various sources and format it into reports that are more accurate than manually compiled reports. Overall, RPA bots act as valuable digital assistants in the financial department, increasing accuracy and substantially enhancing efficiency, and allowing employees to focus on tasks that require human expertise and judgment.

Please contact LMI’s program planning & investment management subservice line vice president, Mark McAlister; financial operations and accountability practice area lead, Brad Hallman; or RPA team lead, Rose Polar, to hear more about how LMI’s Performance Optimization and Adaptive Digital Operations lines of business can be of assistance.