8AUGUST 2024CFO TECH OUTLOOKIN MY OPINIONBy Eric Aboaf, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer, State Street [NYSE: STT]FINANCIAL PROCESS AUTOMATION: A `MUST-HAVE,' NOT A `NICE TO HAVE'In my last article, `Using Data-Driven Insight to Drive Business Strategy and Spur Growth,' I described how the world of financial services has become all about data--managing, analyzing, and standardizing it--in this article, I'd like to drill down into the how and why process automation has become a job requirement for any self-respecting finance team and the very real benefits such automation brings to large, matrixed organizations.Regardless of industry, most large companies are seeking to maximize the benefits of financial process automation that come from improving three broad categories: moving ledgers and sub-ledgers to the cloud to maximize functionality and lower costs, automating and improving data flows from upstream product systems to improve accuracy and reliability; and developing analytic tools and workstations for major processes to sunset legacy processes and improve speed and simplicity. Looking at each of these advances in turn:·Moving Ledgers and Sub-ledgers to the Cloud: Large corporations typically ran ledgers on mainframes in their own data centers and did so with many disparate ledgers from various vendors across their businesses and countries. Today, the impetus is to align processes with feeding into a company's General Ledger and sub-ledgers to improve accuracy and efficiency and boost individual business line self-serve abilities. The crucial takeaway regarding moving to the cloud is that the more a business is able to integrate its holistic finance environment, the more each person across the business has one readily accessible source of truth--Eric Aboaf
< Page 7 | Page 9 >