Financial Process Automation
Your Complete Guide
ScienceSoft applies 15 years of experience in building corporate finance software for companies in 30+ industries to implement effective financial process automation.
Financial Process Automation in a Nutshell
Financial process automation helps businesses eliminate manual efforts across finance-related tasks, including bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll accounting, financial planning and analysis, revenue management, tax management, investment and financial risk management, and more.
Depending on their specific needs, companies can implement a financial process automation solution to digitalize particular financial operations or enable end-to-end automation of all corporate finance activities.
Implementation time: 6–13+ months.
Costs: $200,000–$1,500,000+, depending on the automation solution complexity.
Annual ROI: 200–290%.
Main Use Cases of the Financial Process Automation
Financial accounting and reporting
Automate 75%+ of tedious accountants’ tasks and get increased productivity of your accounting team along with full visibility of financial transactions. Benefit from 90% improvement in bookkeeping and financial reporting accuracy due to eliminated manual errors.
Billing and invoicing
Free your billing team for high-value tasks. A robust financial process automation system can eliminate up to 90% of manual billing-associated workflows. You get 2–3x faster and more accurate invoicing and around 50% reduction in DSO.
Financial planning and analysis
Streamline your financial planning and analysis processes and get instant access to the finance data you need. Harness the power of AI to achieve 90%+ financial forecasting accuracy and improved decision-making on financial and strategic activities.
Treasury management
Plan liquidity with full insight of enterprise-wide financial performance and reduce idle cash by up to 50% with intelligent guidance on optimal investing decisions. Get 50–75% reduction in financial risks due to real-time risk exposure calculation and tracking.
Compliance management
Entrust your tax and revenue management operations to the automation system and enjoy 100% compliance with the latest legal regulations. Get accurate tax and revenue reporting, faster tax payment and revenue recognition.
Pricing management
Get 4x faster price calculation and 3x faster price updating across various selling channels due to automation. AI suggestions on the pricing strategy optimization can bring 3–15% increase in sales revenue and 1–8% increase in gross margin.
Financial Process Automation System Architecture
There are several main architectural options for a financial process automation solution, each having its benefits and limitations. ScienceSoft suggests choosing the one that fits your business needs best.
1. Implementing a solution composed of several ready-made or custom modules (or the combination of both), each automating a particular financial process and having its own data store. This option offers automation of all required financial activities and enables flexibility to independently evolve each solution’s module with new features as new business needs arise. However, the solution with such an architecture is resource-intensive to build and maintain and requires profound project management at the implementation stage.
2. Implementing a custom-made highly integrated financial application. This option offers reduced software implementation time and simplified financial data governance due to centralized data storage. On the downside, a solution with such an architecture is difficult to evolve and scale. To connect it smoothly to other business-critical systems, you will also need to employ proper middleware (e.g., an ESB solution), which requires additional costs.
3. Implementing a ready-made highly integrated financial suite to cover core financial process automation functionality and add several custom applications for areas where the suite cannot fully satisfy your company’s needs. This option allows quickly introducing automation of fundamental finance-related tasks in case you don’t need suite customization to meet your highly specific business requirements.
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ScienceSoft recommends: To get faster development and deployment of a cost-efficient and inherently scalable solution, you can consider adding serverless functions, each handling a particular financial team’s task. This approach helps to effectively automate periodic workloads that require a lot of data processing, e.g., preparing regular financial reports or processing scheduled payment flows. The functions can be independently invoked and auto-scaled on demand. However, such an architecture raises security and latency concerns. |
Maximized automation of rule-based financial tasks
To eliminate manual efforts across financial processes and free up the financial team for high-value, strategic financial activities.
AI-powered analytics
To predict accurately various financial performance variables and provide the financial team with intelligent recommendations on optimal decisions across financial processes.
User-friendly financial data visualization
To provide well-structured representation of financial data and financial performance patterns for facilitated insights on financial risks and opportunities.
Easy-to-use APIs
To facilitate integration between the solution’s modules and enable smooth connection to other business-critical systems.
Legal compliance
To ensure creation of financial documents in accordance with the latest global, country- and industry-specific regulations, such as GAAP, SOX, ZATCA regulations (for Saudi Arabia), GDPR (for the EU), and more.
Powerful security capabilities
To ensure the protection of sensitive data and minimize the risk of malicious user activities with role-based access control, intelligent detection of financial fraud, end-to-end audit trail for all financial activities, and more.
Key Integrations for the Financial Process Automation System
To ensure maximized automation across financial processes, ScienceSoft recommends that a financial solution should be integrated with the following business-critical systems:
- ERP – for accurate financial planning and budgeting; to consider budget limitations during operational and strategic activities.
- CRM – for the automated input of customer data, payment terms, price and quantity of ordered goods when generating invoices; for the automated calculation and recording of sales revenue in the general ledger, accurate revenue recognition and data-driven revenue forecasting.
- Procurement software – for the automated purchase order recording in the A/P ledger.
- Inventory management software – for accurate recording of inventory values on inventory purchasing and utilization.
- Asset management software – for the automated recording of the fixed asset depreciation.
- HR management software – for the automated payroll calculation.
- Bank accounts – for faster reconciliation.
- Financial data marketplace – for the automated investment portfolio valuation, fair value calculation, building data-driven hedging strategies.
- BI solution – for advanced financial performance analytics and reporting.
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Business needs analysis and requirements engineering for finance digitalization.
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Designing the functionality, architecture, and tech stack for the financial process automation system.
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Project planning: deliverables, KPIs, schedule, budget, team composition, etc.
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Custom financial process automation software development OR modernization of the existing financial software and IT infrastructure.
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Quality assurance.
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Financial data migration (from spreadsheets or a previously used financial management tool).
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Establishing integrations with the required internal and third-party systems.
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User training.
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Continuous support and evolution of the automated financial processing solution (optional).
ScienceSoft’s Tech Stack for Financial Process Automation
To deliver effective finance automation solutions, ScienceSoft relies on a range of robust technologies and tools, including:
Programming languages
Back end
Projects
Our .NET developers can build sustainable and high-performing apps up to 2x faster due to outstanding .NET proficiency and high productivity.
Projects
ScienceSoft's Java developers build secure, resilient and efficient cloud-native and cloud-only software of any complexity and successfully modernize legacy software solutions.
Projects
ScienceSoft's Python developers and data scientists excel at building general-purpose Python apps, big data and IoT platforms, AI and ML-based apps, and BI solutions.
ScienceSoft delivers cloud-native, real-time web and mobile apps, web servers, and custom APIs ~1.5–2x faster than other software developers.
Projects
ScienceSoft's PHP developers helped to build Viber. Their recent projects: an IoT fleet management solution used by 2,000+ corporate clients and an award-winning remote patient monitoring solution.
ScienceSoft's developers use Go to build robust cloud-native, microservices-based applications that leverage advanced techs — IoT, big data, AI, ML, blockchain.
Front end Javascript frameworks
ScienceSoft leverages code reusability Angular is notable for to create large-scale apps. We chose Angular for a banking app with 3M+ users.
ScienceSoft achieves 20–50% faster React development and 50–90% fewer front-end performance issues due to smart implementation of reusable components and strict adherence to coding best practices.
Mobile
Projects
ScienceSoft’s achieves 20–50% cost reduction for iOS projects due to excellent self-management and Agile skills of the team. The quality is never compromised — our iOS apps are highly rated.
Projects
There are award-winning Android apps in ScienceSoft’s portfolio. Among the most prominent projects is the 5-year-long development of Viber, a messaging and VoIP app for 1.8B users.
Projects
ScienceSoft cuts the cost of mobile projects twice by building functional and user-friendly cross-platform apps with Xamarin.
Projects
ScienceSoft reduces up to 50% of project costs and time by creating cross-platform apps that run smoothly on web, Android and iOS.
Desktop
ScienceSoft's C++ developers created the desktop version of Viber and an award-winning imaging application for a global leader in image processing.
ScienceSoft uses Qt to create cost-effective, sophisticated software with intuitive UI for image analysis, image and video processing, IoT, VR/AR apps.
Projects
Our C# developers created the world’s largest PLM software. Their recent projects: development of SaaS for vCIO services management and underwriting software for a global aviation insurer.
Projects
ScienceSoft's Python developers and data scientists excel at building general-purpose Python apps, big data and IoT platforms, AI and ML-based apps, and BI solutions.
Platforms
Projects
A certified Microsoft partner, ScienceSoft creates CRM and ERP solutions powered by Dynamics 365 and optimizes most effectively a range of business operations.
Projects
ScienceSoft achieves at least 20% increase in sales and 30% improvement in case resolution with well-thought-out and business-tailored Salesforce solutions.
Projects
A certified Adobe Solution Partner, ScienceSoft builds on robust functionality of Adobe Commerce to create highly automated and scalable ecommerce solutions.
Projects
Solid expertise in SharePoint services has earned ScienceSoft a place in Clutch’s list of Top SharePoint Developers in 2023.
A certified ServiceNow partner, ScienceSoft offers a proprietary 4-level implementation model that helps deliver the best value from ServiceNow adoption.
ScienceSoft sets up Power BI to process data from any source and report on data findings in a user-friendly format.
Financial Process Automation Costs
The cost of financial process automation implementation varies greatly depending on:
- The type of the finance automation solution’s architecture.
- The number and complexity of the solution’s functional modules.
- The degree of automation (implementation of robotic process automation (RPA) and AI-powered features).
- The volume of data that needs to be migrated from the spreadsheets and/or legacy financial software.
- The number and complexity of integrations with corporate systems, and more.
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A custom financial process automation system of moderate complexity requires $200,000–$500,000 in investments. A full-fledged solution that enables end-to-end automation of complicated financial processes for global multi-entity enterprises may cost $500,000–$1,500,000+. |
NB! Using low-code platforms can substantially reduce the costs of creating a solution for finance automation. In ScienceSoft’s financial process automation projects, we rely on Microsoft Power Apps to offer 74% lower development costs.
Benefits and ROI of Financial Process Automation
Despite the substantial investments, financial process automation can bring 200–290% annual ROI, driven by the following benefits:
When to Opt for a Custom Financial Process Automation System
As your reliable IT partner, ScienceSoft recommends building a custom finance automation solution in the following cases:
You need a financial management solution providing automation of your specific tasks, e.g., calculating payroll, taxes, or the fair value of assets and liabilities based on custom formulas, creating A/R collection and A/P payment queues based on specific priority rules.
You have large teams involved in financial management and want to avoid a considerable subscription cost for platform-based financial process automation software, which scales with the number of users.
You operate in a highly regulated industry (e.g., healthcare, defense, government sector) and need a financial process automation solution to provide advanced tools to protect your sensitive financial and business data.
Off-the-shelf automated financial software requires costly and time-consuming integration with your business-critical systems.
Ready-made financial solutions don’t provide compliance with local regulations in the regions your company operates.
You need a flexible solution that can be easily upgraded with new functional and non-functional capabilities and advanced techs, when needed.
Consulting on finance automation
- Analysis of financial process automation needs.
- Assessment of the existing financial processes, tools and their integration points.
- Suggesting optimal financial automation features and solution architecture and tech stack.
- Preparing a plan of integrations with the required systems.
- Implementation cost & time estimates, expected ROI calculation.
Implementation of finance automation
- Financial process automation needs analysis.
- Automated finance solution conceptualization.
- Architecture design.
- Development of the financial process automation system.
- Solution integration with the required systems.
- Quality assurance.
- User training.
- Continuous support and evolution (if required).
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is an international IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. Since 2007, we help businesses implement effective automation in finance. Being an ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified company, we apply a mature quality management system and guarantee that cooperation with us does not pose any risks to our customers’ data security. If you are interested in getting a robust financial process automation solution, feel free to turn to ScienceSoft’s team.