Blog & Newsroom

Finance IT: How to Manage Dependencies within SAP®

In this episode from our series of SAP-focused finance automation podcasts, we discuss why it’s a challenge to manage finance process dependencies in SAP and ensure tasks are completed in the correct sequence. In the podcast, writer and editor Andy McCue talks to Adrian Li, a finance transformation expert with more than 20 years’ experience in the design, build and running of SAP ERP in both large and small organizations across many industry sectors. Li explains how the failure to manage dependencies within SAP can have a huge impact on finance processes such as asset depreciation and,

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The SAP® Challenges for Finance and IT

Writer and editor Andy McCue talks to Adrian Li, a finance transformation expert with more than 20 years’ experience in the design, build and running of SAP ERP in both large and small organizations across many industry sectors. In the podcast, Li explains how many of the IT  and automation challenges can be traced back to the original concept and design for SAP more than 40 years ago and how fundamental it is to finance processes in large organizations today.

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The Automation Gap: The 3 Reasons Why Your Finance Processes Are Still Highly Manual

Despite the widespread adoption of ERP systems that were supposed to remove most of the manual effort, only 20% of finance processes are truly automated. Why is that? It’s the automation gap. That gap around finance and accounting processes means work still needs to be done manually outside of those ERP systems, requiring additional tools or extensive ERP customization. This results in a compromise – either accept a lower level of finance process automation and fill the gaps with manual work,

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How Automotive Parts Supplier Faurecia Automated 80% of Key Finance Processes

How did leading global automotive parts supplier Faurecia – which has its equipment in 1 in 3 cars worldwide – automate 80% of its finance processes, with approval workflow the only remaining manual task? Watch the video to hear Christophe MacGarry, global finance transformation director at Faurecia, explain how the company worked with Redwood to implement a global platform for finance automation. Faurecia is using that platform to support the transformation of its global business shared services (GBS) and improve SAP utilization across all of the countries in which it operates.

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Podcast: What is the Finance Automation Gap and How Do You Plug It?

In this episode from our series of finance podcasts, we discuss the so-called ‘automation gap’ for finance and accounting, and the problems it causes. In the podcast, writer and editor Andy McCue talks to Devin Gharibian-Saki, chief solution officer at Redwood, about what causes this finance automation gap, what the impact of that is on both finance and IT and, more importantly, how to plug it. Listen to the full podcast to find out: Why plugging the automation gap is critical to achieving the wider CFO goal of elevating the role of finance from number crunching to a strategic adviser to the business Why a huge amount of the work involved in finance processes still has to be done outside of ERP systems How adding point solutions to automate each individual finance process not only adds cost and complexity for IT,

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The CIO’s Guide to Finance Automation and Why It Matters

What are the biggest challenges for CIOs today when it comes to meeting the needs of the modern finance function? The reality is that the current finance IT landscape of most large organizations is sub-optimal. It’s a costly and complex mix of ERP systems, workflow engines, point solutions and RPA tools – plus a lot of human effort on top to plug the gaps. According to APQC’s general accounting process framework, almost all key finance processes require additional work outside of the ERP.

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Is Your Finance Team Getting the Most out of Automation?

Even if your finance department uses some form of automation, it’s likely that the financial period-end close will continue to weigh heavily on your accounting staff. The financial period-end close is critical to trust, financial visibility and regulatory compliance. But for a large organization, a typical global close can involve more than 100 companies that must be closed before group consolidation can take place, each with more than 500 processes, along with many more sub-processes. With so much activity taking place within the last few days of each month,

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Automation lessons from the financial close front line

The often-frenetic activity of financial close processes is largely due to the huge amount of manual effort they entail every month or quarter. To reduce the pressure and risk this brings, there is an answer for finance departments: Use automation across the close. Done effectively, this can mean the financial close becomes a non-event. And it also allows finance staff to focus on essential analysis to provide essential insights that can improve broader business performance. In the recent “How to make the financial close a non-event”

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How to Eliminate Manual Effort and Stress and Make Your Financial Close a Non-Event

The financial close continues to weigh heavily on accounting organizations. A typical global close for a large organization today can involve over 100 companies that must be closed before group consolidation, with more than 500 processes per company plus many more sub-processes and hundreds of thousands of SAP-related activities. And all this frenetic activity always happens within the last few days of every month. It’s no surprise that the biggest concern, according to 97% of CFOs in a survey by FSN Research,

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Arla Foods Answers Four Key Questions About Its Month-End Close Challenges

We asked dairy giant Arla Foods four key questions about the challenges of its month-end close and how to tackle them. The company is the one of the world’s largest dairy companies, selling products in more than 100 countries, with 19,000 employees and revenue of over €10 billion. In the video interview, Arla talks about reducing the time to close the books, the importance of having an overview of the month-end tasks and the challenges presented by the amount of close-related work,

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How to plug the Finance Automation Gap That ERP Alone Cannot Reach

It’s a long-held misconception that going through the pain and cost of implementing an ERP system — such as SAP or Oracle— across your business will solve all your financial efficiency and automation problems. In reality, while your ERP does tackle some of those issues there are parts it cannot reach. And that leaves you with a clear efficiency and automation gap for today’s complex finance and accounting processes. For their many powerful capabilities, ERP systems are designed to support rather than eliminate manual tasks.

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How To Start Making Your Financial Close a Non-Event Today – With Standardized and Automated Finance Processes

Regardless of your industry, making the financial close a non-event – faster, more accurate, less stress – has long been the utopia of CFOs everywhere. And there’s good reason for that. Consider, for example, how much cost you would save by shaving even just one day off the time it takes to close the books. Research into the financial close by analyst Hackett Group shows that top performers close their ledgers earlier in the month and complete the process in less time than others in their peer group.

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The evolution of financial shared services — from labor arbitrage and cost reduction to value delivery

Despite moves to ease the lockdown, no one needs reminding that it’s still far from business as usual. The huge changes to working practices and processes forced upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the failings of some traditional approaches to finance. As an extension of many organizations’ accounting capabilities, financial shared services is far from immune to this increased scrutiny, with the current situation prompting questions about how smarter approaches are now needed more than ever before.

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Preparing for the New Normal: Four Priorities for CFOs in a Post-COVID-19 World

As CFOs adjust to our changing world, the shortterm focus is understandably on implementing tactical solutions to address the immediate challenges the coronavirus pandemic has created. But it is also imperative for finance leaders to think more strategically about the long-term picture and prepare for a post-COVID-19 world. Technology has been crucial in enabling business continuity and new ways of working through the crisis. It only serves to highlight that the future is most definitely digital.

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How to prevent a bad audit: Four things you need to address

The role of external auditors is ultimately to assess whether an organization’s financial statements are a true and accurate reflection of the performance of the business. That gives stakeholders, such as investors and partners, confidence in the numbers. But this is no box-ticking exercise. The quality of the audit is paramount, particularly in light of high-profile cases where auditors have been fined for failing to identify fraud or financial misstatement that they should have spotted. Auditors are increasingly focused on issues such as ease of access to evidence that substantiates a transaction or process or compliance testing to ensure controls are fit for purpose and can avoid fraud and human error.

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COVID-19 Forces Finance Transformation Back to the Top of the CFO Agenda

If, six months ago, we had tried to predict the biggest business continuity challenge likely to affect your organization over the coming year, I doubt if the current global health pandemic would have made the list. There is, of course, a tragic human cost to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as we adjust to the new status quo, businesses are also being forced to rapidly adapt to new ways of working, extraordinary workforce challenges and unprecedented levels of uncertainty and instability.

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Throw out the manual: Why auto-certification is key to faster and more accurate balance sheet reconciliation

Huge strides have been made in driving inefficiencies out of many financial processes. Yet balance sheet reconciliation is one of the last bastions of reengineering that has seen very little in the way of efficiency gains over the last decade. Traditionally, businesses have long relied on the accountant’s Swiss Army knife, the Excel spreadsheet, in conjunction with email, workflow systems and shared folders to help with the balance sheet reconciliation process. But it’s an approach that is fraught with problems and often fails to solve underlying issues.

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Five ways to identify intercompany differences earlier and drive a faster close

Intercompany elimination is a common barrier to a fast and accurate financial close. For large global organizations operating across multiple geographies and time zones, coordinating all the intercompany activities at month-end quickly becomes complex due to the sheer volume and interdependency of tasks and tight deadlines. The problem is that intercompany accounting still requires enormous manual effort to reconcile, adjust and record transactions, despite large investments in ERP and finance systems. In fact, 40% of senior finance professionals say difficulties in reconciliations and intercompany agreement is what delays the reporting process the most,

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What financial scandals show about the fraud risk of manual journal entry

Despite large investments in modern ERP and finance systems, manual processes like journal entry continue to leave businesses exposed to significant human error or fraudulent activities. This ultimately creates the opportunity for the material misstatement of financial results and all the implications that brings. WorldCom is the poster child for these types of financial scandals, where manual journals were used to inappropriately capitalize expenses as fixed assets, which inflated net income and total assets by $3.8 billion.

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Automate 70% of Intercompany and Unleash the Full Potential of Your Finance Employees

You’d think that the huge investments your organization has made in its finance and ERP systems would free you up from all sorts of drudgery and save massive amounts of time. In fact, back end accounting processes still require enormous manual effort and intercompany is no exception. Finance teams must plough through the vast quantities of transactions between subsidiaries and parent organizations that have taken place during the period, all of which need to be reconciled,

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Why internal control systems won’t protect you against fraud

Effective internal controls are the cornerstones of integrity for many organizations’ financial and accounting information, by promoting accountability and preventing fraud. At least that’s what we’ve long been led to believe. Not surprisingly, a huge amount of work goes into ensuring that controls are in place, documented and tested to provide evidence that they are designed and operating effectively. And yet all this work is for nothing if employees are able to circumvent the control structure.

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Why You Need to Switch Your Finance Team’s Focus from Production to Analysis

The benefits of automation strike a chord with many business functions. Automation allows you to spend less time on grunt work and spend more on analysis and interpretation. Finance is by no means an exception. The manually intensive nature of control and production processes is a thorn in finance’s side. When it comes to the mechanics of producing financial reports and other analysis, finance teams will typically spend 70% of their total time extracting raw data from the many and varied systems they use by means of downloads,

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The human cause of 4 major accounting errors and how to eliminate them

The reliance on manual controls and procedures remains a major cause of some of the most common accounting errors. We’re not just talking minor errors, such as an unmatched invoice, either. These manual processes result in material misstatements of financial results or business performance. All too often, they go out externally to regulators and investors. This is despite investment — even recent investment — in ERP systems, workflow software and various point solutions. And just to be clear,

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Four undetected errors that add to close stress — and how to fix them

Anyone working in finance knows how stressful the monthly financial close can be. Immovable, tight deadlines and the manual nature of much of the process results in long hours that impact staff wellbeing, turnover and often result in a reliance on temporary staff at this peak time. Frustrated staff have to work within sub-optimal processes that have evolved over years and don’t have the bandwidth to redesign them. Some of the biggest headaches are the errors that accrue but go undetected during the month and only come to light at the height of the period-end scramble.

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