Finance departments have transformed themselves in recent years from "data producers" to strategic business partners for their internal customers. Robotic process automation (RPA) is accelerating this transformation, and that has its consequences for the finance manager. 'The robot is a kind of virtual employee, which you can think of as a new team member. He just needs different attention," says RPA specialist Martin van Esschoten. Three questions for Martin van Esschoten.
What can a robot do in a purchase-to-pay process?
'A robot can take over repetitive tasks that add little value but need to be done from a human. Think of creating a new creditor or updating the data of an existing creditor in your ERP system. The robot can check the VAT number, look up the Chamber of Commerce number or web address and then enrich the master data with the found data. Automating such actions otherwise done by a human is a quick win. For example, we have deployed robots at several companies for automated order matching and have robots produce financial reports.'
What changes with a robot?
'You can think of the robot as a virtual employee who is part of a team. A new team member always brings something the organization can learn from: experience, knowledge, a new way of working... It is a colleague who can take a lot of work off your hands if you give him clear instructions. The robot must have its place in the existing team. So the financial manager gets another "someone" to manage. The robot doesn't need a pat on the head, doesn't need lunch and is never sick, but like a regular employee, it also needs applications to do its job.'
What responsibilities does a financial manager have?
'Contrary to what people sometimes think, a process robot does not contain artificial intelligence that makes its own decisions and thus, if you are not careful, throws your accounting principles overboard. It is therefore the role of the financial manager to know exactly what that robot is doing and to think about the process. What information is flowing through the system? Why do we do things the way we do them? Moreover, the robot has a separate status within a company or institution because it does not have an employee number, for example, but it does have a user name, password and authorizations within certain applications. So the issues for the various stakeholders are different.
For example, a robot does not need its own workstation, but in its operations it must comply with all kinds of laws and regulations. So where does the responsibility of the finance department extend and where does IT's responsibility begin? These are all issues you have to rethink when deploying a robot. That takes time. However, the business case is so interesting that it is worth it.'
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