Autonomous financial management calls for robotic process automation

Commercial context

Digital transformation of financial processes is notoriously complex and sensitive. And the pressure is now higher than ever to introduce effective automation for the financial management of enterprise resources. Manual processes are prone to major delays and errors, and human-centric models frequently prove themselves unequal to task of managing the scale and complexity of datasets involved in digital transformation.

CSPs in particular face considerable structural challenges to limiting such costs, inefficiencies and risks – a key example being the need to process huge volumes of data relating to energy usage by base stations within tight timeframes, in order to enable timely business decisions. This is made even more onerous by energy-intensive 5G base stations sited across shared premises such as urban rooftops, which can involve manual collation of shared paperwork with property-owners for analysis and sign-off by human accountants.

The solution

What is needed here is a zero-touch approach to financial management based on AI-powered data analytics by ‘digital employees’ – which is precisely the solution made possible by the Smart financial accounting with RPA and AI Catalyst, which is pioneering the use of robotic process automation (RPA) to achieve closed-loop automation of accounting processes and eliminate the need for manual interventions. The solution combines process mining, task mining, and generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) with RPA and AI technologies such as optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP) to proactively identify financial risks, suggest process improvements, and optimize subsequent financial workflows.

Applications

With this approach in place, CSPs can seamlessly manage vast quantities of data while saving around 95% in human effort. It can for instance automatically verify and validate over 50,000 electricity invoices per month, reducing processing time from 6 hours to less than 30 minutes, enabling managers to make data-driven decisions for the management of 5G base stations and financial analysts to achieve proper forecasting. It can subsequently also revolutionize the relationship between CSPs and other stakeholders involved in base station siting, who enjoy smoother reimbursement processes and fewer grounds for dispute over bills, while accountants are relieved from mundane data entry and verification.

Wider value

“The direct benefits of this Catalyst are not limited to operational efficiency,” explains Yangang Tian, Project Manager at China Unicom, “though the gains there are considerable – bringing audit processes down to a matter of hours while ensuring accuracy through the elimination of human oversights. This human-machine partnership also frees financial personnel from long repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more cerebral and strategic activities, and promotes not only the stability and reliability of communications networks but also the wider development of informatization and the digital economy.”

Current estimates indicate that this solution could automate around 60% of financial accounting processes involved in managing base stations – with audit processes conducted automatically, 24/7 – while introducing proactive risk control and massively lowering the incidence of financial violations, by storing all non-compliant operation information identified during verification in a problem database and issuing automatic reminders to expense applicants. More broadly this innovation can help CSPs not only reduce overheads but better plan energy consumption requirements for more sustainable use of energy-intensive 5G base stations – and in time be used in application scenarios as diverse as tax, shopping malls, business travel. To find out more join us at DTW Ignite in Copenhagen between 19-21 September 2023, or get in touch with the Catalyst team directly here.