Will we see an Increase in Tech Spending Amid Automation Push?

There is a technological transformation taking place across finance and accounting organizations. If you've been to any Sage Intacct conference, Sage Partner Summit, or Transform, you've heard for years how revolutionary automation in finance will be. Automation has been vital in the most recent Sage Intacct quarterly releases. Just a few weeks ago, they released AP bill entry automation. This new feature saves SMB accountants an estimated 2 to 5 days per month. 

According to IDC, 34% of typical AP process time for medium-sized businesses is spent on invoice entry. IDC also says that 81% of small to medium businesses (SMBs) manually enter vendor bills, with an average of 9 to 24 minutes spent processing each invoice, with roughly 30% of that time on data entry. This example is just one fraction of what can be automated in the finance office. 

Deloitte's The Future of Automation in Finance states, "automation and advanced technologies continue to move finance toward a digital future, allowing professionals to focus less on transactional activities and more on analytics and insights." In addition, recent CFO data from the 2023 Outlook Survey revealed 75% of CFOs plan to increase capital spending for their finance teams this year. Are you one of them? 

How DataBlend Does Automation 

We know it's a fine line between cutting costs and increasing technology use. An iPaaS solution helps you do both of those things. iPaaS stands for integration Platform-as-a-Service. Sometimes, it is just referred to simply as “Integration Platform.” However, at its core, iPaaS is subscription, cloud-based software that helps the seamless movement of data across applications. It allows companies to collect, transform, and upload data across both cloud and on-premises/hosted applications.  

With iPaaS, you can pull the data together and automate manual data entry to lower your margin for error and get a better, accurate picture of your data landscape. With automation, this means you can make better data-based decisions. 

By 2025, according to Gartner, CFOs have ambitious plans to reach a state of autonomous finance within the next three to six years that will require a significant reshaping of finance team structures. "Most finance leaders, including many CFOs, are ill-equipped to identify and address the rapidly evolving digital skills needed in finance," said Shannon Cole, senior director analyst, research in the Gartner Finance practice. "Expertise in traditional finance topics, while valuable, does not prepare leaders to train staff to execute on capabilities, such as deploying bots, machine learning, and AI algorithms." 

Compared to a custom technology solution, DataBlend can automate your finance applications, such as your ERP, CRM, Billing, FP&A, etc., tools and eliminate the manual workload your team is doing. For example, we recently interviewed Joshua Burch, Manager, Financial Reporting & Analytics at Azurity Pharmaceuticals. He said, "I can do more by implementing automation, making my job much easier. DataBlend's value far exceeds what we pay." 

3 Strategic Business Benefits of Finance Integration / Automation and iPaaS 

1. The flexibility and scalability of iPaaS are limitless. As your organization grows, your finance team can manage integrations with less effort. Automation reduces the manual work your team needs to do when applications don't natively integrate. With an iPaaS solution, you can easily add integrations without a heavy implementation process. It's easy to select new connectors for a particular application and upgrade the subscription to include the new integration.
2. Integration and automation can streamline finance and accounting processes. By using an iPaaS solution, finance and accounting departments can run faster because they can access the data they need when needed. Finance and accounting teams can do more, do it more quickly, and do it with fewer errors. 
3. Automating accounting processes with an iPaaS solution you can reduce human errors significantly. Manual data entry is still an integral part of many accounting processes. People make mistakes. It's inevitable – especially when the tasks are mundane and repetitive. When integration is handled manually via spreadsheets, simple errors like transposing account numbers, entering wrong invoice amounts, and posting items to the wrong place (expenses to income or vice versa) can have huge impacts. Simple accounting errors from poor integration processes can become huge nightmares.  

Is Automation worth the spend?  

In addition to Azurity, Mike Daniel from McCarthy-Bush Corporation said, "DataBlend has been instrumental in our finance and accounting digital transformation journey. We've been able to integrate three ERPs with Workday Adaptive Planning. Before DataBlend, we spent countless hours working on the data. It is now an automated process that takes 60 seconds to execute. After going live with DataBlend, we eliminated our manual workload, and with the newfound time, we have been able to focus on data quality and analytics versus time spent on manual processes." 

To conclude, yes, automation will increase tech spending, but the benefits outweigh the costs. Whether you are in the finance team, or specialize in helping finance teams succeed, consider evaluating how integration can add value.