A touchless close is what finance functions want, Gartner said recently.
According to survey of 155 finance executives by the advisory firm in February 2022, 55% of respondents aimed for a touchless financial close by 2025.
In addition, at least half of the respondents identified the following four financial close goals with the aim to achieve them by 2025, Gartner noted.
- 86% said they wanted a faster, real time close.
- 68% mentioned they want a cheaper close.
- 64% indicated they want an error-free close by 2025.
Finance has also invested heavily in technology to reduce time to close, with three technologies deployed by more than half of functions already: general ledger technology, a financial close solution, or workflow automation, Gartner said.
However, a touchless close is a goal that will require moving beyond basic automation towards autonomous finance,” said Pritika Bhattacharjee, vice president, research in the Gartner Finance practice.
Autonomous Finance
A touchless close means that the entire financial close process is carried out autonomously without routine intervention from human employees, according to the research firm.
Although finance executives appear to be broadly optimistic about reaching a state of autonomous finance, few functions are making much meaningful progress towards it, the firm added.
“Automation in most finance functions has gone after low-hanging fruit,” said Bhattacharjee. “Using technologies such as RPA, finance has successfully automated many simple, repetitive tasks, but typically this leaves behind many tasks that require human intervention to keep the process running.”
An autonomous, touchless financial close will require a big step up from existing automation in terms of digital maturity for finance functions, Gartner pointed out.
Autonomous finance yields augmented real-time insights, effortless compliance, and greater flexibility in financial strategy, the firm noted.
It goes beyond an automated function in its ability to learn and act without human intervention, Gartner added.
For example, an automated accounting close has a bot perform reconciliations and sends exceptions and errors to a human for adjudication. In an autonomous finance function, technology embedded in the close process learns how to handle those errors and self-corrects on its way to a continuous real-time close, the firm explained.
“Most finance functions simply are not ready to implement the kind of technologies that can lead to a touchless close,” said Bhattacharjee. “The lack the appropriate skills are hard and costly to source, and their data handling and processes are not ready for full autonomy.”
Examples of autonomous finance
According to Gartner, below are examples that show what’s To help finance leaders understand what’s involved in autonomous finance.
Back-office use cases, such as with AI-enabled process mining algorithms capturing all variations and exceptions in P2P and O2C.
Middle-office use cases, such as blockchain enabling an audit-ready continuous close
Front-office use cases, such as decision Intelligence powering financially savvy tactical and operational decisions
Office of the CFO use cases, such as decentralised finance facilitating innovative options for raising capital and insuring against financial risk
