The transformative power of credit automation

When the finance department at Duke Energy has began integrating automation into its workflow to stay competitive, the results were immediately clear. By combining automation, artificial intelligence, and analytics, the company was able to significantly reduce the time its finance department spent working on routine tasks. This ultimately eliminated thousands of hours of repetitive duties and freed up employees to do more thoughtful and strategic work.

Duke Energy is just one example among an increasing number of companies using automation to transform how they approach business finance. This new technology has the power to significantly streamline existing workflows by integrating first- and third-party data into processes and creating rules that can automatically trigger decisions and actions faster and more accurately.

Automation technology can take something like processing a credit application from a 20-minute task to one that takes less than a second. It also removes the possibility of human error in data entry. However, automation has done more than improve efficiency. It’s also transformed how businesses create products, allowing them to grow faster and explore new avenues for which they previously had no time.

How credit automation changes financing

Because large amounts of data from a variety of sources are being funneled directly into algorithms and machine learning technology, smarter decisions are made more quickly. As a result, business finance departments can spend much less of their time on inefficient manual tasks. They no longer have to use their time approving inquiries or chasing down late payments; instead, technology can do that for them.

For one company we worked with, we used automation to trim down its inquiry processing time from 45 minutes to less than one, which allowed it to focus on its goal of upscaling fourfold by the end of the year. These are the kinds of calculations businesses can make with the support of credit automation technology.

Credit automation tools have the power to take businesses from reactive to proactive and are transforming finance departments from gatekeepers to sources of revenue growth. As more companies embrace automation as the new status quo, opportunities for that growth will increase exponentially.

What to ask when considering an automation solution

To determine how credit automation could help you transform your business for the better without derailing your current way of doing things, ask yourself these questions first:

1. Will this solve an actual problem?

The point of incorporating automation isn’t to disrupt for the sake of disruption; it’s to create new solutions that actually help your organization get things done more quickly. Think through how automation could eliminate mundane and time-consuming manual tasks for your teams, further you in your business strategies, or make your financial reporting more accurate.

Most importantly, figure all of this out before you implement the technology. If you adopt automation haphazardly, you could end up doing more harm than good.

2. Is the company operating at peak performance?

Humans, by nature, do a lot of things machines can’t — including getting distracted or fatigued. Automation, then, can act as the perfect support for employees where and when it’s needed by taking on rote work to free up time for more critical tasks.

Figure out where you’re falling behind in efficiency or where your error rate could improve. Then, find technology that could help ease those issues. Ideally, automation should act as a support system for your staff to help them operate at the best of their abilities and save millions of dollars in the process.

3. Will it help us go above and beyond our status quo?

Automation, when used correctly, can not only make your business strategy more efficient, but it can open up new avenues to explore in the future, too. With AI and automation working together, you have the power to take the data you’ve already collected, analyze it, and turn it into tactics that will take your current business model to new heights.

Automation will challenge the current status quo for business finance — but not by taking over jobs. Instead, automation will free up professionals to come up with more creative solutions, challenge current policies and procedures, and push the industry forward as a whole. It’s time to take a serious look at what automation could do for your business, both now and in the future.

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(Featured image by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash)

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