Anything that can be automated will be automated in finance of GroupM Turkey
I’d like to briefly talk about our team that I felt great synergy at the birth of the idea that before we begin how we’ve automated our ICFR processes in RPA while i have been continuing to work at GroupM. We are happy to increase efficiency with our interminably desire to learn and the energy of a dynamic team, which we converted individual skills into collaboration in order to improve our work boundaries in the processes carried out in finance.
Many thanks to Mart Özzehir, Ilgın Altan and Aslı Temel for giving me great strength in RPA development and other processes.
I’d like to complete this part with the words of a Japanese writer who best describes a team:
“Individually we are a drop. Together we are an ocean.”
1Robotic process automation 🤝 ICFR ( Internal control over financial reporting) works
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a software technology that makes it easy to build, deploy and manage software robots that emulate humans actions interacting with digital systems and software. (Source:Uipath)
(I recommend watching the example where the RPA processes are explained by IBM for those who want to learn more about RPA)
RPA is suitable for repetitive processes operating under clear and logical rules in both Excel and other applications. That who are intimate to ICFR works know that there are many repetitive manual tasks at each stage of the workflow. It also seems clear that these tasks require too much time and task follow-up. These works not limited to finance, but also require the process of working together with departments such as accounting, sales, marketing, treasury etc.
On the other hand, when we look at the whole of finance, I think that the majority of the data incoming from clients, services and various tools in finance that occur of unstructured data compared to ICFR works. This data is converted to structured data only by going through various operational processes. This every process require manual effort by the way. So, when we look at the whole process, the data incoming to the finance from various tools, then make a manual effort using excel or various tools and finally the complete structured data is reached.
So, how much can the risks be measured in every process we carry out manually, how efficiently is the time used, how productive are we? The answers to all these and similar questions are unclear. If we can use the power of automation to fully automate all the processes we perform manually, then we can improve productivity, make time efficient and reduce operational costs.
2Can you become an RPA developer as finance employee?
In the world where technology has developed so much, each finance employee can know RPA as well as knows excel. When it comes to RPA, there is no need to be a senior developer. So, it may be enough to be an RPA developer as much as your processes need RPA. Besides these the technology competence of the finance employee and the infrastructure to be used for RPA are important. The choice of a difficult infrastructure or the lack of technological knowledge of the person, will make the RPA development in the business process even more difficult.
3RPA in financial process of GroupM Turkey
We made the first improvement of our financial processes in the ICFR processes. While we normally complete the ICFR works we do every month in 2–3 days on average, we’ve now reduced it to an average of 5 hours. We designed a workflow automation by considering the whole year, not on a monthly basis while developing the processes. So, we predict that we’ll make minimum intervention in automation throughout the year.
Now, we aim to maximize efficiency by spreading the automations we have made in our ICFR processes to all areas of finance. However, not only the automation process, our biggest goal is to mix this process with business intelligence and machine learning.
