Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Transforming the Finance Function

Presentation by Loreal Jiles, Vice President of Research and Thought Leadership at the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA)

[TradeJockey]

Amazing presentation and discussion on RPA role on FNPA use cases...really helped me solve many grey areas of Finance.

[stuartkeir]

This is a brilliant presentation, very informative on what is possible and rightfully questioning why RPA has not progressed more.

I believe that some core reasons for the disappointing speed of adoption of RPA in finance is that accounting professionals haven’t had a lot of strong incentives to implement RPA and didn’t have the required skills or approach to digital. That combined with the high costs charged by consultants have been almost impenetrable barriers. Recently there seems to be more progress with increasing interest, growing number of available tools (and hence costs) and increased digitalisation generally.

Most importantly, I believe that adoption will accelerate when RPA is a significant factor in the ability to compete within an industry.

While it’s almost counterintuitive, I believe that it would be extremely difficult to compete with RPA enabled organisations (at the currently possible level) right now. But the lack of an adopting incumbent in each sector means that all players are still on the same level playing field (for now). When one takes the first step, the rest will have to choose between adoption or failure.