Roadmap to the Future: Order-To-Cash for the Next Decade

hello everyone this is Akshay from emagia corporation first let me take the honor to thank you all for joining
us today let’s go over a few housekeeping items before we start I would request you all to please mute
your phones during the presentation for all attendees with questions request you to key in your questions on
the WebEx chat and we will respond to those questions at the end of the presentation your questions will be
answered sequentially if you are unable to get to any of your questions due to time constraints we will respond to them
separately over an email just to let you know that we will be recording this session and we will be sharing it with
all the attendees for today’s session we have David Griswold from Deloitte
David is a specialist leader in Deloitte’s finance and enterprise performance market offerings with close
to over 20 years of finance operations excellence both in industry and consulting David is recognized as a
thought leader and the right finance operations excellence offering and is focused on helping his clients achieve
transformation through digital enablers David’s experience includes leading
process optimization and service delivery transformation programs globally primarily David has been
focusing on life sciences consumer products and retail sectors we also have witness Phyllis savage rock Phyllis is
the director for order to cash solutions at Emagia Corporation she has been in
the working in the field of Finance specifically specifically in order to cash for more than 20 years in both
functional as well as consultative roles over over the over the years she has
held several senior management positions in companies such as scandisk novelists
and subah software additionally she has extensive experience as a consultant and
implementer of software in all areas of our auto cash life cycles take much of
your time anymore let me welcome Phyllis to start the presentation would you Phyllis thank you
thank you Akshay welcome and thank you for joining us today I have to say it’s
a very exciting time to be in finance we’re seeing so many transformative technology
that are changing the workplace and how we do our jobs before I get started today I wanted to take a moment to
introduce our company in majah just in case you’re not familiar with us ammaji is a cloud-based software
solution that combines the power of data management advanced analytics and smart
automation to make more efficient and effective the order to cash operations of the business it is powered by the
sole expect Atta platform amage is located in Northern California
where in the Silicon Valley in the United States and as you can see from
the far right side of the screen we have a wide variety of diverse customers spread out across the globe so let’s get
started history has shown us that while technology does in fact eliminate jobs
it does also create new jobs and even better ones to replace them we believe
that within the next five years you are going to see major disruptions in how
finance teams including order to cash organizations do their jobs keeping with
this premise Deloitte Consulting has come up with five predictions about the future of finance in today’s webinar
David is going to provide us with insights into their approach to the finance 2025 report and how Deloitte is
predicting the work and the workplace are going to be changing with all this in mind I am going to be discussing
about these predictions how they are evolving within the order to cash departments the technologies that they
are adopting and how the companies need to change in order to become integrators
of information global process owners and maintainer zuv third-party relationships
so with that I’m going to turn it over to David to get started so thank fellows
so before we begin I wanted to just take a few minutes and and reiterate some of the things that you are talking about
today in terms of digital so as you can see on the slide you know the good news is pilots are happening really across
all of the digital tools robotics natural language predictive analytics even blockchain you know so
the technologies and the tools that you mentioned around reimagining finance they’re here and they are being used the
challenges they continue to evolve and innovation happens relatively quickly
meaning that we need to keep our eyes thinking forward in looking ahead so if you flip to the next slide with an eye
on that future um you know we came up with these predictions and so this is
what we feel our job is is to anticipate how organizations need to progress what
they need to evolve into and how and when that evolution will happen particularly for the CFO so in thinking
about the future we focused on three primary questions as you can see on the slide here so the first the
possibilities of the future of Finance with combined digital technologies so we
look at these technologies independently when we do some pilots but really the
thought process needs to be how do they combine together for more effective and integrated solutions and then second is
how finance work would get done and by whom and really that talks to the talent
the types of skills and capabilities that will need to be developed as this
digital evolution continues and then thirdly you know how finance contributes to overall company success so what what
the digital enable meant and kind of the evolution of finance is enabling is for finance practitioners to be involved not
just within their own lane but across business function so cross collaboration and knowledge sharing about the business
is a critical fact so with this we’ve come up with a predictions and we’ll talk about those across you know the
balance of the hour here and we’ll spital spend a little time discussing each of these as billa billa’s mentioned
so why don’t we go ahead and flip to the next page and we’ll go into the first one
this is the Finance Act so in the coming years you know cloud-based ERP automation
cognitive innovation it all will continue to evolve and expand and at a
relatively rapid rapid pace you know this continues to create opportunities to simplify processes and
most importantly free up people so as you know we mentioned we look at Phillips mentioned the work and the
workforce in the workplace these are three themes we’ll talk about across the balance of the day when we look at these
predictions and so when we think about Finance Factory and the work what we’re
seeing really in finance is they will Excel our practitioners and in this our
discipline we excel in translating the business processes and governance models for automation we’re already seeing this
with with the advent of RPA within within a lot of the back office space
the real-time metrics they’ll continue to expand and become table speak table
stakes in most organizations and then in the workforce there’ll be a premium on talent and we’ll talk about talent
throughout the balance of the hour as well you know people who understand these technologies as well as the
business this combination of capabilities it will continue to shift
towards a hybrid type workforce where processes are continually being
augmented by robotics and cognitive tools and need human interaction to help interpret results and then in the
workplace you know the finance reach into the business it will continue to expand you know primarily due to the
availability of data and the speed of the processes so leading organizations
they’re developing more command type centers of finance groups smaller groups of professionals that monitor and a
broader array of processes using dashboards chat BOTS voice integration
and the like but overall what world we’re seeing is a broader sort of impact
and influence from from our finance colleagues so finance yes it will be leader in the operational space so
transactional accounting is will get automated you know however expectations from business finance areas like
planning and forecasting the business partnering and decisions or that you perform reporting plus
specialized finance areas like tax and Treasury those will all continue to expand and demand more from our finance
practitioners so I’ll turn it over to Phil is to talk a little bit more about the OTC space so thank you David you
know as you can see the way we’re kind of laying out today is David is talking in general about the eight predictions
and finance and I’m going to talk very specifically to those predictions and
how they work for order to cash and how they’re playing out today as you can imagine you know David spoke a lot about
automation that that is really the the image of sweet spot so you know
historically order to cash departments have been highly transactional manual operations they use things like snail
mail to send invoices and statements manually post cash you know cash
receipts that come in from the bank approve credit applications by hand and they do a lot of slow and time-consuming
processes today with the use of software solutions order to cash operations have
the ability to automate and digital digitize anywhere from about eighty to a
hundred percent of their business in today’s world we have the ability to bring our customers onboard digital
credit applications with digital signatures everything is is online and
paper free and the approval process makes a very rapid process of bringing
your customer a new customer into the fold sending invoices to customers
people aren’t sticking invoices in in envelopes anymore these are all going
out digitally processing payments payments come in through the bank every
day into these order to cash departments and no longer does somebody have to sit
at a desk and post those payments to those receipts or to those open invoices
everything has being done in an automated fashion one of the biggest areas of automation is is in collections
route collectors the people that collect the money in the accounts receivable department now are doing strategic
collections they’re not spending their time on the customers that pay that pay
without contact they’re spending their time on those high risk high types
customers that need a little extra work and in the areas that are really specifically driven by the business
another area is managing disputes and deductions those short pays that come in
from customers are really those are being handled in a workflow fashion so
that we can very quickly and easily see why our customers aren’t paying and use
this data to drive business you know changes in the business operations and then finally you know we’re seeing a lot
of self-service tools out there in the marketplace tools that are allowing customers to come in not have to have
human intervention and being able to automate the entire process of gaining
access into the customer environment with all of these integrated automation
we’re seeing organizational silos disappear and we’re now better able to
present a single face to the customer what we at amage are calling the trifecta of automation analytics and
artificial intelligence is giving us the ability to do all of this we are seeing
that this desire is being driven by really five different things here we call those five things the five C’s cost
controls or or cost management including planning and budgeting internal controls
for assuring effectiveness and efficiency and reliable reporting audit
and regulatory compliance consistent and predictable cash flow and specifically a
customer centric organization this new digital ordered cash Factory applies the
80/20 rule at least 80% of all operations in the future will become
digital and automated through and the new and changing workforce will
continue to manage the remaining 20% of the business that still requires human
intervention humans are never going to go away but their role is going to transform and we’re going to see a
little bit more of that throughout the presentation today yeah thanks Phyllis I think you did a
great job there like teeing up a lot of the themes that we’ll discuss over the balance of our time as we get into some
of the other predictions he’s looking specifically here at the role of Finance
you know kind of more broadly we expect finance organizations to evolve into full-fledged business centers you know
finance you know they will continue to service the business but the ability to
control those resources will be something dependent upon how much value the finance practitioners can continue
to be able to add so there’ll be a premium on knowledge sharing as business partnering and some of that analytic
work continues to shift upstream and finance becomes and continues to become more part of that type of discussion so
within the work space like the budgeting the reporting it will include more advanced scenario planning and advanced
forecasting for better visualization type reporting and more interaction you
know teams will focus on the most complex business decisions as the data and the information will be available
for those decisions just in time so we’re talking about moving into use of more real-time data you know we’ll see
routine forecasts you know handled by algorithms that are continually evaluated and monitored more
again automation within those routine activities in the workforce base as we
said you know as I mentioned they’re computer and we’ll handle routine requests from business leaders and what
that result in is a more proactive financial organization because people will spend less time in that preparation
of data and the hunting and gathering that’s gone on and they’ll spend more
time asking questions broader questions about the business now that they have the information and the data available
they’ll be able to learn more about what real did but you know real decisions health impacts sort
of business process I mean less about the gathering of information and so for
the workplace what that means is Jilla tea will become the quality that finance needs to develop because with all the
information with the evolving sort of technology differentiated service levels
will become part of our business different functions that we get involved in will have different needs and we’ll
have to be flexible within our finance workspace in order to be able to provide that type of quality service that the
functions and our stakeholders will expect so we may see more things around colocation or finance within business
teams you know it’ll be a combination of people and technology that keep people that keep business functions and people
together so overall we expect more and more of the data to be handled as cognitive and predictive tools you know
continue to advance but again talent B comes into play here as the resource teams evaluating monitoring won’t be
those traditional roles of Finance but more a combination of data scientists
and storytellers and kind of that you know the cognitive interpretation as we go through so to talk about that in a
little more on the odyssey space I let Phyllis UM click to the next slide
as with the rest of Finance ordered cash departments are going to be changing and evolving the accounts receivable or
order to cash departments like few other departments within the company can
provide some really tremendous insights into almost every aspect of the business if you think about a are order to cash
they’re one of the few roles that both that straddle both internal as well as
external customers they have knowledge as to what processes are working well in
which aren’t and work directly with customers on a regular basis in this new
world knowledge is going to be shared and it’s going to be used to drive business strategy data that gets derived
from things like accounts receivable aging cash flow forecasts and customer issues are going
to be viewed and addressed in real time and they’re going to be shared across the entire company people are going to
be able to use all of this essential data to be able to make better decisions
in the future to you know you’ll hear me talk about it frequently present that one single face to the customer and
really drive the change it is David mentioned they’re going to be data
scientists they’re going to be storytellers and what greater department in the company to be those storytellers
then those that know what is wrong with your products what is good with your
products which customers are happy which customers are unhappy which customers
are paying on time which ones are the high-value customers who do you want to
try and sell more to all of that information makes the order to cash
department an extremely valuable tool for sharing all of this information
across the business yeah so taking a
look now at finance cycle so kind of what you had said around strategic stewardship you know you had mentioned
about you know being able to add the value right into the business knowing
external internal activities you know that to me relates a lot to finance
cycles and what I mean by that is like it says on the slide finance is going real time and this is getting you know
more true every day you know the distinction between the operational and the analytical cycles it’s just it’s
disappearing you know think about what you might be hearing around clutchless close you know seamless sort of
integration the fact is leading organizations are operating really based
on the new mantra that there is no closing time so close forecast
you know reef or casting in some scenarios they aren’t once a month or quarterly they’re happening in a
real-time basis and so the work is really the high impact area here you know stakeholder
expectation for information and insight is just going to continue to increase and increase at a dramatic pace so the
continuous monitoring of sales – close you know inventory other key metrics
they’re going to become the norm it’s going to be the table stakes so as men you know mentally you know the workforce
will continues will continually have a shift in talent you know the mix of traditional process owners did the data
scientists ultimately augmented by artificial intelligence it’s all to
provide better deeper learning and pattern recognition that will allow for better insights and faster
decision-making you know and in the work space will see flatter and more distributed finance organizations with
agile teams that can take advantage of instant and easy access to data that’s
all made possible by these touch lists and seamless integrated platforms you
know the barriers that finance faces today you know that are driven by technology and data processing
limitations those are slowly changing you know we’ll see this changes
information becomes more available instantly to those who need it you know so this will free up people again to
focus on delivering discovery new insights and being able to act upon them based on data being available more on a
real-time basis then in the cyclical cycles we’ve typically operated so phil
is to look at the impact of order to cash so you know as David mentioned data is
going to be available and shared real time close you know the hole closed process is going to cease to exist and
is going to go away I can’t tell you how many customers come and approach us
because they don’t have data in real time that they have they can’t run an
aging in real time they can’t communicate with their customers in real time it truly affects the relationship
with the customer and like I said all of this really boils down to how we are doing business with our customers moving
forward customers shouldn’t have to wait to be approved for things like new credit lines credit lines you know
onboarding a customer should take a matter of minutes especially if it’s a low-risk customer
you’ve gone through all your due diligence and an automated process everything should happen very quickly so
that sales can get back to the business of selling more product and customers
can get on board and start buying products more rapidly payments that come in from customers should be visible
every day and posted to the general ledger that way when the order to cash
came when the collectors are talking to customers there they’re not making your
phone calls for no reason they’re not trying to collect on money that that was
already paid and then you know I actually mentioned in my bio I come from
a functional background I can’t tell you how many times when I was working in
various roles where I would have folks from FPA on my doorstep on a daily basis
looking for a new cash forecast cash flow that comes from real accounts receivable is paramount to the business
it’s not just getting that money in and and knowing you know being able to use
it it’s being able to identify when it’s coming in so they come you know the AP
knows when to pay the bills so that the corporation knows when they can make purchases and things like that it’s
being able see cash and see it forecast at anytime you want
real-time 24/7 on a regular basis to
know and modify and be able to adjust your business as it’s coming in again it
all becomes a real-time cycle so that time is spent adding more value to the
business yeah so you mentioned something
I wrote that down here to reiterate is that the relationship with customers is
changing and that’s internal and external and I think that’s a great lead-in to what we’re talking here about in terms of self service so as the five
states you know self service will become the norm there are plenty of our business partners that don’t need and
holding anymore when it comes to basic finance you know we can ask Siri we can
ask Alexa you know questions that can get answered by digital voice on smart phones or through chat BOTS
you know honored auto delivered you know visualization reporting you know over time we’re going to see these smart
agents learn the type of information and the business data that you know individual people need and then they’ll
deliver it proactively so as this future unfolds what we’re going to see is data and spreadsheets being replaced by this
you know visually rich information that’s intuitive it’s accessible it’s
easy to use so the accounting work in spreadsheets it’s going to be replaced by this technology you know the higher
value work it will require cross-functional collaboration among the business the technology and the finance
strategists you know in the workforce companies that want to excel in the new
world they’re going to develop that skill set necessary for a self-service culture so it’s a little bit different
than made ways we may have or methods we may have in place today so making sure
you’re accessing and developing people who understand customer experience will be critical in the future you know and
then in the workspace like security is going to take on a new sense of urgency you know finance data will be exposed to
a whole new business users and environments and so in this in a self-service world like
data security will become more and more important so getting self-service right will be
paramount you know the growing expectations for responsiveness and quality for finance the last thing we all want is a
frustrated or an unhappy customer or stakeholder and so focusing on self service will run hand in hand because on
emission increases as you know there’s tap BOTS for example scale across different business functions in order
just to handle the main and so if we look at this I’ll turn it back to you fellows to look at this from o to see
space so David you mentioned Syrian Alexa I would be remiss to not mention
our my best friend gia is our digital assistant here at
Amara who I happen to talk to probably on a regular basis and and really enjoy
talking to and getting information from so speaking about self-service you know
coming from the AR in order to cache background at you many of you have
probably heard the order to cash or credit collections department being called the sales prevention department
you know customers go to great lengths often to avoid answering phones and
responding to emails so self-service becomes a really great method for
interacting with customers besides offering them a faster more immediate
way of getting their answers to an issue and helping control unnecessary cost
self-service portals are also a great way to boost your relationship with your
customers I think they definitely help improve in terms of customer
satisfaction it gives you the appearance of being a 24/7 company it gives them
access to information they’re you then
have the ability to access and extract information like invoices and statements
a good self-service portal will allow customer the ability to make payments
online it’s going to also help on the backend help bring those payments in more quickly customers are now sending
communications to their vendors through these self-service portals they can let a vendor know very quickly if an invoice
needs to be disputed it can then be resolved in a more timely fashion it
makes you all in all an easier company to do business with self-service also
takes many other forms it’s not just being available as a portal to your
customers it can also take the form of Robotics that pull things like remittance advice or can deploy a bot to
secure data or as a digital assistant like we talked about Siri Alexa or Jia
that you can talk to that can provide immediate information about the business
digital assistants are great for the analysts working with the accounts so
for example our collectors use Jia to be
able to review or re review a credit application they can ask to you to send
out the new credit application and recheck the credit they can find out a balance or if they’re talking to a
customer they can ask Jia when the last payment came in all of this sort of self-service information really having
it quickly and their fingertips makes doing business easier we also see executives using our digital assistant
for things like sitting in an audit committee meeting they might be sitting there and you might be discussing bad
debt or balances overdue balances in a certain region you can simply ask your
digital assistant you know think you provide that information it’s real-time it comes up in in a graphical depiction
or a verbal depiction and it makes it very easy to have that information at
their fingertips you know all of this allows an executive who may need
information in off hours or when no one else is there to provide it it gives you
access to all of that information
yes so if we think about all the elements that we’ve talked about already they kind of all converge a little bit
in an around operating model and you know this is where in the work that the
primary work that I do where I see a lot of of the impacts happening so we will see an emergence of a new service
delivery model as robotics algorithms begin to integrate with the workforce
companies are given the opportunity to assess the benefits of automation against onshore and offshore operations
so you know digital provides a new lever for managing costs it gives finance an
opportunity to re-evaluate how it’s organized where work it’s done what kind of processes require human intervention
what kind of processes may not we will we’re likely to see more of a finance as
a service model gain some traction beyond the market so into the bigger global global organizations you know so
in the work space you know we really see the days of copying and pasting special
values from contracts you know invoices and uploading an ERP systems like that
stuff’s going to disappear you know leading finance organizations are going to design automation tools to do this
kind of work where is where we’re watching it happen right now you know when where people will turn
their attention to really is the exception based activities and the more providing insights you know the
investigative work not the process oriented tasks and activities you know
they continue it that the continued trend within the workspace is having a diverse talent model you know I guess I
can’t over over estimate this enough or you know emphasize this enough you know the workforce will move you know really
it kind of can be a project to project orientation you know embedding capabilities across the enterprise
you’re creating integration with business units you know eliminating kind of those
finance silos that have to exist within business now you know the talent base needs to be open to learning and that’s
where they’ll see their opportunity for growth you know and in the finance workspace
we that will need to be enabled and facilitated you know through easy-to-use collaboration you know supportive tools
you know across the broad range of teams this will be a critical activity as you
know we as finance begins to expand not only you know in and throughout the business but also as the tools and the
technology become available to all the different people like we mentioned in self-service just a few minutes ago so
you know companies may see a significant disruption in and around offshoring in the outsourcing space you know you some
of you guys may be undergoing that or looking at that currently you know suppliers and the capabilities you know
in this you know Lane are going to look very different than they do today you know building cross-functional dynamic
teams however it’s not easy so being proactive and preparing for what’s ahead and identifying particularly you know
the people and the leaders that can help navigate that transition will be critical so knows what are your thoughts
on this one so you know as we see a David you know tomorrow’s operating
model is going to be one of that’s really driven by advanced analytics and automation and it’s basically going to
render the outsourcing environment obsolete the manual repetitive tasks
that often said you know that have often historically been sent offshore to
minimize costs are now being automated the thought provocative an analytical
parts of the work are going to be completed by a new and differently trained workforce if you think about it
when you look at these offshore environments they were all created in
many cases at least to save money companies wanted to send the
transactional work to a place that where they could have they can basically throw bodies and things in in an automated
world that’s no longer necessary so those tasks really can be brought back into the fold brought back onshore
the tools themselves the software tools will handle all those automated
functions like mailing invoices like mailing billing statements applying cash and then this
new and differently trained workforce those of the data scientists the analysts are going to be working on
Shore to really provide insights into the business all of this is what it’s
going to do is it’s going to help greatly reduce costs and then the organization’s now are they’re going to
be more agile they’re going to be lighter organizations that can really
change scale and grow as the business you know as the business changes and as
the business grows bringing on new acquisitions growing organically all of
that can very easily be done and brought into the fold without really handle you
know adding a whole lot of workforce outcome-based performance is going to
become the norm and really outcome based costs are also going to become the norm
a lot of the vendors will start charging based on outcomes they can provide how
much you know how much DSO can you reduce by how much cash flow can you improve not strictly it’s no longer
going to be rears in the feet right license based charges are going to start
going away it’s a new and different operating model and it’s really a new and different way of thinking and really
shared service centers are going to become data analysis hubs they’re not going to be those centralized
transactional environments that they once were and ultimately I think we’re
going to start to see them you know the offshoring and and the Business Process
Outsourcing organizations really going away yeah
that’s a good lead-in here to to the enterprise resource planning like this
this prediction here and I know we spoke about this and as we prepare for the call here and you know really
traditional ERP systems they’re going to be challenged by micro services that are
available in finance applications and it to your point and what you just made around come results you know there will be a
shift in the landscape around players within the ERP space you know
specialized applications and services that can sit on top of those and most
importantly they all integrate with with the with the big ERP platforms you know
so tuning it will work you know as companies move out towards the cloud they’re inherently choosing to become
more standardized and so instead of building customized systems you know companies will want to buy what they
need from a growing marketplace with the absent services just like we use the App Store on our iPhone you know technology
it’s getting smarter and so it’s integrating itself with ERP platforms
and you know not really needing people to intervene there so instead of being
an app like we perhaps are in our current space you know the workforce is going to need to focus on using the app
so to give business leaders that information that they need to make smarter decisions and faster you know
things are going to be available you know we’ve talked a lot about it real time so how do we use that information and what you mentioned in and about
service centers being you know analytic centers and data analysis like we’re going to need to know how to how to
interpret that information and so at the workplace you know cloud-based apps now
ensure you’re constantly updated with the latest releases so there won’t be big efforts in and around those so the
days of investing heavily and customized applications they’re going to fade the cost is high you know comparable to
maintain and so the bottom line we like to say finances entering a golden age of technology you know as cloud becomes the
norm you know finance apps and the micro services associated they’re going to they’re going to thrive you know it’s a
financial benefit in a way based on reducing the complexity and the cost associated with that technology and not
sacrificing functionality in fact probably getting a little bit more bang for the buck
so fillers so admittedly this six
prediction that David mentioned about ERP planning is very favorable to
vendors like us so I say that with all candor the large erps are likely going to
become unable to meet the demands of the changing finance requirements that David and I have been speaking about
throughout this webinar in order to provide a holistic approach to customers
they’re going to need to open up api’s they’re going to need to give people access to their tools and to their
systems this the entire supply chain people such as third party credit
bureaus the ERPs that we’ve mentioned banks self-service portals vendor
portals those kind of things are going to all become integrated and they’re all
going to be able to be lit need to be linked via API all of this so that the
customer again keep in mind that people need to be able to look at their
customer they need to be able to react and respond to their customer in a holistic approach the single view to a
customer from a company so that you can provide them with all of the services
necessary and many of these things which you can’t find or can’t easily secure
that data from an ERP the use of as well a blockchain in order to cache is going
to really aid in exchanging of this odissey data transactions are going to
be validated and secured across the supply chain and performed in real time
you know a common example of blockchain and AR is the e invoicing process so
we’re really going to see a change in out there I don’t think that the the ERP is are going to go away but I think
they’re going to become more involved and more open to working with the other
software vendors and third-party vendors that are out there in the marketplace
yeah so you know integration api’s real-time info you know reactions
responding all the things we’ve talked about you know all center and and around data here and this was another another
topic that you know as Phyllis and I prepared here you don’t discussed a little further at length you know data it’s a blessing and a curse in this
environment you know with the advancements in API you know it’s driving data standardization but it’s not the Silver
Bullet you know for much of for as much as you know digital transformations can offer the end value and the biggest
value is only as good as the data that’s being utilized and so you know looking
for silver bullets or to solve data problems you know be a digital you know
don’t get disappointed like this is hard work you know automation makes the work
easier to get done but it doesn’t solve a hundred percent further for the data issues so again kind of no illusions you
know this is the hardest part to do but it’s very very important so the work
itself around that the data component is really getting into the weeds and
establishing it probably more importantly forcing you know data governance a lot of clients that were
I’ve been historically have had you know some master data management but enforcing that governance enforcing
those those rules and having that governance has been something that’s been amiss and so within the workforce
space if really what we’re seeing is that organizations need to identify that
data evangelist that chief data officer that you know not only has the authority
to to enforce you know the governance rules but also the ability to drive
continuous data improvement you know this bleeds over into the work space because it’s also a change of
culture and you need to be able to stay the course and and think incrementally when it comes to the data challenges so
that people can continue to do their best work with the information that is
you know so these issues they hide beneath the surface you know partly because of Technology you know partly because there’s no path
to elevate but as mentioned you know kind of where we see the change evolve in here and who’s getting some Authority
now is that is that champion is that chief data officer and having a strong governance model associated with it will
be critical as more and more applications need more and more information across the board so going
forward I think big data is going to be the key analytical tool supporting the
decision-making across the organization finance and very specifically the order
to cache department is going to be the central repository to house and share
this data best-in-class organizations are going to need to be committed to
sharing this data as well just bringing the data in getting it but it also needs
to be shared across the environment he needs to be used and used in such a way
that we can get actionable insights from this information using analytics
insights gained from both structured data and structured data is things like spreadsheets or machine generated data
as well as the unstructured data things like emails and files are going to allow
us to make better business decisions in the future so using the information that
you know about how we’ve historically performed to help us drive you know
continue to do the things that we’ve done well as a business make changes make rapid changes on the things that
we’ve not done so well and really to learn and gain insights from all this information we’re going to be able to
manage order to cash as well as the corporate wide behaviors by just excuse
me by deploying you know really three different types of analytics the
descriptive analytics those that really talk about what has historically
happened in the business so applying you know our analytics on top of all of this Big Data predictive analytics really
helping us to predict outcomes in the world of order to cash we use predictive
analytics for things like to predict cash flow to predict DSO to protect
customer payment behavior to predict risk performance and things like that
and ultimately we’re getting to a world of prescriptive analytics prescriptive
analytics you know will tell you really prescribe s were how to change your business how to
operate your business to gain a desired outcome additional insights can also be
gained into things like customer payment behavior DSO and things like to help you
manage traditional KPIs and metrics you know finance is a very heavily metric
driven department using all of this information all of these these you know
order to cash data that come you know has been provided in these central data
Lakes really will help us to help drive current performance help make
modifications for future performance as well as analyze all the things that that we’ve done historically yeah so putting
kind of a wrapper on this the last one here is around workforce and and
workplace you know as it says here on the on the slide you know employees will
be doing new things and new in new ways you know some of which will make CFO’s
uncomfortable you know and you know change I guess the overall kind of comment there is like changes is is hard
you know we stay here that employees will be doing things new ways and that can’t be you know again I can’t
emphasize that enough you know finance talent is evolving and it’s evolving quickly you know we
mentioned data scientists storytellers advanced analytics you know which is a
shift for many many finance organizations you know the path forward though here is to make sure as you look
at your talent as you look at your people as you look at new hires you know you fit them for the future you’re
trying to create so across these three spectrums you know we’ve talked about the qualities that
may rise to the top including strong customer service you know flexibility collaboration skills you know you need
to add to that the technical capabilities needed for certain roles to use the tools that support those
activities now the the analytics components you know the natural language
pieces you know there’s there’s more and more evolution of the tools that will
continue to more and more evolve the capabilities as finance practitioners that will need to have so make sure that
your people can elevate the value of finance along the way as well you know strong communicators deep understandings
of the business you know we talked about knowledge sharing and cross-functional teams and collaboration you know
throughout our time you know here today that ability having that ability to influence across function will continue
to keep finance in the centerpiece of a lot of these business decisions you know
the information is going to be here so you might as well enable your people to use it in the best way that they can so
Phyllis any final comments from you well David you know the way I see it I see it
very similar to the way way you see it it kind of all boils down to a changing
environment and the willingness to change you know in the in the future
we’re going to see more of these hybrid roles right we’re going to see roles where humans are performing those high
touch high visibility tasks all of that thought provocative work it’s going to
you know that is always and probably will continue to be performed by humans
bots however going to be doing all of this manual and repetitive work that’s
out there it kind of it brings me back you know and I regularly come back to this you know 8020 rule of engagement in
the new world where 80% is going to be done in an automated fashion and 20%
will continue to be done by you know human intervention so with that leaders
need to be prepared for these new roles as you mentioned their new roles of data scientists and analysts who understand
both the business of order to cash as well as technology they need to think
about retraining the existing workforce in hiring the right skill sets for tomorrow you know we often think about
you know the old school role of a credit manager or a director
of credit or director of order to cash you know sort of it as this you know
person who sits there and they make phone calls on on past new invoices and
they kind of rubber stamp credit applications coming in we need to think about the kind of people were going to
be hiring for the next generation we need people that can analyze the data people that that can provide insights
that can share it share the information that are really these these sort of global process owners that can own not
just the order to cash but own the hutt the customer across the organization so
that we can optimize all the processes and that we can provide better customer
service and better customer satisfaction to our customers we can improve working
capital metrics we can improve cash flow metrics all of these things and all of
these things are going to come with this new and improved you know workforce that
that we should be changing to you know organizations as well are going to become a little bit flatter they’re
they’re going to be you know with a single global process owner they’re going to be able to spread themselves
you know a little more widely across the organization and and sort of jump over
the those barriers and those silos that have historically been a part of the
finance organizations that work with the customer so in ending you know I want to
quote the finance 2025 study itself all of your people should be able to
contribute to elevating the value of finance in terms of communication impact
and influence make every new hire account yep and with that we want to
open up the floor and see if there are any questions right
I would like to request all the participants to clean the question and the chat box Phyllis I would like to
first quote the question that we have readily available which is which is from
one of the past friends robotics to grab remittance information from third-party customer portal sites can you explain
how this would be handled and the statement is I believe this would be HS
ec issue and GDP are for any customer to allow connecting the third party portal
so I will preface my response by saying I am NOT a technologist so if they’re
looking for a technological response I can’t provide that I am a
self-proclaimed functional expert but what we typically do is it’s not really
third party customer portals we typically can pull remittance information from third party vendor
portals things you know common examples of that in the marketplace today would
be somebody like in a Reba or a tungsten or something like that where payment
information and invoice information can be secured we typically don’t go
directly into the sites we use API is to conte to connect and we pull that
information in and utilize that in the system so so far today we have not had
any issues with gdpr if you know if I haven’t answered the question or you
want more information please certainly feel free to contact me and and I’ll get you the right answer if I’ve
misunderstood it thank you for letting me come over to the next question
explain how digital assistance can be used in finance so you know today we’re
assistance can be used in a whole variety of ways digital assistance can
be used to send information out to a customer via email they can interact and
talk with a for example we utilize our digital
assistant to send out past-due letters to customers and so they can they can
interact with gia and make payments or dispute invoices things like that our
digital assistant resides as well on all the operational desktops in our software
environment so if you are a collector for example a collector of money you can
utilize our digital assistant if you want you can ask gia a question hey what was XYZ company’s last payment date you
can use that when you’re talking to you know the customer emailing with the
customer to provide insights I think I also mentioned you know executives
frequently using Gia you know and things like audit committee meetings board
meetings executive staff meetings c-level c-suite level meetings where
they might need some information and they they are not you know they’re probably not as knowledgeable about the
day-to-day account activities but they can ask gia for information there there’s a whole bunch of different you
know if you think about it it’s a machine learning voice assistant tool so
we have taught at least in our environment we taught G all these different skill sets so that she can
respond to anything from credit collections to cash application those types of activities are very specific I
think she’ll also tell you the weather and the news in your location as well if
you’d like that yeah and also I’d also add in that you know the digital assistants are used you
know within the business partnering space you know in commercial like the
market type operation finance to connect actuals to forecast data also in a way
to you know allow folks to be able to say you know hey Alexa you know what
were sales last quarter versus what’s planned for this product line in the coming quarter there’s many
different ways that we’ve seen the digital assistants apply in that business partnering space around
planning forecasting the variance analysis pieces even within kind of the
close and report cycle you know for reporting the neat thing about the
digital assistant pieces it can integrate well with robotics or where you’ve automated you know processes say
around clothes you can have your digital assistants being able to provide you
know updates on the ask in a way so you know that there are there are there are
a lot of broad applications to it I think you know for everybody who’s maybe a Bank of America customer you know you
log on there and you’ve got Erica asking if she could help I think what we’re going to see we’re not just gonna what
we are seeing more of that type of application within the finance base when
it comes to doing kind of the analytics and the comparative you know questions
that we all you know have to ask that are sort of the surface level right now and then ultimately will drill down
thanks will extend thanks David the next question is I think this is more specific to Amasya so probably
Felicity can take it what ERP systems is ammaji are already integrated with so Imagi
is what we’ll call it ERP agnostic we integrate with all of the major ERPs as
well as legacy systems we pull in information into a central data hub that
integrates with one or many ERPs or legacies for example we’re doing one
implementation now that company has one version of Oracle r12 we’re doing
another implementation where it’s a very large water company that has I believe a
hundred and twelve different ERPs and legacy system environments that we pull
in information from Thank You Phyllis the next question this
is a very interesting question I mean question is much of the presentation was
delivered in the future tense it will versus it is how much of this is
really happening versus a desired future State can you speak to customers who are using this
today yeah so I’ll start here if that’s ok fellas all right I think that’s it
I think that’s a great question because the here-and-now solutions I mean I
guess to directly answer your questions can you speak to you know customers who are using this today I would say a
hundred percent of the clients that I serve within the life-science consumer
and retail space are involved in some sort of digital deployment whether it’s
starting their robotics journey or you
know further down the lane and already using automations throughout their organization and looking to expand into
more of the analytical and predictive type toolset so I’ll feel it a little
bit and say you know that it is part to hearing now pieces are really around
automation tools and the natural language processing and generation type
tools so getting you know a data set that’s converted into a report with key
metrics automating that process and having that produced is like tangible
here and now in our space what we see coming that’s more emerging still is in
and around the analytics and the predictive and that’s really a result of the advancements that’s really going on
in cognitive and the artificial intelligence base so those those tools
are evolving just as fast because we’re trying to learn how to use them so that’s still in a you know kind of pilot
emerging space and then the further sort of out on the curve as to what’s coming and Phyllis mentioned this a little bit
in in the ODC in one of her Odyssey spaces is around
watching you know blockchain is still probably a ways out from being broadly adopted but people need to learn how to
do ooh and utilize that technology and the power of that tool now so that when it
does come about they’re prepared so I think it’s a spectrum across what’s
being used really today in what’s desired future state primarily because the digital continues to evolve as we’re
starting to utilize it but I would say if you haven’t started a digital journey
you may be you might be a little bit behind now because things around automation and in some of those those
initial like technical back office you know accounting and type applications
those are those are rapidly becoming table stakes thank you David
I noticed that we are already a couple of minutes beyond our schedule I’m not
sure if you want to take another question or so but this roll is out over here here’s the one of the question that
we have maybe if the batch pens are still patients with us the question is I notice there were not any knowledge
check questions during the presentation is this EP eligible so right now this we
are not providing a CPE eligible webinar we are we’re working on doing that
however for the next ones thank you for this I think I think we are good on the
questions anything else you want to add that David Phyllis before leads out from there session yeah I mean I just like to
say thanks for everybody for joining in I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys today and thanks fellows
for everything collaborating on this it was a great session yes and and thank
you David very much thank you David and thank you Deloitte for and for everyone joining us today for any more
information and to take our digital score assessment feel free to go to
image calm and you should be able to get more information have a wonderful rest
of your day and thank you very much thanks everyone