The finance industry is changing, and many businesses are struggling to keep up. Gone are the days of brick and mortar systems, where paper filing and long drawn out processes were the norm.

Surprisingly, CFOs often still work with legacy systems that do not talk to each other, making different departments in their company work in silos instead of being integrated. This affects efficiency for all employees and stakeholders, which can trickle down to use more money, time and resources.

Today, cloud and automation are king, and the better integrated systems you have, the more prepared your finance operation will be.

Automation can often be the deciding factor in a business's success or failure, which is why it is so important to look carefully at where your business needs automated practices.

It is clear that automation is becoming exponentially more popular in the finance business as technology evolves due to its critical function of allowing mundane processes to be taken care of with ease. It also allows for a range of other factors to become more enhanced, such as data production accuracy, better processing speeds and a wider scope of the business in general.

Integration is also paramount in allowing a company to keep its data organised, easily accessible, easily communicable and in the exact place that it needs to be. This will encompass the entire company and create workflow processes that are easier and more manageable. Unintegrated software can often result in missed payments, data finding issues and poor managerial decisions due to poor data management.

So what are the kinds of ways enterprises can be prepared to implement automation, and how do tech leaders know how to navigate cloud-related challenges?

The Access Group has released an insightful ebook that gives finance enterprises of all shapes and sizes the tools and skills to navigate automation implementation.

At the core, they believe automating the finance and accounting process is about integrating different systems and functions of a business, spanning many different stakeholders. They say institutions with superior quality automated data and insight will be much better off in the long term as markets in the finance world change.

The ebook covers a variety of crucial topics such as:

• What automation really is and its importance to a successful business
• How to automate to achieve data of superior quality
• Consideration for integration of systems and data across various functions across an organisation

There is also a key focus on finding the right financial software that suits an enterprise, with functionalities that make working processes better for all involved. Being informed and educated are the best assets to have when preventing bottlenecks and further business issues.

To learn more about how automation drives superior data quality and insights across business functions, sign up to read the full ebook here.