Ask someone from outside the world of Finance and Accounting to describe an “accountant.”
They’ll likely paint a picture of a bespectacled, bow-tie-wearing number cruncher, hunched over a clunky adding machine—that old-fashioned behemoth with large buttons that make a gratifying “thwap!” with each tap.
This imagined accountant sits at a desk in a back office, isolated from the rest of the company, reconciling each month's close amid tangles of paper spools and overflowing file cabinets.
This description is, of course, wildly inaccurate.
Today’s accountant isn’t just a number cruncher. Au contraire. In fact, accountants in every industry are taking on new and expanded roles, such as analyst, strategist, and financial experts. The 21st-century accountant’s responsibilities have less to do with data entry and more with informing and driving the business strategy forward.
Why then does the outdated image of the isolated accountant persist?
Because too many of us are stuck using yesteryear's technology. Sure, we’ve ditched the clunky adding machine but we’re still drowning in thousands of Excel spreadsheets. Day-to-day accounting still resembles grunt work, rather than the highly valuable, creative, and analytical work it needs to be.
Worse, the more time we spend performing grunt work the less time we can spend on strategy. Hours spent compiling data leave little time for transforming that data into insight. And when we’re stuck performing rote, manual tasks, we're not thriving as analytical and creative individuals ready to provide real solutions to our company's challenges.
There is another way.
Embracing the role of creative strategist and driving the company forward with our analytical prowess requires saying “no” to the rote and “yes” to the RAD—the robotic accounting department.
It’s time for us to automate our financial processes with modern tools.
Tools that free us from manual matching, clunky workflows, and time-sucking data aggregation. Tools that make it possible to engage in Continuous Accounting, access real-time visibility into finance and business performance, and drive better decisions.
Ready to move beyond a manual close? Automate tedious tasks? Effortlessly transform from back-office numbers cruncher to awesome analyst?
Start by reading The Finance Automation Journey: How to Fuel Your Finance Transformation ebook.
You'll learn how finance automation can unshackle accounting and what you need to know to get started, including an overview into the four key areas—process, technology, people, and automation—that are crucial to your finance automation journey.