Organizations looking to enhance their productivity and profitability should focus on streamlining their business processes

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Neelesh Kripalani, Chief Technology Officer, Clover Infotech

• What were some of the challenges Clover Infotech faced before deciding to automate their business processes?

Before we automated our financial processes, our teams used to manually generate invoices for customers. The collection and TDS details for each invoice was validated and knocked-off manually. Further, our customers provide consolidated TDS amount against all the invoices that they would process on any given day. Since, our earlier systems lacked the flexibility to break down financial data to granular level such as services or customer-wise, it took significant amount of time for our accounts team to manually search for invoices in the system and pass individual entries against them. The challenge was also compounded by the fact that piling up of many invoices across various customers increased the chances of human errors in accounting.

• Why did Clover Infotech choose to implement Oracle Fusion Financials?

Oracle Fusion Financials enabled us to connect and expedite our financial processes such as payables, receivables, expenses, and reporting, to get a clear view into the company’s overall financial health. We chose to implement this as it’s a significant upgrade from our earlier systems, which were very complex owing to disparate cash inflows, outflows, reporting, and non-configurable tax rules.

• How did Oracle Fusion Financials help Clover Infotech to overcome these complex business problems?

Through Oracle Fusion Financials, we were able to leverage a host of cloud ERP benefits such as customized dashboards, mobility solutions, AI, catboats and automation. We weren’t able to utilize these capabilities earlier as the traditional system did not support them. Further, we built an automation solution that is integrated with the Oracle Fusion Financials to streamline the invoice generation and collection process. It checks TDS collection and passes individual entries against respective invoices. This has allowed us to save more than 150 man-hours every month, and we could channel these efforts towards more productive and analytical tasks.

• How important is automation of financial processes for companies in a digitally-led world?

Irrespective of the business model or industry, the finance function is one of the most essential department in any organization as it performs several significant and multi-faceted roles on a daily basis. In this digital age, it has become imperative for companies to create an ‘intelligent’ finance model to drive performance, business growth, and enhanced value. Integration of new-age technologies such as cloud, AI and ML with financial processes will make them agile, flexible and insights driven to improve decision-making, eliminate redundancies and errors, accelerate innovation, enable faster reporting, and enhance the overall financial health of the organization.

• What are some steps that organisations can take to reduce manual dependency/redundancies and enhance employees’ productivity?

Organizations looking to enhance their productivity and profitability should focus on streamlining their business processes. Efficient business processes not only reduce workload but also fast-track the delivery of a product or service. In order to make business processes intelligent, enterprises need to design a robust strategy that addresses the continuous need for process definition, execution, evaluation, and iteration.

Enterprises of today must have a robust modernization strategy, wherein every existing process is reimagined with new-age digital technologies for optimization of operational efficiency and ROI.