Financial Institutions Should Introduce Automation – Just Make Sure it’s the Right Kind

Over the past several years, the intersection of finance and technology has grown, helping to expand markets and drive innovation. While this presents an exceptional opportunity to automate companies and streamline processes, unfortunately, far too many financial institutions, accounting departments and other financial professionals are still spending time on manual and monotonous tasks and delaying their ability to progress and grow. 

Finance has long involved a variety of tedious tasks – from manual data entry to laborious analytics – but this work is leading employees to burnout. A recent study from Benenden Health found that almost two thirds of managers in the finance sector are experiencing burnout at work with a quarter considering quitting their job as a result. However, through technology, financial institutions are eliminating these mundane tasks and driving their companies towards growth and success.  

Automation in particular has incredible potential to help employees and organizations thrive. According to a study from SmartSheet, it’s estimated that workers would save six or more hours a week — almost a full workday — if the repetitive aspects of their jobs were automated. This extra time would allow employees to not only focus on deeper or more purposeful tasks but to also maintain a more positive headspace and uphold a healthier work/life balance, ultimately combating burnout. 

Why Gen1 RPA Shouldn’t be Your Number One Choice

Many companies have chased the promise of RPA by using Gen1 solutions but it often tends to fall short of their anticipated potential. This is due to limitations put on customers by RPA vendors that require an expensive and complex combination of proprietary tools, upfront, licensed-based pricing, high infrastructure costs, and antiquated development and deployment experiences. 

These limitations end up creating broken bots that leave users frustrated, pricing models that make it so that companies are paying too much and using too little, and it fosters a buy-not-build approach to bots that results in automation that doesn’t meet the needs of the buyer.

Additionally, it has become increasingly clear how much more difficult it is to scale Gen1 RPA and utilize it properly. A recent study from Forrester suggests that only 52% of enterprises that have launched RPA initiatives have progressed beyond their first 10 bots. Further, only 15% of organizations are extremely confident in their open source RPA management practices; the majority have concerns about keeping everything up-to-date, secure and well-maintained (TideLift).

Bringing Affordable and Easy Automation to Finance: The Rise of Gen2 

If banks, accounting departments, and others in the finance space want to tackle burnout utilizing technology, Gen2 RPA is the way to go. Gen2 RPA is a better, faster, and more cost effective automation solution than its predecessors due to several reasons including advancements in parallel processing, the ability to rapidly pinpoint issues, the use of a programmatic approach to solve UI based automation limitations, and the use of the cloud. 

Through these advancements, teams are able to easily build bots that can interact with all levels of the application stack, reducing bot fragility and decreasing the time it takes to complete a task. They’re also able to scale bots up and down as needed, avoid upfront licensing costs, and only pay for the bots they actually use.

Even further, Gen2 RPA enables large companies to build sustainable robots that can be scaled up across the organization over time and gives small and medium size companies the ability to start to use automation – something that wasn’t always possible with Gen1 RPA.

As the intersection of tech and finance continues to grow and the use of automation becomes increasingly more popular, making the switch from Gen1 RPA to Gen2 RPA is critical. Gen2 creates an elevated experience for consumers with smoother, more accessible and understandable features. Finance professionals are far more likely to combat burnout and introduce opportunities for innovation and growth with Gen2 RPA - changing not only employees' lives, but the entirety of the finance world.