Ep. 40: Loreal Jiles - How Real is RPA in Finance and Accounting?

"Govern Your Bots!" by Loreal Jiles (Strategic Finance, January
1, 2020):
https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/january-2020-govern-your-bots/


Links to learn RPA Development or other things about RPA
Tools for Free 
UiPath:
https://www.uipath.com/rpa/academy  (The name of the RPA tool
is UiPath and this site is to UiPath Academy).Automation
Anywhere: https://university.automationanywhere.com/ (The
name of the RPA tool is Automation Anywhere and this site is to
Automation Anywhere University)


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host,
Adam Larson, and I'm happy to bring you episode number 40 of our
series. Today's conversation is between my cohost Mitch and
Loreal Jiles IMA's director of research for digital technology
and finance transformation.  Their discussion revolves
around RPA and the practicality of robots and accounting. So,
let's transition over and hear what Loreal has to say. 


 


Mitch: (00:31)


We keep hearing so much about RPA, but I'd like to kind of start
off on the right page here. Can you tell us exactly what is
RPA? 


 


Loreal: (00:45)


Certainly. So RPA stands for robotic process automation, and my
personal definition is RPA is a technology that enables a virtual
robot or a bot, as we call them, more casually to emulate human
interaction with computer applications to execute processes. And
so in planar terms, what that really means is the bot mimics the
clicks and the keystrokes of humans to perform a process on a
computer. It can navigate through desktop or web based
applications, and it can do all of that simply by accessing
what's called the user interface or the UI. And the user
interface is the part of an application that all of us as humans
see and interact with. There is another part of each application
that's in the back end and that's where traditional computer
science majors or programmers access that to right code to either
modify the application or to automate things that way. Right?
Historically, the only way to automate things was to access the
backend of the application. What RPA does is it allows us to do
things, things that historically businesses, professionals or non
it professionals would not be able to do because now without
having to access the back end of the application where there's
admittedly a bit more risk, we simply record the keystrokes but
clicks the type, of the human throughout the process and allowed
the robot to replicate those steps. After we've documented it in
sequential format in the required, I'd say the required format
that's necessary. So what's really cool with it, I think is as
opposed to going in the back end again, the automation happens
right in the front of the screen. And in some instances you can
even watch the robot perform your process. Um, so RPA for me is
the easiest way to automate processes for non it
professionals. 


 


Mitch: (02:42)


So you just said it right there. non-IT in our audiences, finance
and accounting. So how real is RPA in finance and accounting?
What are some of the typical uses that you've come across? 


 


Loreal: (02:52)


Oh, I think it's incredibly real. I'd say first off, it's, it's
very real across many. And so McKinsey published a study just a
few months ago highlighting RPA offers potential ROI of 30 to
200%, and in fairness with the right selection principles for a
process, those projections aren't incredibly conservative. I
start there because nearly all enterprises who have begun RPA
journeys regardless of their industry, they started in the
finance and accounting department. And so that means that the
thousands of companies that are using RPA today, over 70% of them
started in finance and accounting. And that's incredibly powerful
because it says to us as finance and accounting professionals,
how do we want to be impacted by the technology? Do we want to be
the recipients of it, if you will, or to be on the front end. And
my encouragement to finance and accounting professionals is to
consider being on the front end of it. The other thing I think
I'll highlight is, although it's tempting to say, um, we're not
developing bots or are developing robots themselves or actually
developing processes that robots will perform. And the only thing
we have to do to do that is effectively to tell the robot what
steps to take. Yeah. Who knows those steps better than the people
that actually perform them. Yeah. So my mantra is more can we
have finance and accounting professionals developing these
processes as opposed to solely it professionals. That doesn't
mean everyone will be converted to a developer, but you could
play a critical role in either process requirements gathering in,
in exploring what's needed to be able to facilitate or progressed
the implementation, if you will. And so I think in that space,
we're seeing something where every company, or just about every
company that starting RPA journeys is starting in finance and
accounting. Our processes lend themselves a bit more. It's a
automation because of the cyclical nature because some of them
are routine just by nature of what we're doing for month end
close or quarter end close for example. And so I think in the
spirit of that we as a profession will see a ton of this, for
those of us who haven't already been exposed to it,
significantly, 


 


Mitch: (05:10)


Well, in my own personal research trying to learn about RPA and
how finance really fits in, I came across democratization of RPA
and quite honestly, I'm hoping you can give us a little better
definition than what I read online. 


 


Loreal: (05:23)


Oh, certainly. Yeah. So democratization of RPA is a phrase that
summarizes the concept of a bot for every employee and some
people go so far as to see a bot for every human. I'm not trying
to go that far, but the concept of a bot for every employee means
that if I sit in any corporate setting, despite the company, just
like I have a laptop and it's automatic, that when I start
working for that company, they will give me a laptop. And that
laptop will have Microsoft office suite when it, for example,
there's an by some people or envision that I will also have a bot
on my laptop as well and I'll have software that allows me to
automate some of my processes on demand and in real time. And my
robot that sits on my laptop will effectively become my personal
assistant in that world. I think we've, we've got a little wait
before we can get there. So would I ask myself if I truly believe
in democratization of RPA? Yes. I think it's a far off, but in
fairness, no one thought we would have a laptop when every desk,
just a few short decades ago, no one thought we'd have
effectively a computer in the palm of our hands or in our back
pockets. And so what I think we have to do before we can truly
realize something like democratization of RPA is that the
technologies themselves, the software vendors, we'll have to
continue to progress the user friendly nature of their tools.
There are a couple of tools that are more user friendly than
others. And there's a recent Forrester report that was published
earlier this quarter that tells us who the leading RPA players
are. And I think the top three that they've highlighted are ...