The need for actionable analytics—and the data and automation behind it—is paramount to the success of financial operations. Research from McKinsey suggests that 42% of finance functions can be fully automated with solutions that exist today. For organizations looking to streamline financial operations, the efficiency gains from automation are hard to ignore. As CFO responsibilities evolve to include organization-wide growth strategies, automation can help reduce manual processes and enable data visualization and analytics that drive growth.
An example of how finance can use automation comes from Dropbox, the file-hosting service provider that develops smart content and collaboration products. With over 600 million users and plans starting at $10 per month, Dropbox processes millions of small-cost, high-volume transactions. To scale the business rapidly while minimizing cost and risk, Dropbox embraced automation using touchless transactions across all finance operations wherever possible to eliminate manual labor.
Watch Oracle’s Steve Miranda talk with Dropbox CFO Tim Regan.
Automation improves the efficiency of financial operations
Financial operations like processing, accounting, and closing are costly and time-consuming. They can also result in error-prone data, which causes larger problems for businesses as digitization efforts scale. Deloitte predicts data cleanliness to be a primary focus for finance in the coming years, with businesses relying on cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) for core data infrastructure fixes.
Dropbox wanted to automate and clean the financial data coming from their transactions and quickly deliver that information to finance. They turned to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to create a simple, secure invoice consolidation process to manage their large volume of monthly transactions. Using Oracle Analytics Cloud, Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Database Cloud, and Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, Dropbox reduced their processing costs by 80% through invoice consolidation and automated data delivery
“To get that [transaction] information into Oracle in an automated way, in a fast way, where now we can just do analysis, that has been critical to our success as a finance team,” said Tim Regan, CFO at Dropbox.
Automation enables finance to focus on business growth strategy
By reducing manual processes, automation allows finance teams to spend more time providing business insights with greater confidence in data accuracy. Data visualization and advanced analytics enable finance to use real-time information to guide current and future resource allocation decisions and uncover growth opportunities.
Under a big data pilot program, Dropbox is using Oracle Analytics Cloud, powered by Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, to provide its finance team with access to dashboards, data visualization tools, and self-service analytics to monitor and improve business performance. Together with Oracle Cloud EPM, Dropbox can also apply augmented analytics to manage cash flow, model the impact of new product offerings, and reallocate resources to higher-value initiatives.
For more information on Oracle Analytics for finance, take a product tour.
Automation helps shorten financial close time
Deloitte predicts that by 2025, most financial reporting can be done in real time. While regular reporting cycles still have their place, finance teams can provide results more quickly without the limitations of monthly or quarterly forecasting.
Automation can help shorten time to close. Using Oracle Cloud ERP, Dropbox cut its financial period close in half and its accounts receivable period close from four days to one.
For another example, see how Lyft speeds up financial reporting with Oracle Cloud.
The future of finance is digital. Get started today with Oracle Cloud!
According to a 2021 PwC survey, 64% of CFOs plan to invest more resources in digital transformation over the next 12 months. Financial leaders who fail to digitize and automate operations can fall behind their peers.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure helps finance teams use automation to access timely and accurate financial transactions and deliver decisive insights. Sign up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier today!