It’s time to take an Amazonian approach to technology in Finance
By Andy Burrows
With all the scare stories about “robots taking our jobs”, it’s easy to get the impression that we’d rather have robots doing jobs because they’re better than us.
Recently, I had to do a 2-minute presentation on the subject of why Finance should pursue automation opportunities. And I was given a PowerPoint slide with 10 or so bullet points full of buzzwords, telling how automation can reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction, improve consistency and traceability, support strategic platform upgrades and accelerate innovation, amongst other things.
Even my own eyes glazed over as I started to talk it through, so I cut to the real point.
Forget the buzzwords!
Forget the buzzwords. Humans are better than robots!
Robots don’t have intelligence.
Robots don’t interpret anything.
Robots don’t take action on information.
Robots don’t make strategies.
Robots don’t care if they win or lose.
Robots do:
Do repeatable,...
Next Generation Finance Skills - a business and personal challenge
By Andy Burrows
What are the skills needed for Finance in business in the next generation? One of the biggest current challenges for the Finance and Accounting profession, the individual Finance professional, and Finance functions in general, is around skills.
It’s not just a problem of what skills are needed for the future. But whose responsibility is it to create the career pathways, the learning opportunities, and to ensure the right skills, mindsets and behaviours, prevail?
In an earlier article, I looked at what’s really happening in Finance in the realm of automation and technology. I argued that it need not be all about RPA and AI, as the media and software companies would have you believe. There are plenty of other tools we already have in the toolbox, some are more robust and stable, and some are much lower cost. Automation isn’t new in Finance, and RPA is just the new kid on the block (and that would make AI a babe in arms!).
But what I want to point out...
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