Covid-19 exposed weaknesses in organisations’ financial close process and accelerated the path towards automation.

Trintech conducted a global survey of 486 financial professionals across 430 organisations in Q1 of 2021 to evaluate which parts of the financial close process have been automated, which are in the process of being automated and where finance and accounting (F&A) teams are looking to adopt automation in the future. Covid-19 exposed weaknesses in organisations’ financial close process and accelerated the path towards automation. The Trintech 2021 Global Financial Close Benchmark Report provides an analysis of the research.

Key findings from the survey include:

The top 3 challenges the Office of Finance experienced within the financial close process in 2020 were all influenced or accelerated by the pandemic

• A lack of automation is identified as the largest contributing factor to an inefficient financial close
• Process standardisation and automation are the key areas of improvement for 2021
• Completing quality work on time, while simultaneously balancing workforce issues (i.e. attracting talent and managing employee burnout) will be the biggest challenges for finance professionals over the next five years