Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology is poised to change the global workforce by completely automating an employee’s most time-consuming, repetitive tasks throughout his or her day. When incorporated with elements of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), RPA is capable of automating the processes of an entire department. With its cognitive recognition services, Automation Anywhere’s IQ Bot software can automate each step of a businesses’ invoice processing procedure. The IQ Bot, with a little bit of training, can look at your documents and understand both what it is looking at and what details you need it to extract. This technology can help accelerate the efficiency of businesses in any industry; but RPA’s recent wide availability and cognitive abilities has the potential to impact community development through the nonprofit sector.
Traditionally, we think of bots, AI, and other technologies as supplementing the social aspects of the always necessary nonprofit outreach as marketing or donor engagement tools: bots with a customer service angle that engage with customer relationship management (CRM) programs. But what if we focused on implementing automation tools that automate those backend business processes so humans can concentrate more on tasks that require human ingenuity and deeper human interaction?
Automation Anywhere IQ Bot
With Automation Anywhere’s IQ Bot, nonprofits can focus less on administrative duties and more on community engagement and the person-to-person interaction that is so necessary within the not-for-profit sector. Without having to pull resources to focus heavily on full-time staff for overhead, nonprofits can concentrate more of their efforts on scaling and sustainability to better help the causes they are supporting.
Nonprofits promote community development and receive a lot of support from the communities they serve, yet most nonprofits have low operating budgets year after year. One of the biggest problems nonprofits face is the perceived elevated importance of program over administration. As a result, this sector has remained at an extremely low percentage of the nation’s GDP for decades, according to Giving USA, mainly because nonprofits are difficult to scale without the right kind of funding for administrative duties, such as budgeting and invoice processing. This funding gap is understandable when considering that donors often want their contributions going directly into community service, those programs that have visible impact on those they are helping.
Nonprofit Invoice Processing
So, what does invoice processing typically look like for nonprofits? The answer, of course, is “it depends.” Nonprofits are all very different; they operate at different sizes, serve different causes, and have different funding models. Most businesses, however, inevitably share basic financial anatomy in order to move money in and out, like accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) departments. However, nonprofit financials are unique because of a shared necessity for a high level of monetary transparency and strict rules as to how finances are being managed. This need for accurate results and accessible logs presents a lot of opportunity for automation.
Invoice processing broken down into AR and AP is a very necessary system used to help companies keep track of sales between vendors and clients. This is especially important for nonprofits. When IRS audits occur, and a nonprofit is not prepared, they must improve or risk being heavily penalized. It is easy to find any number of nonprofits in the news for mismanaged accounts. Such errors can cause irreversible damage to a nonprofit’s reputation in the community they are trying to help serve. To avoid being the center of negative attention, a nonprofit can make the choice to automate their processes.
For example, Automation Anywhere’s IQ Bot is great for an RPA accounts receivable process, including the imperative procure-to-pay vendor invoice processing. As a result, the IQ Bot completes the work of several employees, faster than ever and completely error-free. RPA invoice processing also leaves an audit trail, making records more accessible to nonprofit administration in preparation for audits. Not only are audit fees expensive: they are on the rise, according to FEI’s 2018 Audit Fee Survey Report. As audit fees increase for nonprofits, the opportunity for automation only amplifies.
Bringing RPA in Financial Services
Invoice processing in the nonprofit sector does not have to be the time and resource-draining chore it once was considering IQ Bot’s abilities to do the job more efficiently than ever before. Automation with RPA creates an extremely high ROI and promotes the sustainability of an organization’s workforce. Of course, IQ Bot’s impact is not exclusive to nonprofits and can be enjoyed by any business that wants to increase speed of processes. Nonprofits simply have the unique added-pressure of regulatory hoops to jump through in order to stay compliant with the IRS and stand to gain a lot from automating invoice processing. Subsequently, the communities these nonprofits serve will benefit from the scaling of services and increased organizational stability and sustainability.
With Automation Anywhere’s IQ Bot, we can increase productivity more than previously thought possible, and nonprofits have the added incentive to keep their financial affairs at the height of efficiency. Integrātz can help your company, with its unique structures, use the customizable IQ Bot and RPA platform to bring your business processes into efficiency and make the technology work for you. Learn more about what Integratz does or contact us and let us help you leverage this resource to create business efficiency that is simply amazing. To read about more positive experiences check here.
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