Welcome to Episode 26 of the Cloud Wars Horizon Minute — featuring news and commentary hosted by Acceleration Economy analyst Tom Smith. Each episode provides insights into one or more Innovation Accelerators on the Cloud Wars Horizon.
This episode gives a sneak peek at a new Innovation Profile featuring Auditoria, a company that develops purpose-built bots that automate finance functions.
Highlights
00:20 — Tom poses the question: Would you embrace finance bots if they could reduce days sales outstanding (DSO) by 13 days in the first quarter they are live, then 22 days by the second quarter?
0:45 — A startup named Auditoria makes automation tools that are functionally similar to some of the big automation players such as UiPath with a couple of unique elements.
1:05 — Auditoria’s purpose-built bots are written specifically for the language of finance; they use natural language processing (NLP) to understand terms such as accrual or ledger entry that are unique to finance.
01:20 — The bots actively monitor email inboxes (think accounting @ or accounts payable @) and can be programmed with answers to the most common questions. Auditoria said one late-stage prospect has 50 people — that’s five-zero — who spend their time monitoring such inboxes.
01:55 — A company named User Testing deployed Auditoria bots in a largely manual, spreadsheet-based invoicing and payment collections early on. Then, it deployed NetSuite and had to turn off Auditoria during a six-week transition.
02:30 — Days sales outstanding shot up to 104 days. Once User Testing turned bots back on, they went down by quarter’s end to 91, then down to 82 one quarter later. Of course, it’s not likely that the entire change can be attributed entirely to bots, but the outcome isn’t a coincidence either.
03:25 — That’s a great proof point for the tangible value of bots and, in this case, bots purpose-built for finance.
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