Throughout 2021, business leaders have been discussing digital transformation, both on an enterprise-wide and a financial organizational basis. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 65 percent of the world's GDP is predicted to be digitized by 2022.

Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are enabling far more extensive process automation, thereby eliminating more manual tasks, than was available ten years ago when workflow automation was the buzzword. Furthermore, pundits are predicting ML and AI tools are coming to all our desktops in the near future.

At the same time, conversations in the banking world are largely about Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Payment innovation. The idea is to integrate banking and treasury management tools into the corporate ERP and supporting systems to facilitate straight-through-processing (STP).

With all this in mind, the question for us at Credit Today was: what are credit executives seeing in terms of system improvement plans for next year that will affect the order-to-cash process? Here's what the 14 survey participants revealed:

Observation: These findings are in the ballpark that we see going on in finance and treasury. According to the Association of Financial Professionals (AFP):

• 39% use APIs today while 80% expect to use APIs in the next few years
• 53% use RPA today while 72% expect to use RPA in the next few years
• 15% use AI today while 70% expect to use AI in the next few years

Observation:

• A solid majority do not see a need to upgrade, which does run counter to the trends we are seeing when treasurers and CFOs are polled.
• Sometimes organizations consider their systems to be adequate because they do not have a good understanding of the tools and opportunities available nor the benefits and return on investment the resulting performance gains would generate. This perspective is easy to understand given the rapid pace of innovation these last few years.
• Also, smaller organizations may find upgrades more difficult to justify.

Observation: Not surprisingly, for the most part, the functions with the highest workloads or volumes are getting the most attention

Question: What is the impetus for your systems upgrade and what will be the benefits? 

• “We are several releases behind in Oracle and IT is upgrading to current version”
• “Improve efficiency. Re-allocate to customer service.”
• “We are in the process of implementing Receivables Intelligence which is D&B's Credit-to-Cash software. The impetus is streamlining and process improvement. We anticipate the greatest area of improvement will be auto cash.”
• “Conversion to SAP to bring our nine business units onto one ERP System. Automate several manual processes. Improve purchasing decisions and automate the matching and approval of invoicing.”
• “Improved customer experience and an automated, more efficient collection process.”