UK Finance leaders are looking to prioritise the Cloud/SaaS and cybersecurity as employees continue with flexible working in 2022 –
Almost half (41%) of UK Finance leaders say they are focusing on cloud computing and Software as-a-Service in 2022, as many are still working towards supporting remote teams, a new survey has found.
Cybersecurity (31%) was second on the tech wish-list, followed by Big Data analytics (22%) and Artificial Intelligence (13%).
The research, commissioned by automated Purchase-to-Pay providers, Yooz paints the future of accounting and finance departments, with the need for agile and secure solutions in the new year.
30% of Finance Leaders are currently looking to implement automated Accounts Payable systems as data security and safeguarding financial documents remains a top priority.
Flexibility and ease-of-use is also top of mind, with the need to integrate new automated systems with other software systems (33%) and user-friendly platforms (30%) rounding off the top three priorities for accounts payable systems over the next year.
This acceleration to adopt automation has been highlighted by the shift to flexible working, with teams recognising the drawbacks of manual processing as an inability to work from home (27%) and in making critical financial errors (26%).
Francois Lacas, Deputy Chief of Operations at Purchase to Pay software provider, Yooz, says, “The accounts payable function was already in desperate need for automation in 2021, now it’s become the stand-out candidate for flexible working. Although businesses have focused their efforts on keeping operations going and staff working over the past year, the benefits of automated solutions simply cannot be ignored any longer.”
“With manual processes proving to be too time-consuming and high risk, any opportunity to improve quality and efficiency should be top priority. Businesses that haven’t embraced automation risk being left behind by those that have,” Lacas concludes.
Editor’s notes:
Download a copy of “The State of Automation in Finance” International Market Research results here: https://www.getyooz.com/en-gb/whitepaper-survey-the-state-of-automation-in-finance
Independent Research Consultancy, Opinionography conducted the research on behalf of Yooz during March 2021. A total of 1,055 finance and accounts payable professionals were surveyed across the UK, Europe and US to determine the challenges faced by finance and accounts payable departments as a result of COVID-19, the current state of Purchase-to-Pay and Accounts Payable processes and the technologies finance departments are adopting to streamline their accounts payable processes. 217 of the respondents were based in the UK.
