Accelerate Digital in Your Finance Function

The New CFO Agenda: From Accounting to Acceleration

The modern Chief Financial Officer is no longer confined to spreadsheets and compliance reports. Today’s CFO is expected to be a strategic enabler of digital transformation, driving business resilience, efficiency, and foresight across the enterprise.

Amid global economic uncertainty, fluctuating interest rates, and inflationary pressures, finance leaders are rethinking priorities. According to Gartner Research (2022), over 52 percent of CFOs rank cost optimization and 50 percent focus on financial performance as their top goals, followed closely by growth initiatives.

The message is clear: in the new financial landscape, digital acceleration is not optional — it’s essential.

The Case for Digital Acceleration

Once, it was acceptable for invoices to take days to process and for financial closures to drag on for weeks. Not anymore. Delays mean lost opportunities, compliance risks, and inefficient use of talent.

Today’s CFOs face three converging imperatives:

1. Cost Efficiency: Manage shrinking margins with smarter operations.
2. Speed and Accuracy: Close books faster and make real-time financial decisions.
3. Compliance and Control: Maintain governance and auditability across every process.

Automation and digitization are the key enablers of these outcomes — yet success depends not on technology alone, but on how strategically it is implemented.

As Gartner’s 2022 CFO Survey reveals, digital acceleration is now the top technology spending priority, especially in back-office automation across accounts payable (AP), receivable (AR), reconciliation, and financial closure.

The Transformation Imperative

In an environment of increasing operational complexity and tighter cash regimes, CFOs must go beyond incremental improvements. Transformation demands a platform-first mindset — one that unifies automation, analytics, and collaboration across financial functions.

The key lies in:

• Automating repetitive and high-volume processes.
• Integrating systems to eliminate data silos.
• Embedding governance and compliance within workflows.
• Empowering teams with real-time visibility and predictive insights.

Digital transformation in finance is not about replacing people with systems — it’s about freeing finance professionals to focus on strategy, analysis, and innovation.

End-to-End Process Automation: The Blueprint

What It Takes

A fully digital finance function is built on connected automation across all critical areas:

• Digital initiation: Paperless submission of documents and forms through desktop or mobile.
• Intelligent Document Processing (IDP): AI-driven data extraction from invoices, receipts, and statements.
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Automated routing, validation, and exception handling.
• Smart Rules and AI: Real-time decisioning for policy compliance and approvals.
• Integrated Communication Management: Automated updates and notifications across channels.
• Analytics Dashboards: Real-time performance visibility for KPIs and SLAs.

What It Means

With end-to-end automation, finance operations become frictionless, compliant, and transparent. CFOs gain instant visibility into cash flow and performance metrics, enabling smarter and faster decision-making.

The Four Pillars of a Digitally-Driven Finance Function

1. Accounts Payable (AP): From Manual Processing to AI-Driven Precision

The Challenge:
Manual invoice processing leads to delays, errors, and strained supplier relationships.

The Solution:
AI-powered automation transforms AP into a strategic function. With Newgen’s low-code automation, invoices are ingested, validated, and approved automatically through portals, APIs, and emails.

Benefits:

• Reduced cycle times and operational costs.
• Improved cash flow visibility.
• Seamless ERP updates and audit-ready workflows.
• Enhanced vendor satisfaction through on-time payments.

Automated invoice processing turns AP into a finance enabler, not a cost burden.

2. Accounts Receivable (AR): Customer-Centric Collections

The Challenge:
Delayed collections and poor visibility into outstanding payments impact working capital.

The Solution:
Digitally orchestrated AR ensures timely follow-ups, personalized dunning, and transparent communication with customers.

Capabilities:

• Automated invoice generation and delivery.
• Intelligent tracking and alerts for overdue payments.
• Dynamic case management for exception handling.
• AI-powered segmentation for tailored engagement.

The result is improved cash flow, better customer experience, and reduced Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).

3. Financial Closure: Governance, Transparency, and Speed

The Challenge:
Month-end closures involve multiple stakeholders, reconciliations, and dependencies that delay reporting.

The Solution:
Automate the closure process with workflow-driven governance, predefined lead times, and centralized master data management (MDM).

Benefits:

• Multi-level dashboards for real-time progress tracking.
• Automated updates and proof attachments in ERP.
• Consolidated and statutory reporting across entities.
• Alerts and escalations for pending tasks.

A structured, transparent, and faster closure enables CFOs to stay in control — always.

4. Accounts Reconciliation: Accuracy through Automation

The Challenge:
Manual reconciliations are prone to human error and lack auditability.

The Solution:
Automate journal entry uploads, validations, and exception routing. Ensure 100 percent auditability through digital logs and role-based access.

Benefits:

• Real-time digitization of journal entries.
• Configurable rule-based validations.
• Integrated ERP updates.
• Automated audit tracking and compliance reports.

Finance teams gain tighter control, faster turnaround, and fewer errors — freeing time for value-added analysis.

Think Platform, Not Point Solutions

Many organizations attempt digital transformation through isolated automation projects — only to create new silos and inefficiencies. The answer lies in adopting a platform-first approach, uniting automation, content management, communication, and analytics.

A low-code digital transformation platform provides:

• Rapid development and deployment of applications.
• Seamless integration with ERP and legacy systems.
• Enterprise-wide visibility and governance.
• Scalable automation for future growth.

This agility allows CFOs to innovate continuously while maintaining compliance, transparency, and control.

The Newgen Advantage

Newgen’s low-code digital transformation platform, NewgenONE, helps finance leaders reimagine their operations for the digital age.

What Sets It Apart:

• Unified process automation, content services, and communication management.
• AI/ML capabilities for intelligent validation, analysis, and decisioning.
• ERP integration for real-time financial data synchronization.
• Low-code agility for rapid solution building and modification.

Key Benefits:

• Faster invoice processing and reconciliations.
• Improved accuracy, visibility, and compliance.
• Reduced manual effort and operational costs.
• Enhanced stakeholder collaboration and reporting efficiency.

Global enterprises trust Newgen to help their finance functions evolve from transactional to strategic — empowering CFOs with visibility, agility, and control.

Lead the Future of Finance

As Gartner predicts, more than 40 percent of finance roles will be reshaped by technology by 2025.
CFOs who embrace this change now will be better positioned to lead with insight, resilience, and innovation.

Accelerate digital transformation in your finance function today — with the power of automation, intelligence, and low-code agility.