Finance leaders today face a paradox.
The pace of global business is accelerating at breakneck speed, yet in countless back offices, legacy systems and manual processes remain stubbornly entrenched.
The result is a mismatch between the demands of modern markets and the tools organizations use to manage their most critical functions.
Wendy Tapia, head of product, receivables at FIS, told PYMNTS that she has seen this challenge play out across industries.
“The reality is that the world is moving way faster than most companies can keep up pace with,” she said. “Because of legacy systems, there are still a lot of organizations that are stuck in heavily manual processes, very fragmented systems. Without realizing it, they are limiting their agility and ability to scale.”
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What’s different now is that technology offers more than just faster processing. Automation can be integrated into receivables and cash forecasting.
“CFOs can now move from making decisions that are quite reactive into making them more proactively,” Tapia said. “This technology now allows them to have near real-time visibility into receivables, cash, forecasts.”
“Clients with manual processes have about three hours of wasted time a day,” she added. “That is 780 hours per year per person. You could get a certification in AI with that time on your hands.”
How Intelligent Automation Is Transforming Receivables
As technology evolves, so too does the conversation around automated receivables.
Automation is not new to finance, but for years, it was framed narrowly as a tool for efficiency. What’s different now is the layer of intelligence AI brings around eliminating repetitive work and generating predictive insights.
“To rethink finance, we need to start accepting that automation is no longer optional, and that it isn’t necessarily only about efficiency,” Tapia said, adding that the business case for automation is not theoretical, and even relatively simple changes can deliver impact.
Tasks like invoicing, reconciliation and dispute identification can now be fully automated.
“In industries like financial services, just moving your receivable system into the cloud makes a difference because you’re able to take proactive actions,” Tapia said.
She gave as another example a global manufacturer where AI-driven automation cut cash application processing time by 80%, enabling near-real-time invoice matching. Beyond that, Tapia outlined how a mid-sized logistics company reduced its days sales outstanding (DSO) by more than 15 days using risk-based collections automation, unlocking millions of dollars in working capital at the same time.
“It is a proven model,” she said. “When you invest in modernizing your receivables, you are not just making a big win for your processes; you are actually creating measurable business outcomes.”
“The exciting part is that AI can go beyond that because it provides predictive insights,” she added. “You can look into things like payment behavior, forecasting delays, and you even get recommendations that are proactive on collection strategies.”
For CFOs, perhaps the most transformative shift is real-time cash visibility. In the past, decisions were made based on backward-looking reports, often outdated by weeks. Intelligent automation has changed that equation, and now finance leaders can redeploy resources from chasing overdue invoices to driving forecasting, planning and growth.
“When you have a unified cash view, now you have alignment with your procurement team, with the operations team, with treasury,” Tapia said. “Everyone is looking at the same cash reference. And when you have that level of clarity, your CFO can confidently start funding growth initiatives, whether that’s R&D, acquisitions, expansion.”
What Can Make or Break an Automation Initiative
If automation delivers such compelling results, why do so many projects stumble? The answer may lie less in technology and more in alignment.
“A successful automation initiative is a lot less dependent on the technology itself and a lot more on how it is aligned with the existing financial processes,” Tapia said.
She said key steps include process mapping to understand what is happening today in the business in terms of current workflows before they can be improved; compatibility because automation must integrate seamlessly with ERP, CRM and financial systems to avoid recreating silos; stakeholder alignment; and change management.
“When you treat it as a strategic investment, now you are having to think through what are your objectives?” Tapia said. “Is your business pursuing to reduce DSO? Are you wanting to improve visibility? Are you looking to drive to lower your costs?”
And, most importantly, clean, consistent data fuels accurate automation, she said.
“With bad data, you’re not going to go far,” Tapia said. “No implementation, no initiative is going to deliver the appropriate return on investment without a specific focus on data quality. If you bring in bad data, AI will get out of hand really quickly.”
Ultimately, when speed and agility define competitive advantage, finance leaders can no longer afford to rely on manual processes and outdated systems.
“When your invoices are being delivered instantly and payments are being made immediately and reconciliation is happening automatically, that is the very definition of acceleration,” Tapia said.
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