Technology and Cybersecurity

Hartford Business Journal's 2021 Book of Lists includes an economic forecast section containing outlooks for the year ahead from various economists and industry experts. Here's a look at what they had to say.

Many finance and accounting teams, under immense pressure and facing resourcing challenges stemming from the pandemic, are turning to automation for answers. The automation space, which grew at a compound annual growth rate of 30% from 2017 through 2022, must now also contend with COVID-19 as an accelerant. While intelligent and cognitive automation is now on the scene, robotic process automation (RPA or “bots”) remains an essential steppingstone in bringing automation into an organization's operations — and one that stands to yield significant advantages and benefits.

Institute of Management Accountants president and CEO Jeff Thomson is predicting six megatrends in the finance and accounting profession this year.

In moving traditional finance and accounting (F&A) departments towards finance business partnering, automation becomes a key criterion. Without freeing up employee hours from routine tasks, F&A would be “trapped” producing routine reports most of the time and reporting historical numbers. Automating routine tasks frees up capacity for F&A departments to redeploy and invest time in transformative projects.