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Role of RPA in Streamlining Banking, Finance & Accounting Operations

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Role of RPA in Streamlining Banking, Finance & Accounting Operations

Emerging technologies have accelerated the adoption of AI and robotic process automation (RPA) in the fintech sector. These technologies offer unparalleled opportunities across multiple banking, finance, and accounting operations.

Entrepreneurs who implement RPA and AI software into their business practices benefit from automated opportunities from financial forecasting, accurate analytics, budgeting, and efficient fraud protection.

Let’s find out in detail the role of RPA in streamlining banking, finance, and accounting operations.

Preparation of Financial Statements

Most businesses keep tracking their finances regularly to observe their revenue and expenses and make adjustments accordingly.

With RPA software, the process of preparing financial statements can be accomplished quickly and without hassle. Therefore, companies that aim to check their performance in real-time can leverage benefits by implementing the RPA process.

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Invoice Automation

Invoice processing is a manual task that is time-consuming and sometimes redundant. In this process, the accounting department receives an invoice to cross-check its items with the services received.

This process includes sending the invoices to several other staff members or analyzing a series of spreadsheets. This is where RPA comes into play. By implementing RPA, businesses can automate the entire process.

With RPA, the entire process is automated. Simply put, everything can be done faster with a software bot, from cross-checking the invoices items to sending them to the relevant staff members.

Client Onboarding

When performed manually, client onboarding in banks is a long hour process. It incorporates manual verification of countless documents, the client’s background checks, and financial history.

RPA finance bot can make the process easier by capturing the data from all relevant documents using the optical character recognition technique (OCR) in a fraction of time and generating an automatic report for your compliance manager.

Later, the data automatically enters into the client’s management portal. RPA automation in client onboarding helps avoid manual errors and saves the employees time and effort required in manual processes.

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Tax Reporting

When it comes to calculating a business’s taxes payable, one needs to gather the required documents and financial details for evaluation. Such a critical and tedious task may lead to errors and mistakes.

To mitigate such challenges, banking and accounting firms use the RPA process to make it easier to gather your tax data and prepare an accurate tax report based on your documentation.

Processing of Expenses

Carrying out the manual process of expenses evaluation and reimbursements are common challenges in accounting operations. It involves verifying the figures and other details to ensure accuracy before feeding the information into your system, which eventually delays reimbursements.

Integrating automation software in the expenses processes streamlines this entire operation instantly. In addition, an RPA bot can fetch the data from each expense mentioned in the form in real-time without compromising accuracy and reliability.

Credit Card Processing

Credit card application approval is one of the time-consuming processes at banks. It commonly takes an extended period to validate the customer details before approving the credit card.

With the RPA bot, banks can quickly approve/disapprove the application by implementing a rule-based approach.

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Loan Processing

Loan processing is a tediously slow process. Although the banks have implemented automation opportunities in their existing operation to a certain extent, RPA further accelerates it and makes it a process of 10-15 minutes.

Financial Planning & Analysis

Forecasting short- and long-term financial strategies for the next financial year can be a daunting task. It involves in-depth research and previous year’s data across all departments to develop projected goals based on these metrics.

An RPA bot can make forecasting easier, accurate, and reliable and enable organizations to make significant business decisions for the company hassle-free by creating budget models automatically.

Further, it allows organizations to visualize an unlimited range of scenarios without the risk of human error.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC)

Both AML and KYC are significantly data-intensive processes, making them most suited for RPA. From automating the manual processes to detecting suspicious banking transactions, RPA bots are accurate and reliable when it comes to saving time and cost compared to traditional banking solutions.

Mortgage Lending

Mortgage lending is one of the critical services in the banking and financial sector that is highly process-driven and time-consuming.

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RPA offers automation opportunities that make the mortgage lending process hassle-free. It includes loan initiation, document processing, verification, financial comparisons, and quality check. As a result, the loan approval process becomes easier and quick, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What can RPA do in accounting?

Organizations can enhance productivity, reduce costs, and streamline compliance with robotic process automation. In addition, it allows more time for your team to act proactively and focus on the strategic planning that adds value to your business growth.

Why is RPA important in banking?

The primary goal of implementing RPA in finance and banking operations is to reduce repetitive processes. Simply put, RPA enables banks and financial institutions to boost their productivity by engaging customers in real-time and achieving operational efficiency with the help of software robots.

What are the benefits of using RPA?

Here are the RPA Benefits

  • Boost Productivity Across the departments.
  • Improve Efficiency to Generate Savings.
  • Ensure accuracy, reliability, and consistency in the operations.
  • Enhance business data security.
  • Seize Opportunities for Scale.
  • Produce Data for Important Analytics.
  • Deliver a better customer service experience.

Why should I consider RPA for my business?

RPA is one of the fastest-growing technologies that businesses across the industry are implementing in their operations to boost overall productivity, quality, and efficiency.

In addition, integrating RPA software in your business can accelerate your business operations and optimize speed to market by reducing the overall cost that you invest in expanding your resources and workforce. Hence, RPA is worth consideration to meet your business needs cost-efficiently.

Empower Your Banking and Accounting Operations With RPA

Today, banking and financial institutions have already started leveraging automation opportunities by implementing RPA into their operations.

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RPA can accelerate banking and accounting operations accurately and quickly if appropriately implemented. Moreover, it enables organizations to enhance productivity, mitigate the risks of human errors, and ensure an impressive turnaround time.


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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