Business & Finance Transformation Driven by Digital Innovation

In 21^st century, digital transformation roadmap has been a critical component among most citizens and organizations. A finance transformation initiative can have a significant positive impact on business results, but it can also require a considerable commitment of your finance organization’s talent and resources. At Deloitte, we understand that converting from manually intensive transactional processes and aging systems with multiple sources of financial data requires both strategic business insight and technical proficiency to navigate the inevitable challenges and risks.

Digital innovation has been embedded virtually in every aspect of our life, right from showcasing us how a business should typically function between changing market conditions to how we live and adapt to these technological advancements. Technology terms like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Data Analytics and Robotic Cognitive Automation, sound far away from our arm length. Nevertheless, it is right in our hand when we navigate through smartphones and use mobile apps such as WeChat, AliPay, Taobao, TikTok et cetera. China has emerged on the world stage with a brace of global tech companies that is innovative and competitive. And increasingly, their successes are being studied and replicated in other markets.

Cloud computing facilitates over billions of daily online transactions in China. For Blockchain, the government is actively supporting and coming with strategies to be a pioneer in early adoption. By means of big data analytics, search results are being differentiated and retrieved to people based on their preferences and interest. Mobile payment technology has surpassed and emerged as a key component, the progress to an instant payment applied to parking lots, empowered by Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and AI technologies. Now, takes just 2 seconds of check-out time, thus significantly improving users' parking experience and brining in efficiencies. In agriculture sector drones are emerging as key player applied for farming techniques to increase the agriculture production. And these drones incorporate the AI planning together with big data analysis for precise operation.

Companies aspiring to create a digital finance business often do not know where to start. Creating a digital finance business is a strategic imperative to grow revenue, maintain competitiveness and evolve the organization.

We at Deloitte China, Audit & Assurance Innovation team are Reinventing Audit to build our own innovation playbook and moving forward to map the innovations space. Technology is the key enabler or our new agile approach to Audit & Assurance and guides us to standardize, centralize, and digitize the audit process. Each of us embodies innovation. It's about creating a mind-set that produces both technological leaps and empowers our overall approach by asking how we can better deliver today's audit, and what audit can be going forward. Living in a digital world, we think digitally seamlessly enabling our work with revolutionary tools, from analytics to artificial intelligence and beyond, so we can deliver greater value.

After years of working with CFOs and finance leaders at many of the world’s most respected and well-known companies, we have leveraged the insights garnered from these experiences to create an integrated technology solution that targets some of the most common—and difficult—finance transformation challenges. However, the adaption of cutting-edge technology in finance sector still has not been efficiently engaged. The real world implications companies' face in going digital include:

Also, managing change in digital business is uniquely disruptive and requires a different approach.

Therefore, for an organization to be truly digital, they need to adopt digital traits and evolve digital capabilities to create a foundation that enables organization to innovate, iterate, and scale for success.

Having understood digital technologies and strategy, how do these technological innovations be applied in finance function and in turn contribute to business transformation? At Deloitte, we have key strategic assets ready to use and implement for the finance pioneers. These assets can help you leverage short-term gains made possible by digital technologies while laying the groundwork for long-term realignment and value generation.

a.    Improve of accuracy and efficiency

As businesses grow rapidly, digital innovation can demonstrate precision at work to set aside heavy manual processes and tasks, thereby providing scope for better utilization of resources and timely rectification of any errors.  Deloitte China Audit & Assurance Innovation team has developed and implemented several influential assets to smoothen the work process. One such asset is Intelligent Document Review Platform (IDRP) is an intuitive interface that leverages artificial intelligence, including advanced machine learning techniques and natural language processing capabilities that enable users to quickly process, extract, validate and analyze key information from a range of document types in China’s business and language environment while learning what matters most throughout the process to make more precise extraction suggestions in the future.

For financial audit, our engagement teams utilized IDRP to quickly extract data from analyst reports. Leveraging the IDRP application, the key information was extracted and exported into a single Excel document. This allowed the engagement teams to focus their efforts reviewing positive and negative indicators in the reports versus gathering the information from the analyst reports.

Our innovation product Smart Leases, which helps to understand the impact of new standards on the accounting, business and strategy under different industries like Bank, Telecommunication, Insurance and Hotel. It also assists companies to complete the transition to new leasing standard. The platform trains the model to extract lease contracts and financial statements so it can automatically read the relevant lease and financial indicator information. Hence, compile the impact amount under different transition period options and disclosure statements for management level to understand current and future business.

b.   Channelling through Business Insights

To drive digital innovation, the transformation needs to be co-operated from the top management to all its employees. Through sharing information and integrating data analytics, cross-function collaborations and quick reaction towards market trends which can significantly increase organization agility and reduce risks of business downfall. Leveraging abundant experience from finance experts and client exposure, Deloitte China Audit & Assurance Innovation team developed advanced statistical data analytics platform for dedicate industries. For example in banking sector, DeLight and iCredit can adapt to humongous volume of data generated by banks and provide multi-dimensional analysis from business trends. These platforms help monitor, address major risks and controls, and also analyse data at various financial indicators to explore in-depth patterns and generate meaningful business insights.

c.    Become Market Leader

As market grows at rapid pace, uncertainty always exists. For major players, it's an opportunity to advance in digital innovation space and be a business disruptor. Similar to Deloitte, disrupting the accounting profession with series of technological transformations. Deloitte China Audit & Assurance Innovation team works closely with clients to facilitate and provide world class experience of our assets through dedicated innovation labs, client experience centers with state of the art facilities across China, aiming to elevate them to become a market pioneer both locally and globally. The Greenhouse Lab in Shanghai, Client Experience Center in Beijing, and Greater Bay Area Center in Shenzhen are examples of spaces consciously designed to help shift perspectives and optimize exploration. These labs have a synergetic effect, driving entrepreneurship and innovation in these regions by leveraging Deloitte's leading innovation and professional service capabilities.  

In conclusion, these investments and capabilities can help you in your efforts to achieve faster time-to-value and lower implementation risk for your finance and even business transformation initiative. Boost your organization power and accelerate changes by connecting with Deloitte, you will discover and create a brand-new chapter against traditional technologies thereby amplifying your capabilities towards a whole new world of Business & Finance Transformation Driven by Digital Innovation.