Exploring the deep water area of ​​financial transformation, Lenovo’s AOM automated management system is fully developed

With the development of the market and the deepening of intelligence, finance is showing the trend of standardization, specialization, structure, informatization and digitization. As the world's leading ICT technology company, Lenovo has always adhered to the brand vision of "Intelligence for every possibility", providing users and the entire industry with intelligent terminals that integrate applications, services and good experiences, as well as powerful cloud infrastructure and industry intelligence. solution. In its internal road to financial intelligence, Lenovo has also adopted a rather innovative transformation approach.

Choose UiPath to build an intelligent management system AOM

In its past digital and intelligent practices, Lenovo has always insisted on driving new business growth and realizing social value through intelligence. In Lenovo's view, "Digital and intelligent transformation are not just projects for top leaders. In actual practice, the transformation of enterprises requires the digitalization and intelligence of all employees. Every employee should become a 'digital native'. This will be "A very important component in establishing future competitiveness", and automation technology with the characteristics of flexibility, rapid implementation, and customization has now become a key force in the construction of national digitalization.

Against this background, the technology and solution delivery team of Lenovo Global Solutions & Services Group (hereinafter referred to as SSG) selected UiPath as its partner to strategically plan the scope of automation implementation and the Automation Operating Model (hereinafter referred to as AOM) management system, through IT intelligence The operation and maintenance ecosystem helps the entire enterprise achieve digital transformation goals, covering business departments including human resources, finance, supply chain, auditing, sales, services, etc.

Reduce costs and increase efficiency, reduce financial work pressure through multiple processes

In various business areas of an enterprise, financial automation is of great significance to the enterprise and is a key driving force for the company's development. Since Lenovo has the characteristics of many customers, large transaction volume, large data volume, and large number of employees, improving the quality and efficiency of financial work is also full of various challenges. Therefore, Lenovo first made the financial department a key area in the automation project, in an attempt to use automation technology to open up new ideas for financial transformation.

1.Break down system barriers and achieve seamless cross-system connections

Some of Lenovo's internal financial statements require downloading data from multiple systems, manual merging and data processing before they can be issued. The key data also needs to be verified for accuracy across systems. Through automation technology, Lenovo is able to break down system barriers, quickly deploy and realize business needs. For example, in Lenovo's daily operation and maintenance, foreign tax-related certificates need to be checked for consistency and accuracy of data in two different systems to ensure the overall accuracy of tax data. After using UiPath automation technology to automate this cross-system inspection task, it not only greatly saves manpower, but also allows employees to have more time to do more valuable work. In addition, in response to the need to quickly implement data verification, robots have also exerted their technical advantages of high efficiency and low cost. For example, in the Lenovo ECC upgrade S4 project, the account balance verification and details in the parallel phase of the system can be automatically downloaded, automatically verified, and differences marked from the two systems through automated robots. The process efficiency has been significantly improved.

2.Replace repetitive daily financial operations and make the process simpler

Due to its large number of businesses, Lenovo has a huge number of corporate reimbursement services. In the original process, employees in each department need to fill in the reimbursement form based on the information on the invoice, and then submit the reimbursement application in the system. After approval, the document will be downloaded and printed and handed over to the finance department. Not only is this approach inefficient, but the quality of the process is also unstable. After deploying automated software robots, by combining OCR, intelligent self-service dialogue robots and other intelligent technologies, the robot can automatically identify invoices through OCR and organize data, complete system filling and submission, and export reimbursement details to employees. After the implementation of automation, the overall business process time was saved by at least 90% , the accuracy of intelligent identification of invoices was also increased to nearly 98% , and the precision and timeliness of verification were also greatly improved. More importantly, through the comprehensive visualization, structuring and dataization of bills, the company's internal audit and control of expenses can also be completed efficiently and conveniently online. In addition, the UiPath automatic inspection robot will also automatically inspect and place orders on the system, minimizing the impact of system abnormalities on the business.

3.Integrate AI technology to realize the upgrade of core supporting technologies for hyper-automation and quickly promote the implementation of enterprise digitalization

After making full use of machine learning, natural language processing, OCR and other technologies to process large-scale and logically complex data, the UiPath business automation platform helped Lenovo significantly improve its original work efficiency. For example, SSG Finance has some special and logically complex financial statements that need to be issued at the end of each month. However, due to the large amount of data and heavy calculations, in order not to put pressure on the core system during the monthly settlement period, Lenovo uses artificial intelligence-driven Business automation technology ultimately improved the efficiency of this business by 97%. Reports that originally took an employee a whole day to download and process can now be completed accurately by a robot in just 15 minutes, effectively freeing up a lot of manpower and time to engage in more valuable analysis during the monthly settlement period.

At the same time, robots also have great advantages in logical processing of huge amounts of data, and can continuously speed up the delivery of various tasks and reports. For example, in the group's Trial Balance key account reconciliation automation project, the robot can better guide the completion of monthly settlements and accelerate the monthly settlement progress; it can also realize automatic analysis and calculation of product costs, helping cost managers to analyze millions of parts. Quickly retrieve suitable products and calculate final quotes.

4.Automation of key processes helps management make financial decisions more accurately and timely

Cash flow is an important fund that a company needs to survive, pay suppliers, and invest in key business assets. Once an abnormal situation occurs, it will have an unpredictable negative impact on the company. Therefore, the accuracy and timeliness of corporate cash flow forecasts are very important. Lenovo's financial department needs to accurately budget the payments that need to be made in the next 90 days before every Wednesday. However, due to the large amount of cash flow data and complex verification logic, the global expense team often needs to work overtime to compile the correct budget report, and every operation It’s all time-consuming and labor-intensive. After implementing UiPath automation technology, the robot will automatically download, organize, and calculate all data. Employees only need to check the data result files in FTP every Monday and check them. This not only saves a lot of manpower, but also improves the timeliness of data. accuracy and accuracy, helping management make decisions more quickly, accurately, and timely.

In addition, the revenue cost analysis report is also an important report that management pays attention to. Lenovo's cost team needs to download data from ERP and SharePoint across systems every month, then organize and verify the data and issue reports. This process requires manual operation and is inefficient. After the robot goes online, the cost team can deliver accurate revenue and cost analysis reports in a more timely manner. The introduction of automation technology not only improves financial efficiency, but also reduces employee pressure in all aspects, allowing employees in the financial department to have more time to complete analysis and optimization recommendations.

Customized intelligent management system to create a new future of financial automation

Taken together, the UiPath business automation platform has shortened processing time by automating manual and repetitive financial processing processes, successfully increased process efficiency by an average of 5-8 times, and greatly improved the overall user experience.

As Lenovo's financial automation and intelligence process accelerates, financial business users have also formed a more efficient collaboration model with robots in the process of participating in digitalization. The degree of digitalization is constantly expanding in depth and breadth.

In overall review, the success of Lenovo's financial department automation project is inseparable from the top-to-bottom attention of the SSG technology and solution delivery team . When Lenovo launched its automation project in an all-round way, combined with years of management and automation pilot experience, it worked with UiPath to create an AOM management system suitable for Lenovo's automation development status. This system covers the five major areas of organization, governance, technology, process, personnel and culture. dimensions, and based on this, the development and deployment of business automation processes were carried out. AOM is not only the key to the success of the automation plan, but also provides sufficient guidance and support for the implementation of specific automation projects. In addition, Lenovo's SSG technology and solution delivery team has also developed Lenovo's RPA management and operation platform, which aims to achieve an integrated platform for all-round management and services and promote the comprehensive deployment and advancement of automation at the enterprise level.