As businesses have to report on increasing amounts of data, more finance professionals are looking to incorporate automation and artificial intelligence into their internal processes. Automation of financial reporting has the power to eliminate costly errors that can result from manual accounting, reduce the time it takes to update financial statements, and can affect various other reporting processes including actions surrounding financial statements, quarterly reports, multi-entity accounting, management reports, and the financial close.Yesterday's finance professionals had to comb through mass amounts of data and provide insights across company platforms and business units. Performing these tasks solely through human efforts is no longer an option for many enterprise organizations. With the proliferation of data-collecting devices, the amount of data generated is too large for humans to gather, sort, and analyze; that's where automation can help. Automation can eliminate some of the most time-consuming accounting processes and offer greater insight into data points that would have been buried under the sheer volume of data. Automation can offer an advantage in various other processes as well, including negotiating better supplier terms to optimize cash flow, which is especially critical during high-volume data periods such as end-of-quarter reporting.