FP&Ai Podcast: Ep 13: Removing Friction from Finance Workflows
In this episode of the FP&Ai Podcast, Roger Knocker is joined by Anthony Wilson and Donovan Moses to explore one of the biggest barriers to finance efficiency: friction within business processes. While automation is often receives most of the attention, the discussion highlights that lasting improvement begins with understanding, documenting, and simplifying your processes before introducing technology.
The conversation explores how finance teams can reduce duplication, eliminate unnecessary handovers, standardise ways of working, and use AI to dramatically accelerate process documentation. The speakers also explain how well documented processes become the foundation for automation, continuous improvement, and better decision making across the finance function.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I identify what's slowing my finance processes down?
Finance teams often lose valuable time because work is handed between people without clear ownership, multiple versions of spreadsheets exist, and responsibilities are not clearly defined. The podcast explains that creating a simple process map showing each activity, its owner, its inputs, and outputs makes these bottlenecks visible. Once the process is documented, it becomes much easier to identify duplication, reduce delays, and standardise how work flows across the finance team.
Podcast timestamp: 2:23–4:45
Do I really need to document my finance processes before automating them?
Yes. One of the biggest misconceptions is that process documentation needs to be long, complicated, and difficult to maintain. Anthony explains a practical framework that keeps documentation simple and easy to understand, while AI can generate approximately 80 to 90% of the documentation automatically. This allows finance teams to spend less time creating documents and more time improving the way work is performed.
Podcast timestamp: 4:45–9:56
Why do finance teams end up duplicating work and maintaining multiple versions of the same data?
Donovan shares practical examples of how organisations repeatedly capture the same information across different spreadsheets, departments, and reporting levels. By mapping an end to end process, finance teams can identify duplicate effort, establish a single source of truth, improve reporting accuracy, and eliminate unnecessary manual work throughout budgeting, forecasting, and month end reporting.
Podcast timestamp: 9:56–14:15
How can process mapping improve budgeting, forecasting, and month end reporting?
The discussion explains that documenting processes is far more than a compliance exercise. It provides finance teams with a clear understanding of where unnecessary work exists, where risks occur, and where processes can be simplified. Starting with a high level process map allows teams to standardise activities, reduce manual effort, improve collaboration, and create more capacity for value adding analysis.
Podcast timestamp: 14:15–20:16
How do I stop approval workflows from becoming bottlenecks?
The team explains that digital workflows provide visibility into approvals, handovers, and delays across the finance process. Workflow systems, digital checklists, approval routing, and performance data make it easier to identify bottlenecks, redesign approval structures, delegate authority where appropriate, and continuously optimise business processes using measurable data rather than assumptions.
Podcast timestamp: 20:16–28:11
Key Takeaways
- Map your finance processes before introducing automation.
- Make responsibilities, inputs, outputs, and handovers visible across every workflow.
- Eliminate duplicate data and establish a single source of truth.
- Use AI to reduce the time required to document finance processes by up to 80 to 90%.
- Standardise processes across teams to improve consistency and efficiency.
- Use digital workflows to identify bottlenecks and continuously optimise performance.
- Spend less time managing processes and more time delivering strategic business insights.
🎧 Hosted by
- Roger Knocker
- Anthony Wilson
- Donovan Moses
About FP&AI
FP&AI helps finance teams transform planning, reporting, forecasting, consolidation, analytics, automation, and decision making through modern finance technology, AI, and best practice processes.
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https://www.fpai.co.za/
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