ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Finance transformation
Marlow Group's finance function spends most of its month-end closing manually keying supplier invoice data into the ledger. The CFO plans to deploy software 'bots' that mimic the keystrokes of staff, working through the existing user interfaces of the ERP without changing the underlying systems. Which technology is being proposed?
The proposal is robotic process automation. Software bots copy rule-based human keystrokes through the existing ERP interfaces, so repetitive tasks like invoice keying are automated without changing underlying systems. It is not analytics, blockchain or a cloud delivery model.
- ARobotic process automationCorrect
- BBlockchain distributed ledger
- CPredictive analytics using machine learning
- DCloud-based software as a service
Explanation
Robotic process automation uses software robots to replicate rule-based human actions through existing application interfaces, which fits the description of mimicking keystrokes without changing core systems. Predictive analytics forecasts outcomes, blockchain is a shared ledger, and SaaS is a delivery model, so none match.
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