Robots march into offices — "Any CFO would appreciate these cost saving figures"

What does the CFO of a large, international corporation think when reading an increasing number of news about artificial intelligence and robotics? Marko Ylä-Autio smiles when he hears the question: he thinks that robots are excellent colleagues.

Marko Ylä-Autio, CFO of Telia Finland, has long since stopped wondering whether the company should seize new opportunities. The only question is how and in what order the new methods should be utilised.

"Typically, we start with processes that include a lot of recurring transactions, such as the processing of purchase and sales Invoices," says Marko Ylä-Autio. "However, all companies also have a lot of other types of processes, and the benefits of automating them might be of interest to CFOs".

Smooth processes and higher service quality are essential objectives of automation. Automation is a good servant, which ideally provides customers with better service experiences.

"With the automation of routines, people are able to focus on the things they find meaningful and that enable them to create genuine added value," Marko Ylä-Autio emphasises.

"For example, having a robot handle the background routines that require time and effort, such as retrieving data from various systems, simplifies customer service work significantly.”

Telia's own lessons learnt and experience from utilising new technologies provide a good basis for providing customers with comprehensive hardware, software, security, and service solutions that help allocate resources appropriately.

"As we are constantly developing and testing new technologies and solutions ourselves, we are able to harness them effectively to support our customers' business."

One of the cornerstones of Telia’s strategy is the provision of comprehensive ICT solutions and services. We want to ensure that the everyday life of our customers is smooth – and do this so that costs can be managed and predicted as accurately as possible.

According to Ylä-Autio, a company can quickly achieve even 50% cost savings merely with electronic invoicing solutions. Every CFO understands this language.

The combination of robotics and service business can also be utilised, for example, when onboarding new employees. Previously, managers had to create separate orders for computers, phones, email addresses, tools, business cards and many other items, whereas now an automated process can take care everything. The employee’s information only needs to be entered once in one place – and the entire package will be ready for use on the employee’s starting date.

A sensible way to allocate resources appropriately, for example, when summer employees start their work.

Author: Timo Mansikka-aho