Case Study | Workflow Automation for EdTech Scaleup

Functional Topic

Finance Automation – Workflow Automation

Project Industry

EdTech

Needed Support

1 Digital Finance Consultant

Duration

3 months

The Challenge

The client, an EdTech scale-up, faced significant inefficiencies in its finance department. The manual, resource-heavy Order-to-Cash (O2C) process consumed substantial time and workforce resources, slowing down overall operations.

Despite ongoing digital efforts in other departments, the finance function lagged in automation. The company needed an expert to assess its finance processes and identify automation opportunities, focusing on the O2C process to drive operational efficiency.

Role of Consultport

The client approached Consultport for a solution to optimize its finance workflow. Within 48 hours, Consultport presented three highly qualified digital finance consultants. The client selected a former McKinsey consultant with over 10 years of experience, who had successfully led over 10 large-scale finance automation projects. The consultant’s role was to audit the current O2C process, identify inefficiencies, and implement automation solutions such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP).

The Approach

The project began with a detailed audit of the company’s finance operations and digital capabilities. The consultant worked closely with the CFO and IT team to map out the current challenges and assess opportunities for automation and AI integration. The approach had three key components:

Order-to-Cash Automation: The finance consultant focused on automating the manual O2C process. This included deploying RPA to handle repetitive tasks like invoicing and payment processing and using IDP to streamline data extraction and reduce manual input errors. These solutions aimed to reduce processing times and free up the finance team for higher-level tasks.

Generative AI Development: In parallel, the expert worked on integrating Azure OpenAI and AWS services into the company’s operations. The focus was on building AI models that would enhance financial forecasting, automate decision-making processes, and provide predictive analytics for more informed strategy planning.

Training and Stakeholder Alignment: A series of workshops and training sessions were held to ensure both the finance and IT teams were fully aligned with the new tools and technologies being implemented. This helped stakeholders understand the strategic importance of the transformation and equipped them to manage the systems moving forward.

The Results

The changes introduced by the consultant helped the company to scale digital technologies more effectively, while maintaining streamlined financial operations.

20% Reduction in Processing Times

The automation of the O2C workflow resulted in a 20% reduction in processing times in the first year of implementation, allowing the finance department to handle orders and payments much more efficiently.

Training and Team Alignment

Through workshops and training, the consultants ensured all stakeholders were aligned with the company’s digital strategy. The internal teams gained the skills to manage and scale these technologies independently in the future.

Enhanced AI Capabilities

The consultants developed a custom Generative AI solution integrated with AWS, which improved decision-making processes, particularly in financial forecasting and risk management.

Digital Agenda Roadmap

The team delivered a coherent roadmap outlining the integration of generative AI with the company’s existing AWS infrastructure. This roadmap guided the company in implementing AI initiatives that could scale with the business.

We successfully transformed our finance operations with Consultport’s help, reducing our workload and enabling us to scale efficiently. The integration of Generative AI was a game-changer.

— CFO, EdTech Company