Robotic Process Automation (RPA) using Power Automate Desktop: A Practical Introduction for the Modern Finance and Accounting Professionals

Description

Technology continues to reshape our business environment at a rapid pace, and accounting and finance professionals are by no means immune. Our roles are changing, and it is vital that we are well-equipped to support businesses.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) eliminates the need to do menial tasks, allowing accountants to escape the ‘daily grind’ and develop higher value-add skills instead. The modern-day accountants will have to embrace automation, but that will make their work more interesting.

Microsoft Power Automate Desktop has been named as a leader in Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for RPA. Due to its cost effectiveness and easy integration with other Microsoft products, more and more companies are relying on Power Automate Desktop to streamline their manual and time-consuming processes. While RPA tools can automate processes in many different areas, Finance and Accounting Professionals can certainly benefit from RPA in capturing and transforming data, making rule-based decisions, and interacting between applications.

This hands-on workshop will help Finance and Accounting professionals without coding and/or programming background develop the basic skills required to start automating processes using Power Automate Desktop.

With his background in Accounting and Tax, the Trainer will be using data sets and processes familiar to Finance, Accounting, and Tax professionals in the examples and hands-on exercises. This will facilitate learning and allow you to directly apply your knowledge learned in the workplace.

Programme Outline

1. Introduction
• What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
• Market leaders and comparisons
• Power Automate Desktop
• Power Automate Desktop User Interface
• Flows
• Actions
• Variables
• UI Elements
2. Exercise
• Email
• Excel
• Browser
3. Hands-on Project Part 1
• Check emails
• Download attachments
• Transform data
• Look up exchange rates
• Perform calculation
• Consolidate
• Send emails
4. Hands-on Project Part 2
• Power Automate Desktop vs. Power Automate Cloud (formerly known as MS Flow)
• Different ways to deploy and execute workflows
5. Brainstorming and Q&A

This workshop qualifies for 7.0 CPE hours in Information Technology (Category 5).

What you will learn

By the end of the workshop, you will:

• Be able to automate data capture and transformation processes
• Be able to automate rule-based decision-making processes
• Be able to automate interactions between applications

Prerequisites

You should ideally have:

• Fundamental knowledge in MS Office such as Excel and Outlook
• Experience in streamlining processes in the past (e.g. have developed standard templates, have re-designed a process to become more efficient, or have automated Excel workbooks etc.)

Laptop Requirements

You are required to bring along an internet-enabled* laptop (PC only).

Your laptop should meet the following hardware requirements:

• CPU of Dual cores at 1.8 GHz or above
• 64 bit processor (x64)
• 8GB RAM

* You must be able to send and receive emails and access internet during the class.

Your laptop should be installed with the following operating system and applications:

• Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, or Windows 10 Enterprise (Mac is not supported.)
• MS Excel 2016 or later
• MS Outlook 2016 or later
• MS Edge or Google Chrome
• Power Automate Desktop (Installation instructions will be sent out separately to you prior to the workshop)

Target Audience

Finance, accounting, or tax professionals without coding and/or programming background who would like to develop baseline knowledge and fundamental skills in RPA using Power Automate Desktop and learn about different ways to automate processes.

Expert Speaker

John Kim

John is a US Certified Public Accountant licensed in New York State, and currently leads a Finance Transformation Advisory. He provides a variety of solutions (e.g., technology and data strategy, data transformation and integration, process improvement and automation, and data analytics services) and business process outsourcing services to corporate finance and tax departments. He was formerly a director of EY’s Tax Technology and Transformation group (formerly known as Tax Performance Advisory) in Washington DC, New York City, and Singapore.

John utilizes over fifteen years of combined experience in corporate finance/tax technology and performance improvement, finance/tax operating model design, finance/tax technology roadmap design, executive financial dashboard design and management, finance/tax data modeling and warehousing, ERP finance/tax integration to help corporate finance and tax functions improve performance and manage business risks using business intelligence.