Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition Reviews

Primarily, it's SAP automation. We use it to automate all our finance processes, including procure-to-pay (P2P) and order-to-cash (O2C). It integrates seamlessly with SAP, making it very efficient.

Redwood streamlined our financial closing process in two ways. Firstly, we've reduced the number of personnel needed. A single bot now replaces five associates who previously handled finance processes. This freed up those associates to focus on expanding into new markets. 

Secondly, it eliminates manual errors. The bot is programmed to handle everything, so there are no mistakes or missed entries. 

The processing speed has also significantly improved. It used to take much longer for each transaction, but now, we can execute continuous transactions ten times faster. 

Earlier, every transaction used to take up more time. Now it's much less. In one-tenth of the time, we can execute the continuous transactions. Whether we consolidate it or compare the transcations, those kinds of things, they are much faster and better.

Redwood has positively impacted our daily financial operations and reporting tasks. As an example, invoice automation is much easier. Previously, posting a smaller number of invoices involved manual geo-posting and data transfer. Now, I can process 3,000 to 5,000 invoices daily.'

Another improvement is in terms of compliance or audit trails since implementing Redwood.

Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each transaction. It creates an audit trail of the entire process execution. It is a really good feature. This eliminates the need for extra coding or report generation. The audit report is readily available within the tool itself.

The seamless integration with SAP is crucial, as it's our primary system.

Reporting is also good. That's one of the product's strengths.

The remediation features are excellent. If an error occurs during posting, it generates an error log. We collect these logs, restart the bot, and process the remediation. So, Redwood's error handling and exception management features helped our automation. 

Everything seems to be working well. However, I see value in integrating AI for automation.

So, I would like to see AI integration for automation in future releases. 

Ideally, after I perform postings, I would like to leverage a generative AI model. This would allow me to type a query or question directly to the bot, and it would retrieve the information I need. 

For example, I could ask for the number of invoices, the status of specific invoices, or any other relevant data. 

Currently, we achieve this by building our own Finance model. So, integrating a pre-built finance model with the tool would be much easier and more efficient for reporting purposes.

We're looking at several potential uses for this AI model. It could empower various user groups, including regular finance executives, customers, and even vendors to submit queries. Additionally, our leadership team is interested in using the AI model to generate reports directly on the Redwood dashboard. 

This functionality could potentially replace the need for BSpoke Solutions and the manual generation of BSpoke reports, streamlining the entire reporting process.

I have been using this solution since 2016. 

I'd rate its stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It scales very well.

Currently, it's only loaded up for Finance. We've been using it primarily for finance across our Vodafone assets in forty different countries, including Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and to some extent, America. 

We do not have Vodafone stores in very many locations, so we have partnered with other vendors in some areas. However, as a telecom operator, our primary operations are not in trading but are focused on Europe, Middle East, and Asia. 

For HR, we're still analyzing and identifying processes that can be taken up first with Redwood. We're aiming to start with some pilot HR cases in the second quarter of 2024.

The customer service and support are pretty good. They're a small company, but their support is fast and effective. 

They're very fast to respond, fix issues quickly, and even provide permanent fixes. Their service level agreements (SLAs) are much better. 

They have a tiered system based on transaction volume. For example, if your transactions fall under the 10% tier, they respond within a minute and ensure your process is running again within five minutes without loss of any data, guaranteeing 99.99% uptime. 

We haven't needed tier three support yet, which offers 99.95% or 99.0% uptime with resolution within 15-20 minutes, but it's good to know it's there. Overall, their SLAs, response times, and recovery times are pretty good.

While they're good, there's always room for improvement.

Positive

We used Blue Prism and UiPath. Tools like Blue Prism and UiPath are generic and not specific to any industry or technology. 

They're not well-suited for specific industries. Whether it's healthcare, pharmaceutical, or aviation, I doubt you can effectively use those tools. They might be better for generic industries like service industries, such as travel, retail, or even e-commerce. I could potentially build bots for handling orders using the UiPath or Blue Prism, and they might be faster. However, it ultimately depends on the applications I use and the number of processes involved, including main and sub-processes. Those generic tools might be better suited for such scenarios.

However, for industries with specific and streamlined processes and applications, like finance, Redwood comes into play. It offers specific applications tailored to industries like pharmaceuticals, telecom, or finance. These pre-built applications align with the streamlined processes and applications used for years in these specific fields, making the tool ideal for such situations.

The deployment process wasn't easy. It requires someone with a good understanding of product installation, configuration, and integration. 

So, I'd rate my experience with the initial setup around six out of ten with ten being easy to set because it requires a good skill set.

Initially, we faced some issues because we were using traditional tools like Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and UiPath, which are not technology-agnostic.

Redwood is very specific to SAP. So, we had to consult with Redwood itself in the Netherlands. They sent a technical team member to train our team for two weeks. He trained us on installation, configuration, documentation, and support. This was excellent support provided with the product purchase.

The support is still managed by Redwood itself. The support works based on a per-transaction model. They charge based on the number of transactions processed in production.

One metric is the time taken to execute tasks and the number of transactions processed per minute. Previously, processing 1,000 financial records took 12 minutes. Now, it's significantly faster, with the number of transactions processed per minute increasing two to three times, even up to 300 times faster.

Secondly, cost savings. For example, one bot replaced five associates. That's significant resource optimization. The bot's efficiency has improved utilization overall.

The pricing is very client-specific. It's not a one-size-fits-all price. They don't have a single price for everyone. It's based on the client and the number of transactions. As Vodafone, a large company with many transactions, we get a discounted rate.

Initially, it was challenging because few of our processes were ready for automation. But as we stabilized, documented, and automated processes, the value increased significantly. We've reached a break-even point after two years, and it's much better now in terms of value for money.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

This solution comes with financial automation, but with finance, it has multiple use cases. 

We can use it in multiple operations, considering that SAP systems are involved. Creating automation with respect to finance, HR, and SDM is also possible. It is mentioned as a finance solution, but it is not limited to finance; you can apply it across areas where integration is possible. 

So, we are using it not only for finance but also for multiple applications.

So the best thing is ease of use. The number one ease of use. 

Number two, earlier, we used to create functionalities or conditions for other programs, like SAP or non-SAP. The functionality needed to be created inside the end system. But in Finance Automation, you can directly define your site, your workloads, and all. 

Inside Finance Automation, we do not need to go through the end system and define it. Rather, you can define it directly in Finance Automation, and you can run it. So that is the best thing I found in Finance Automation.

There is room for improvement, considering no tools having everything inside it is right. 

So the room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything. Right now, you can do it with a little bit of custom scripting in addition to eight. 

But rather than custom scripting, if we can have a direct feature integrated inside this tool, it will be a major achievement. So, it already has that capability, as you can do custom scripting, and you can go ahead with creating your own. But the direct functions are not available. That's where we are lagging behind. 

However, importing the values or importing the service can be achieved. So, that is where I can see the room for improvement. In this particular area, the entire system can be improved.

I've been using it for about five years. I use version 9 of Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition.

It is stable most of the time but when it comes to custom scripting applications, the solution's default handling mechanism is already there. 

But once in a blue moon scenarios are there where, when you run large amounts of data reports to get extracted, if your environment setup is not capable enough to handle that large data, it will extend the memory and may encounter issues.

So it is a once-in-a-blue-moon scenario, but overall, the solution is stable.

It is a scalable solution. There are around ten end users using this solution in our company.

The customer service and support are pretty fast to respond. They are excellent.

Positive

As it is dedicated to finance administration and automation for finance, and considering it is automation where we can do multiple things around it, the majority of competitive tools do not have the functionality as good as this particular tool. That's why my company decided to go with this solution.

The company migrated from the VP to the financial solution. So earlier, it was a VP.

The initial setup is easy to get done. So if you can follow the instructions, even it is very easy to get done.

However, it's not an instant installation either. So, it depends on your environment, like how many systems you are integrating with the tool, how many are SAP, non-SAP, or any third-party applications you are connecting. 

So it is totally dependent on your environment when you need to set up and how much time it takes to set up. So, definitely, it will not take a longer time, but it will not take less time, considering your custom environment.

The pricing depends on how much the usage is. So, it is not a fixed cost. It is dependent on the agreement you make with this solution.

So it is totally dependent on the use case of your organization and, with respect to those resources, how much budget we are allocated. So, defining it as a bit cheaper or expensive will not justify the price impact process.

For me, it is worth the money.

You should definitely use it, but just the solution. You need pretty much knowledge of the scheduling tool, how automation will work on the scheduling tool, and a combination of that. 

So, there are prerequisites where you need to get an understanding of the scheduling tool so that you will be able to use financial automation.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The primary use case is to start with all Record to Report Processes within our FSSU, automating critical processes.

This solution processes Record to Report (R2R), Order to Cash (O2C), and Procure to Pay (P2P) tasks. We started with engaging with Redwood right from Proof of Concept, Product Selection, Training, and Pilot Implementation. Redwood did an excellent job.

Unlike other automation tools, Redwood has a unique space in finance automation, where standard SAP modules are used for automating every step in the process, quickly and easily.

Right from identifying processes based on certain key parameters that would bring value-add, you could call it low hanging fruit.

The process of selection, process analysis (documenting using SIPOC process), and then designing the solution which then went into pilot implementation and full-scale implementation of the processes, was quick and easy.

Training from Redwood went a long way, as we learned to appreciate the product and its features. They were hand-holding the technical team on the pilot implementation and at every phase of the automation process. The testing and the Hypercare stages stabilized the BOT execution.

Handover to the Support and Operations team was good enough for on-boarding the Operations team along with the knowledge transfer.

To be honest, initially, we had glitches comparing the output from BOT execution with the Manual Execution. Identifying the issues and rectifying them took some time. This again gave way to process improvements, data quality issues, and compliance issues that we managed to fix during the process.

Though the process runs only on specific RUN DAYS within every month, the process and the BOT execution has improved a lot.

Parallel execution of a number of processes has improved. All manual posting issues are taken care of, leaving no room for human errors while posting financial transactions within the systems.

The out-of-the-box finance modules within the Redwood Finance framework help to speed up the process, versus designing and writing generic BOT code.

The only time that it took was to perform the process analysis, identifying steps, and mapping the steps within the BOT code. 

Testing was done from the Redwood team on a system with test data (masked) before rolling it out for user acceptance testing and Hypercare execution.

This is a tricky question, but certainly, some improvements are definitely needed in the template-based approach and modularity of design. Mapping the process steps to an existing R2R process quickly would be a definite step forward.

Testing, logging, and reporting accurately on a dashboard for any issues during execution will help to identify issues early. As the RUN DATES are only two to five days every month, identifying issues and fixing them should be quick and easy.

Compliance is a major factor, as financial processes are always on compliance audit for issues in processing critical financial data and legal ramifications.

For close to three years, we have been successfully using Redwood for Automating Critical Finance Processes in all our SSUs.

It is quite stable and has no issues with memory leaks or the BOT being unresponsive. In fact, I am quite impressed with how one can choose the step in the process from where the BOT can start execution.

The solution is scalable, there is no doubt about it. Purely based on how the infrastructure is set up, which again is based on the number of processes, the number of transactions, the number of BOTs, RUN DAYS, and the sharing of BOT time for multiple processes. 

Definitely, Redwood has a standard sizing plan for infrastructure and BOT setup.

Customer support and technical support are good, with the standard ITSM process using a ticketing system. Response time is good but can be improved.

We did try other automation toolsets earlier, but then the generic full code development took the fun away from most of the standardized finance processes. We were looking out for an automation product that understands standardized finance processes and the backend SAP systems.

The switch to Redwood happened quickly and on time, without spending too much time on a full code BOT tool.

The initial setup was quick, easy, and straightforward. With the Redwood team supporting, the infrastructure setup provided the standard design including the hardware and server requirements.

Initially, we expected the automated process to be up and running within a span of two months. However, as the processes were critical and some compliance issues had to be sorted out, getting it right took some time.

We went through Redwood itself, helping us from concept to rollout. The level of expertise was high. We had the best team at our disposal for all of the setup, process analysis, requirements, design and development, and testing and rollout.

This is where the real challenge is, having a licensing cost that needs to be compared with the existing manual operational cost and coming up with a competitive licensing and pricing model. ROI will be well defined during the start of the process.

To an extent, there is a definite cost involved in terms of setting up the right infrastructure and the licensing model. This needs a good discussion on the licensing and pricing model, which can be worked out for the larger benefit of the enterprise.

The licensing was purely based on the number of transactions being processed in production. 

We were already into automating customer back-office operations for about 21 critical processes and saw the need to look at the finance processes. We expected this to bring value-add in terms of automating standard finance processes.

We did a few automations using Blue Prism and it was a success, but the real success was discovered only with Redwood.

I think this product is the right fit for finance processes that are very standard but definitely, a proper licensing model will go a long way for the adoption of Redwood for SME, and large enterprises as well.