Prepress
Tieto and Aditro aiming for real-time financial management processes
Tuesday 24. February 2009 - Tieto and Aditro are developing new technical solutions and operating models for use in corporate financial management. The aim of the development work is to enhance the efficiency and automation of financial management processes as well as the competitiveness of Finnish companies. The project entitled Fully Integrated Accounting (FIA) is part of the Real-Time Economy (RTE) programme*).
As a result of the FIA project, progress towards real-time finances, processes and services will continue. The project focuses in particular on developing electronic financial management processes, taking into account the demands created by archiving, auditing and taxation. One of the project’s objectives is to model a new set of account codes, with the starting point being the vision of integrated financial management for the future.
The joint project also involves the Association of Finnish Accounting Firms, which represents accounting firms, and several SMEs. Helsinki School of Economics is responsible for the research part of the project. The FIA project started in January 2009 and will end in June 2010.
“Research and development will increase our knowledge of the current state, maturity and expectations of the market. The results will help us to identify flaws and to model new alternative solutions as well as to make better use of e-business opportunities. This is important for us because we want to further enhance the financial management processes of our approximately 5,000 customers,” says Aditro’s Mikael Fagerholm, Director, Financials Solutions.
According to Leena Rekola-Nieminen, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Finnish Accounting Firms, the work being carried out in the FIA project will offer new solutions to accounting firms to meet future challenges. The automation of financial management will make production processes more effective, promote the production of new services with added value and free up experts from routine work for expert tasks. In addition, a common account code will make it possible to develop more efficient links with the authorities.
“The need by companies to make business processes more effective and for them to be in real-time has increased, and as online invoicing has become more common, there are now clearly better opportunities for this to happen. Under the leadership of Bo Harald, Tieto has actively influenced the development of the concept of online invoicing at the EU level. The FIA project is a natural continuation to this work,” says Tieto’s Jyrki Poteri, who is the director responsible for the RTE programme.
*)Real-Time Economy is a programme funded by Tekes that was jointly launched by Tieto and the Helsinki School of Economics. The programme also includes Aditro, the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK, the Bank of Finland, Tieke, the Finnish Information Society Development Centre, the Ministry of Finance, and several banks and systems suppliers. The programme aims at digitising and standardising the message traffic of the entire financial management value chain (order-invoice-accounting-stakeholder reporting) within the EU area and in this way improving the competitiveness of Finnish companies in global markets