The rumblings of disruption are rolling through the world of finance. And it's about time. More than ever, disruptive technologies are needed to help finance combat a barrage of new challenges, from exploding data volumes to accelerating business cycles to an unprecedented talent crunch. In this first of a three-part blog series, let's look at one of the biggest disruptors facing finance today: Automation.

Finance is embracing its new best friend, the bot. Many of the organizations we work with have heard of robotic process automation – or RPA – and every day more of them deploy software bots to boost efficiency and control costs. Right now, we have several clients developing smart bot solutions running in the cloud to turn their payment processing into a touchless end-to-end routine. And that's just one out of a multitude of processes that finance manages.