The Oracle logo is seen on its campus in Redwood City.
On Tuesday Oracle Corp's NetSuite said it will add automated banking features to its accounting software for businesses, with HSBC Holdings Plc as its first partner to automatically send and receive money and reconcile accounts.
Oracle NetSuite sells cloud-based software to mid-sized businesses to track their financials. But many core functions, such as resolving account payments with a bank to pay a bill or reconciling billing records with account charges to see how much cash is available for use at any given time, still requires humans to push buttons and key in data.
Oracle said on Tuesday it used artificial intelligence and partnerships with banks to automate those processes. When a bill comes in, the software can read it, wire it appropriately and file the money accordingly.
Evan Goldberg, executive vice president of Oracle NetSuite, said the purpose of the new system is to help business get a more accurate daily picture of their cash position and free up personnel in finance departments to work on more important things like planning and analysis.
Goldberg provides an example of labor at a premium, Goldberg told Reuters in an interview. You want your people to not work on strategic data entry, but work on stuff that is actually going to add manual value to the business. The Oracle NetSuite System requires integration with banks, who have also worked to use technology to make transactions more efficient. Oracle NetSuite is aiming to incorporate with most important banks and that its first partner is HSBC.
In a statement, Barry O Byrne, chief financial officer for global commercial banking at HSBC, said partnerships such as the one with Oracle NetSuite are central to our strategy of supporting our clients growth across all regions from Asia to the Americas. We envisage this to be the first alliance of many.