As digital transformation continues to make headlines, nearly all business professionals agree that advanced technologies are going to significantly change the way we live and work over the next decades.

In the same way that R2D2, the faithful droid from the Star Wars movie franchise, travels the far reaches of the galaxy righting wrongs, the software algorithms that guide Robotic Process Automation (RPA) travel the constellations of data collected by companies, resolving anomalies. Agile Finance Revealed: The New Operating Model for Modern Finance, a recent study by Oracle and the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), predicts that RPA and the related technologies of machine learning and adaptive intelligence will become increasingly important in finance automation as they help finance professionals free up their time for more strategic pursuits. Oracle Vice President Loren Mahon explains that because so many tasks in finance are repetitive in nature, they are prone to human error. Mahon, who works in the CFO's office and is an expert in large-scale transformation using new technologies, predicts that savvy finance teams will embrace automation as a way to "move away from these repetitive tasks and spend more time looking at insights and identifying risk and fraud." That ability to pivot is a core characteristic of "agile" financial leaders--finance experts who embrace new digital technologies, are responsive to change, and offer insight and strategic guidance to the companies they serve, according to the AICPA/Oracle report.