Direct financial operations
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Direct or coordinate an organization's financial or budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, or increase efficiency.
- Direct or coordinate financial or budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, or increase efficiency.
- Coordinate activities of departments, such as sales, graphic arts, media, finance, and research.
- Establish goals for soliciting funds, develop policies for collection and safeguarding of contributions, and coordinate disbursement of funds.
- Plan, direct, or coordinate the activities of workers in branches, offices, or departments of establishments, such as branch banks, brokerage firms, risk and insurance departments, or credit departments.
- Prepare or direct preparation of financial statements, business activity reports, financial position forecasts, annual budgets, or reports required by regulatory agencies.
- Select or direct the execution of trades.
- Administer online purchasing systems.
- Conduct and administer fiscal operations, including accounting, planning budgets, authorizing expenditures, establishing rates for services, and coordinating financial reporting.
- Direct collection of monthly assessments, rental fees, and deposits and payment of insurance premiums, mortgage, taxes, and incurred operating expenses.
- Coordinate the development or implementation of budgetary control systems, recordkeeping systems, or other administrative control processes.
- Approve, reject, or coordinate the approval or rejection of lines of credit or commercial, real estate, or personal loans.
- Delegate authority for the receipt, disbursement, banking, protection, and custody of funds, securities, and financial instruments.
- Manage investment funds to maximize return on client investments.
- Direct or coordinate activities of businesses involved with buying or selling investment products or financial services.
- Coordinate and direct the financial planning, budgeting, procurement, or investment activities of all or part of an organization.
- Select specific investments or investment mixes for purchase by an investment fund.
- Direct activities of accounting or operations departments.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Enterprise platforms
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Manage budgets or finances”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.