Mitsubishi Corporation Automates Financial Anomaly Checks With Alteryx

Improving finance and accounting processes reliant on manual work

Mitsubishi Corporation, with about 115 locations worldwide, creates value through domestic and international transactions, business investments and services in information, technology, finance and logistics.

In 2023, the company began reforming its finance and accounting business processes, taking a hard look at inefficiencies that had long been managed in a piecemeal, individually optimized way. The Finance and Accounting Department alone handles as many as 800 business processes, making reform a significant undertaking.

Mr. Masaki Mukunoki, Head of the Business Process Management Office, explains the issue: “Traditionally, most financial and accounting operations were transaction-based, with a large share involving manual work. As a result, tasks that should have been the main focus, such as control and insight, were only addressed to a limited extent.”

The reform seeks to reassess all operations from three perspectives: cost-effectiveness, overall efficiency and flexibility to adapt to change. The goal is to cut the man-hours required for transactional operations and shift resources to more advanced, higher-value tasks. The Business Process Management Office operates with a team of about 40 members, drawn not only from the finance and accounting departments but also from the sales and IT groups, including staff with dual roles and contract employees. The reform also covers processes carried out in the sales group.

The initiative is primarily composed of the following four pillars.

1. Defining passing criteria
   Clear output standards have been set for each business operation, and efforts are underway to cut unnecessary tasks, reduce excessive reporting and streamline verification activities.
2. Organizing the division of roles
   The roles and responsibilities of sales departments, management departments and accounting subsidiaries have been clarified to minimize overlapping tasks and reduce excessive preliminary coordination.
3. Development of business infrastructure
   A common infrastructure is being developed across organizations to standardize operations and improve efficiency.
4. Design of monitoring indicators
   The progress and effects of business process reforms are being quantitatively measured, with a system in place to ensure continuity and drive ongoing improvements.

As a specific initiative of this reform, the team developed an in-house tool called Tataite Pon! (literally “Tap and Done!”) to automate the checking of abnormal values in financial statements.

Mr. Noriaki Wakayama, Manager in the Business Process Coordination Office, says: “In the traditional process of checking for abnormal values in financial statements, staff would confirm items using an Excel checklist every period during closing, which was extremely time-consuming — it has been estimated to take more than 2,500 hours per year. Specifically, staff had to repeatedly search and match data in SAP individually, which made it a very labor-intensive task.”

The conventional process for checking abnormal values in financial statements was divided into four phases: SAP search, result confirmation, SAP research, and detailed analysis. This had to be carried out for “the number of check items × the number of days × the number of organizations,” requiring the involvement of 200 employees across the company’s accounting subsidiaries.

Alteryx enabled us to streamline everything from detecting abnormal values to root cause analysis, speeding up the verification process.

The aforementioned Tataite Pon! is a system that visualizes and systematizes the checking of abnormal values in financial statements, similar to a “whack-a-mole” game. It uses a UI created in Microsoft SharePoint to let users address displayed abnormal values and is composed of three functions.

In-house development of Tataite Pon

1. Automatic Check
   Alteryx automatically extracts anomalies from company-wide data.
2. Status Management
   Centralized management of response status in SharePoint List.
3. Detail Retention & One-Click Transition
   Retain original data (Excel) when abnormal values occur.

“Tataite Pon!” turns abnormal value checks into a “whack-a-mole” style process.

The first automated check function uses Alteryx to scan the entire company’s financial data in bulk and display the abnormal values in a SharePoint list.

The second status management function updates the response status of extracted anomalies, enabling managers, rather than the responsible staff, to monitor progress in real time.

The third feature, “Detail Retention & One-Click Transition,” preserves links to the detailed data behind each abnormal value, allowing staff to directly access the source data without the need to individually search SAP.

In addition, the extraction condition table is created in Excel, so even users unfamiliar with Alteryx can easily customize it. Parameters such as thresholds and account items can be set, allowing flexible operation. In status management, options such as “Unaddressed,” “Under Review,” and “Review Complete” can be configured, and details can be freely entered in the comment column, integrating progress management and information sharing into a unified system.

A notable feature is the automatic detection of new errors that appear after confirmation is complete. Mr. Wakayama says, “Since new accounting entries are entered into SAP daily, it is common for errors to be added the next day to items that have already been confirmed. In Tataite Pon!, if an abnormal value is added to an error that has already been resolved, the system automatically reverts the status. This allows the person in charge to quickly notice the addition of a new error and respond immediately.”

In the trial conducted during the fiscal year-end accounting for the 2024 fiscal year in April 2025, around 20 types of check logic were implemented for the accounting department of a subsidiary with 200 employees. User feedback has been positive, with comments such as “It’s helpful that re-search is unnecessary thanks to the detail links,” “The response status is clearly visualized in a list, making management easier,” and “It offers better visibility than existing RPA.”

Mr. Wakayama says, “We have not yet conducted a formal effect measurement, but based on the current development scope, we estimate that the accounting department will reduce about 400 hours from the 2,500 hours of work originally required.”

For future development, the plan is to discontinue the existing RPA in the first half of fiscal 2025 and integrate it into this system, while further enhancing the UI and logic. By enabling the entire process from detecting abnormal values to identifying their causes to be completed in one stop, the initiative is expected to deliver major efficiency gains.