ACCA's professional-insights work on the future finance function describes a shift in the mix of work: automation and better data absorb the transactional load, while the human hours move toward analysis, business partnering and judgment, with skills development as the binding constraint.
Our experience with SME finance teams matches that arc, with one caveat: the order matters. Automate a messy process and you get faster mess. First standardize the bookkeeping and the month-end routine, then automate the repetitive middle, then reinvest the freed hours in reporting the management team actually uses. Skipping step one is where most tooling projects die.