Top AI applications for the Finance Function

In a recent webinar for CFO.com I was asked what are the top AI applications for the finance function in terms of the biggest potential positive impact on an organization? I believe they are:

●       Accounts Payable – since the Accounts payable function is so similar across industries and company sizes it is no surprise that this is one of the first domains to be invested in by technology providers. In a recent Coupa survey, 34% of CFOs said they will implement AI in the Account Payable function in the next 6 to 12 months. As a matter of fact, it was the leading function that CFOs planned to address. I suspect this is the case because AP has the highest turnover in the Finance department, and it is hard to keep that department staffed properly. Secondly, because there are fully vetted and trained systems already in existence it may be the fastest path to value and ROI while being virtually risk free. These solutions handle invoice ingestion and coding to G/L and dimensions, purchase order matching, workflow approvals, and payments. You can expect quick ROI with a very easy implementation that doesn’t disrupt the other projects you are involved in.  

●       Financial Reporting: there are AI solutions that automate the period close for controllers. What we are seeing in the financial sector right now is that “time to close” has crept back up in a lot of organizations. We plan to take a survey soon regarding the causes but we believe there are a handful of issues causing this:

-        It seems that many have allowed manual processes to creep back into their systems but we should be using AI to create, categorize, normalize and reconcile data.

-        Corporate teams may not have clear guidelines for transaction cutoffs and the need to be pro-active regarding invoicing and collections efforts as the period end approaches.

-        Resource constraints – it is currently very hard to find, recruit and retain accounting personnel. At the same time we have terrific AI solutions that will bring value to your organization.

●       Invoice to Cash – this domain is more industry specific and variable and hence the available AI solutions tend to be geared to certain industries or types of businesses. Some of the current AI solutions help with dunning/collections efforts. Others include cash applications, and some include customer portals to accept payments. These solutions are integrated with a number of ERP solutions.  

●       Bookkeeping – there are full bookkeeping solutions generally geared for start-up or less complex organizations. These solutions will collect transactions from corporate credit cards, and banks and organize, categorize and reconcile them in real time. Unusual transactions are flagged for accounting review. Data generated by AI is normalized and provides the ability to easily identify trends. We are getting close to the daily financial close with the AI solutions in this realm.

Please let us know if you would like help streamlining and improving your organization. We may be contacted at info@AIadvisorsUSA.com