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Implementing AI To Innovate Financial Teams

Aug 13, 2018

Artificial Intelligence and Financial Savvy — Implementing AI To Innovate Financial Teams

Artificial Intelligence and Financial Savvy — Implementing AI To Innovate Financial Teams

These days, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more than a science fiction staple, it has fast become a reality. Though it might seem scary (here’s hoping our new robot overlords are merciful) it already shows tremendous promise in terms of financial innovation, daily utilities, and much more.

Most common applications of AI that come to mind include virtual assistants or chatbots such as Siri or Cortana, smartphone fingerprint or facial recognition, self-driving cars, as well as computers that automatically recognize and analyze documents.

However AI is also widely prevalent in the business world, as evidenced by:

Hiring optimization, helping HR streamline the selection process.
Quality assurance departments, pinpointing and preventing potential problems.
Marketers anticipating customers’ needs and optimizing brand consumer interaction.

So how does AI impact finance functions and workflows? What future changes can we predict? What does the finance department of tomorrow look like?

Automating accounts payable processes was introduced twenty years ago, and though it has drastically changed in that time, the essence is unchanged: take a tedious repetitive process, and simplify it, reducing stress on AP personnel.

Prior to the use of AI, accounting teams were tasked with manually performing the entire AP process, but today that nightmarish system is no longer a reality. Moreover, newer systems not only save valuable hours that can in turn be reallocated, they also provide more essential insight into the whole AP process, with details such as payment timing.

Better still, use of AI in the AP process has matured to an extent that powerful tools previously available only to larger firms, now serve as realistic solutions for small and midsize businesses-

Advanced algorithms are able to manage documents with variable structure, such as invoices.
SaaS (software-as-a-solution) cloud services are widely available, providing frequent technological advances.
These solutions “learn,” meaning they don’t repeat an error once corrected by a human user.

These factors combined equate to real profits, dramatically reducing processing time, and adding up to significant savings. Invoicing times have been seen to drop from 45 to 5 days, processing costs per invoice dropped from $15.00 to $2.00, and opportunities to utilize early payment discounts have risen from only 18% of the time to 75%.

AI-driven systems have been shown to transform financial teams, freeing them from monotonous tasks, and allowing them to focus on innovation and creative problem-solving.

The science fiction AI robots may have not yet arrived, but when they do they’re sure to be impressed with the efficiency we’ve achieved using current AI models.

If you're not ready to make the jump to machine learning and AI, the first step is automation. Kerr Consulting can help you leverage the right software to streamline your business processes to reduce error, cost, and time spent on manual tasks. Contact us to learn how to integrate and automate, or check out out Anyware Apps now.

Automate with Anyware Apps →

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