Can Tech Sector Financial Management Exploit Automation with the Help of AI?

CFO Tech Outlook

Tech Sector businesses have to rethink consistently how people, processes, information, and technology fit with one another, as well as each other.

Within typical finance departments, some processes are time-consuming and execute in ways that is unchanged for years. Few CFO’s are ready or able to change the methodology of these processes fundamentally. The best way forwards is to enhance, streamline, or automate. Still, even this carries disruption risks.

Also, most of the CFOs reign over the finance functions, which are dominated by spreadsheets. These have infiltrated nearly every finance function in one way or another. Much of the organizational and intellectual knowledge is held with these spreadsheets, usually with minimal documentation or understanding of the underlying concepts.

Meanwhile, the latest generation of financial management software comes in ‘a cloud.’ One of the prime factors is the accessibility from any device, any time, and anywhere. Another is that cloud-based financial systems open up the opportunity to:

• enhance as well as automate processes and, in doing so, remove much of the ‘daily grind’ which exists in a traditional accounting

• reduces the reliance on spreadsheets at the core of many tasks and processes.

Artificial Intelligence can then boost such improvements, taking them to new levels of complexity and efficiency.

Period end closures in many organizations take time. They include numerous reconciliations, intercompany journals, and the weight of regulatory and internal reporting needs.

The alternative is specifically for a modern Financial Management solution to facilitate the completion of everyday tasks, providing on-demand reports. This contrasts with the need to download data into in Excel files and then produce the needed report.

However, with up to date data, forecasting improves, with AI enhancing forward analytical assessments of revenue, profitability, and cash flows. Similarly, having automated preventative and fraud detection controls relevant to governance and regulatory requirements reduces risks while saving time and costs.

When an organization can exploit one system that embraces the whole business, it can address risks, including those of existing business partners ‘disappearing’. It can also assist in identifying new possibilities, which can then shape the acquisition of new business partners.