BeanBlog — AI Blog for Bean Counters
Author: Natasha Lam, Head of Finance Automation at Blackbook.ai
Introducing a blog series that provides practical AI solutions for Accountants or those working within Finance functions.
Now that RPA is well and truly embedded in most finance functions, it’s time to start to open Accountants’ minds to what’s next. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can solve real accounting issues and help the finance function to improve its service, free up more strategic resources and start to add real value to organisations.
The purpose of this blog is not to advise you on how to embark on an AI project, rather to explore the possibilities and the feasibility of leveraging AI in the Finance function. . A hot tip however — you will need several things; such as good data, someone to drive the initiative, governance and change management etc. The idea here is to stimulate ideas, resonate with real business issues and generate AI opportunities to improve systems and processes that are very much outdated, and will more than likely be bleeding costs from the business.
The format of the BeanBlog will be similar to the structure of a month end performance report, hoping it will be easier to digest for Accountants.
· Intro — What this Month’s BeanBlog subject area is.
· KPI’s — All accountants love a good stat — metrics on current issues and indicators of why the subject area or process is an opportunity for AI
· Trend analysis — What AI solutions we are seeing currently in the market and the application
· Crunch the numbers — How to identify practical AI opportunities, plus ROI, what are the benefits of an AI solution in the subject area
· Actual vs Forecast — My thoughts on where AI is, what’s being implemented now and where it is headed in the future in the subject area
· ‘Start Today Tip’ — Tip on executing AI for a process in in the subject area — an actionable idea or activity accountants can go away and action today
· Finish with a relevant hashtag to the subject area #letsgetfiscal
AI is an extremely disruptive technology and for an industry that hasn’t seen much disruption since the invention of the computer, accounting is ripe and ready for intelligent automation. Consider the introduction of IFRS 17 a few months ago, instead of thinking how many people we will need to formulate the insurance and risk adjustments, why not think how we can automate the execution, while we retain the decisions points and make the judgements. Unless your organisation has invested in an ERP that can automatically apply IFRS 17, you are most likely going to be stuck with old processes, legacy actuarial systems and large data sets. Enter RPA and AI!
Education is key when implementing new technologies. Finance use cases are a good way to start to understand AI and Intelligent automation, it will also give you the ability to adopt technology to your role when required, a skill that is in high demand today and will be in the future. There are numerous blogs/articles touching on what skills are needed for the future of work, but the reality is, you need adaptability and openness to learning new skills — which is a skill in itself!!!
My goal is to encourage Accountants to start trusting AI and gain a healthy respect for innovation, which in turn will help our outdated industry evolve along with emerging technologies; after all, there is no one ERP that fits all our needs and as most accountants know, customisation is extremely costly!
Stay tuned next month as we kick off with how to leverage AI for Month End processing, followed up with using AI for Payroll compliance.
