Adapting to a changing world of finance with AI

As the saying goes, change is a constant. But what is driving the changes in the field of finance and how can we be more prepared and adapt to change? At this year’s SAP Concur Fusion, I had the privilege to join a group of experts to explore this topic further, from the lens of technology and demographics changes.

As global economic recovery endures, financial decision-makers are navigating both short-term and long-term challenges: from increasing cost of capital and economic and geopolitical uncertainties to regulatory compliance and a rapidly evolving technology and business landscape influenced by emerging technologies. To prepare for the unexpected while becoming more cost effective, today’s finance leaders must stay abreast of innovation to leverage technology wisely and to invest strategically and for the future.

The sentiment is reflected in the March 2024 SAP Concur CFO Insights Report, with the investment priorities pointing to a need for better tools to support data analytics and reporting as part of their strategy to manage risks and uncertainties. Majority of senior finance leaders prioritize equipping their organizations for unforeseen challenges, reflecting the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI). The CFOs surveyed are investing in innovation (40%) and cutting-edge technologies such as automation and AI (33%) to help address the growing complexity in forecasting and budgeting.? Interestingly, although almost all finance leaders believe AI threatens them or their team, 61% believe that it will be essential in managing the unexpected, and 51% are investing in AI across financial processes.

Driven in part by interests around generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT, AI has captured our attention and imagination in the past two years. Gartner recently predicted that “by 2026, 75% of businesses will use generative AI to create synthetic customer data, up from less than 5% in 2023.” Despite the enthusiasm, however, there is a gap in understanding AI, with 58% of CFOs surveyed in the SAP Concur CFO Insights Report admitting they understand very little about AI and 46% expressing an urgent need to learn more.

AI's ability to analyze vast amounts of data and predict patterns is crucial for future-proofing businesses. In expense management for example, AI can automate previously mundane tasks, ensure policy compliance, and validate receipts. For example, Verify is a self-serve audit solution within Concur Expense that automatically checks 100 percent of expense reports to identify potential compliance issues. It uses AI and machine learning from SAP Concur to tap decades of expense user data that helps identify hard-to-detect spend issues and anomalies. ?Such process transformation can enable finance professionals to shift their focus from expense reporting to exception reporting and spend more time on strategic tasks.?

For business travelers, some of the new SAP Business AI capabilities announced at SAP Fusion will also help to save time and improve accuracy when managing business travel and expenses. This includes the ability to provide intelligent cost estimates for trip planning with Request Assistant, and to create new expense items automatically based on receipt images, with prepopulated fields and itemized hotel folios with ExpenseIt.

AI will undoubtedly impact how work gets done. But regardless of which part of our processes get automated, and whether it is a program or humans who generate the code, we will still require human oversight. And we will still need humans to interpret the results and communicate them to other humans —?internally and externally.

This is where reskilling and upskilling programs become crucial. Employees whose work can be automated will likely be the ones most impacted when more use cases focused on operational efficiencies are implemented. Training and education will take center stage as organizations focus on retaining employees and redeploying them in different areas where their experiences can be leveraged. And near-term hiring — along with new jobs — will likely be focused on those who can navigate the new landscape and help guide the organizations towards an AI-enabled future.

As AI is more embedded in our daily lives, focus on the ethical and responsible use will become increasingly crucial. Organizations must also foster tighter collaboration between technical talent and the business leaders, and carefully consider where the technology is used and who it will impact. The teams must also gain a clear understanding on where the data is coming from, how the model is being trained and retrained. Building and maintaining trust is paramount; it must not be an afterthought.

“With great power comes great responsibility. Organizations will need to establish clear guidelines to ensure that AI is used responsibly, particularly when it comes to customer data and privacy”, Christopher Juneau commented in his latest blog.

The world is changing around us, and we must adapt by using technology effectively and responsibly at our disposal, while not losing sight on what matters the most: our human ingenuity.

Catch my latest conversation with Christopher Juneau , SVP, Head of SAP Concur Product Marketing, where we chat about how SAP Concur is reimagining business travel and expense management experiences with AI-powered solutions.

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This article was sponsored by SAP Concur , but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent SAP Concur’s positions or strategies.