How AI Will Be Embedded Into Your Everyday Tools

Hello,

Welcome (back) to?The AI Treasury Insight?Newsletter!

In this week's?edition, we discuss how AI will be embedded into your existing tools.

Let's break down why your first real, practical interactions with AI will be through embedded AI, why thats a good thing and a look into examples that Google Sheets and PowerBI?are already using.

Please note that this article is not sponsored, we just found these solutions interesting and worth talking about!

Why Embedded AI is the Future

As treasurers grapple with the complexities of the AI revolution - and although we will continue bringing you insights into it overall -?it's worth noting that the first brush with AI you're??likely to experience will be through embedded AI.

But what is?embedded?AI?

Essentially, it's the integration of AI capabilities directly into the tools and systems treasurers already use daily, such as ERP or TMS platforms or even your excel spreadsheet. This is in contrast to stand-alone AI applications which operate independently - like ChatGPT.

It should be said, the most likely interaction/ change in your daily life from AI will come from it being embedded into the tools and applications you already use today.

Let's go through some advantages of embedded AI vs stand alone AI tools:

Familiarity and Ease of Use:?With embedded AI, treasurers won't need to navigate unfamiliar systems or drastically change their workflows. AI's power is harnessed within the familiar interfaces of the systems they already use.

Seamless Integration:?Embedded AI offers the promise of plug-and-play. It's designed to work seamlessly with existing systems, reducing the need for complicated integrations or alterations in the current tech stack.

Real-time Insights:?Embedded AI can provide real-time insights and recommendations directly within the work environment. This can include everything from anomaly detection in invoices to predicting cash flow trends.

Reduced Implementation Barriers:?With AI integrated into existing tools, treasurers can bypass many of the barriers to AI adoption, such as cost and complexity of standalone AI systems.

In short, embedded AI allows treasurers to enjoy the benefits of AI's processing power and predictive capabilities without needing to step too far out of their comfort zone, making it an appealing first step into the world of AI.

But what does that look like? How is it different to today?

As one of the most widely used business analytics tools, Power BI has made significant strides in incorporating AI capabilities to help treasurers analyze and interpret vast amounts of financial data.

PowerBI has already integrated AI analysis into it's tool, allowing you to get help analyzing it as if you have a data analyst talking to you. Now, it doesn't just visualize the data,?it helps you interpret it.

This is a form of embedded AI: an existing tool with AI capabilities built into it. Not a new AI tool.

Here's how Power BI's embedded AI can help:

AI Visuals:?Power BI introduces AI visuals like the Key Influencers visual and the Decomposition Tree. The Key Influencers visual helps identify factors that drive a metric you're interested in, such as what influences late invoice payments. The Decomposition Tree allows you to break down a data point in various ways to understand the driving factors behind it.

Automated Machine Learning:?With Power BI's automated machine learning feature, you can build machine learning models directly within Power BI, without requiring any specialized knowledge. For treasurers, this could mean predicting cash flow trends or forecasting financial performance based on historical data.

Natural Language Querying:?Power BI's Q&A feature allows users to ask questions about their data in natural language and receive immediate answers in the form of relevant visuals or tables. This allows treasurers to get quick insights without having to manually sift through data.

Dataflows with AI:?Power BI Dataflows now support AI transformations. This means you can clean, transform, and enrich your data using AI insights, all within Power BI. Treasurers can use this feature to clean invoice data or categorize transactions automatically.

You can imagine the same capability in your excel spreadsheet (something Google sheets is already doing) - giving you functionality such as:

Smart Fill and Smart Cleanup:?These features can autocomplete data and detect inconsistencies or errors, ensuring that your invoice data and financial records are accurate and consistent.

Explore Feature:?Just type a question about your data, and the AI will respond with an analysis. For treasurers, this could mean asking about trends in expenditure or identifying top vendors by spend, all with a simple question.

Pivot Tables:?AI suggests Pivot Tables based on your data, which can help identify patterns or insights, such as understanding how expenses are distributed over time.

If you want to dive deeper into Treasury-related topics or have specific areas you'd like us to cover in future editions, we encourage you to?visit our website.

There, you'll find a wealth of resources and can also reach out to us directly to share your feedback and suggestions.

Reach out to Hussam Ali or Guillaume Jouvencel and we will answer you!