Right home for AI and analytics? – Part 4
In many organizations the finance function is critical part of the corporate strategy. They might carry on several responsivities which require support for decision making like analyzing competitors or selecting best acquisition targets to support growth. They also need to take care of different important performance optimization related activities like cash flow forecasts or other corporate asset related optimization activities. Their daily routines include performance tracking which hopefully is as up-to date as possible to support management’s decision making in real-time. All of these are natural domains to be supported with help of AI.
Finance
As previously mentioned, needs are easily assisted with help of AI, why shouldn’t these scarce resources be embedded into proximity of the source of demand to ensure most fluent co-operation. Analytics teams is inherently also hosting mostly numbers-focused people, so it is natural for CFO to take an analytics leadership role also from organizational culture and mental mind set point of views.
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Depending on maturity of company’s AI and project management culture, Finance can be excellent location also from cost control point of view. Understanding the scarcity and financial impacts of different assignments, Finance function could be in good position to scale wisely AI resource up, with focus in value of delivered results and not just taking need for AI as granted. So main motivation to locate AI into Finance would be their ability to focus analytics efforts on the issues that matter most to business performance, including enterprise performance management itself, which is their own main task.
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General downsides could be the attitude of CFO towards analytics and AI. If CFO does not embrace analytics, then the finance function remains an uncommon, if logical, home for analytical groups. I don’t think this is a common problem, but something that one needs to consider and weight while making the decision of location.
Next part 5: Marketing as location for AI and analytics.