A Tale Of Robots: From Assembly Lines To Knowledge Workers

This article is co-written by Thomas Schultz and Anders Liu-Lindberg 

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Once upon a time there was a robot standing at an assembly line. It knew its part in the process and executed only what it was told. It had many ideas on how to improve the assembly process that could lead to products of a higher quality made faster. However, no one wanted to listen. Until one day when the factory owner got so tired of endless breakdowns and faulty products and (s)he said to the robot standing at the assembly line. 

“ Today, begins a new era. One where I will listen to your input and use what you have learned about assembling my product to make improvements. Not only that, I expect you to constantly learn and propose even better ways of doing things. I set you free to improve quality and productivity” 

After that, the robot went on to make many improvements and kept surprising the owner with its ability to innovate. The robot had truly transformed from a worker standing at the assembly line, only doing its part of the process, to a knowledge worker that keeps learning and doing things even better. 

A tale of robots!?! What has that got to do with anything? 

You see this story makes up the difference between Robotics Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). An RPA robot will execute its part of the process or in the case of end-to-end process automation many robots will do their small part and form a line of assembly workers to complete the process. They don’t learn. They don’t make improvements. They do only what you tell them to do. With an AI robot it’s different. This robot will, once you’ve trained it in your process or model, only become better at it. As it learns, it will find the most efficient way of executing the process.

This tale marks the passing from the RPA mini-series to a series about how to succeed with AI. The series is a co-creation with Thomas Schultz from Enversion. Thomas is the CCO of Enversion, an AI-experts company based in Denmark. Thomas leads the efforts of Enversion to dramatically change the engine room of the finance function. Being one of the leading countries in the world in terms of government mandated electronic invoicing, Denmark is the ideal place to explore the limits of present AI technology and computing power.

We will introduce you to a model of working with AI and deep-dive into each of the steps. Our ambition is to help you succeed with AI in whichever shape or form that you’re considering using it in. 

A way of working with AI that’ll help you succeed 

First, we’ll introduce the model which consists of five steps. Granted this model might not be unique to working with AI yet it’s a pre-requisite for increasing your success rate with AI.

1. If your solution is not solving any business pains, you likely don’t have the perseverance to see it through. Also gaining support for using AI for the intended purposes will likely not happen.
2. You must do specific projects as opposed to just creating a strategy building on using AI for all sorts of different purposes. If you can’t be specific about where and how you’ll use it, you’re just not ready yet.
3. Explain in simple terms how your AI solution will work. If you can’t explain it like this, you’re not ready either.
4. Now that we’ve established that you’re ready, you can’t embark on the project with just about any Tom, Dick or Harry. You must reference-check the partners you intend to work with.
5. Having found the pain to solve, selected the specific projects to work on, done the simple feasibility study, and found the right partner it’s now time to brace yourself. It’s going to be a long and bumpy ride but, in the end, you’ll succeed because you took all the right steps to get there.

How does this sound to you? Reasonable? Too simple? Well try it for yourself and let us know how the model works. 

This works for Finance too! 

In the finance function there are plenty of projects that can be picked to try out AI. Essentially pains are everywhere being it in your cash and bank setup, your month-end reporting including management reporting or your advanced analytics where smart models are the need of the hour. And as an individual working in the finance function try to reflect on the “Tale of Robots”. You’ll see that the robots are undergoing the same development as we humans did. That means as the robots develop we must too. With AI entering the finance function you must find a new platform from which you can grow and still have a thriving career. That could be technical accounting or business partnering. Are you ready to begin your own journey? 

It might have started with RPA, but AI is coming at us fast and its entry into all business functions is inevitable. The question is how are you going to get started? We will lay out the details of the individual steps in the coming weeks to prepare you for successfully working with AI. If you’ve already had some success, why don’t you share your story with us? We’d love to feature it as a use case at the end of the series.

This is the fourth article in a mini-series about RPA and AI. Read previous articles in the series below. From next week we begin to discuss how to succeed with AI.

How To Make Robots A Part Of The Finance Family?

Why You Should Only Robotize Standard Processes 

Robots and Humans. A Marriage Made In Heaven Or Hell?

You can read previous articles about robotics and other stories about finance transformation below.

Blip. Blop. Accounting Robot. Are You Ready?

Are You Ready For Robotics Process Automation?

Have You Met Your Robot Accountant Yet?

Robots Are The Future Of Analytics

Your Robot Accountant Has A Name, It's Dixie

What Defines A Finance Master?

The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance

How Finance People Can Be More Successful

The New Career Path For Finance Professionals

I also encourage you to take a tour of my past articles on finance transformation, finance business partnering and not least “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” which is really the starting point for the transformation. You should join our Finance Business Partner Forum which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community where we will continue to discuss this topic and you can click here to follow me on Twitter.

Anders Liu-Lindberg is a Senior Finance Business Partner at Maersk supporting our largest product and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 7,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to show how to be successful with business partnering and drive value creation as a trusted partner. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 27.000+ followers.