On-demand Webcast | What’s Next: Harnessing AI to Mitigate Risk
Curious about how leading finance teams are using AI to better control costs and mitigate risks in the new world of work? Or perhaps you’re wondering whether AI is merely the latest finance catch phrase?
For our October webcast, Brian Veloso (Managing Director, SAP Concur Canada) dug into the latest insights around AI with an expert panel that included AG Lambert (Chief Product Strategy Officer, SAP Concur), Sam Hitchen-Rae (Partnership Director, Institute of Financial Operations & Leadership), and Rohit Gupta (Senior Advisor, Assurance and Audit, Deloitte).
From the outset, Sam Hitchen-Rae identified three significant pain points currently shared by those businesses that have yet to adopt AI technologies:
- Lack of data accuracy
- Inability to track spend
- Difficulties enabling remote employees
Digitizing your spend management can quickly resolve the first two paint points. As AG Lambert points out, however, AI brings that value of automation to a whole new level. Simply put, AI can do things we as humans can’t. It can look at your company’s entire data set, the complete history of data, and use pattern recognition and predictive analytics to identify trends and minimize future risks.
As Rohit Gupta observes,
“AI is going to make you smarter. The more data you have the better your decision making… As finance leader, you will be very pleasantly surprised on your ROI and how it keeps adding up.”
The third pain point, meanwhile, is relatively new for many businesses, and it has been driven in large part by the pandemic. A 2021 global survey* by IFOL and SAP Concur found that 45% of business leaders and their teams have no plans to go back to the office. This new working paradigm puts a higher demand on businesses to empower their remote employees with automation tools. Gone are the days of simply walking down the hall to submit an expense report, get an invoice approved, or even have an item shipped.
Here again, however, is where AI offers undeniable advantages for businesses. By reducing time-intensive manual tasks, employees can focus on more value-driven activities, such as improving customer and supplier relations. It’s a win-win for operational efficiency and employee satisfaction.
Lastly, it’s clear that move toward AI is accelerating. Even though 48% of businesses have yet to adopt any kind of AI technology, the same global survey mentioned above found that 35% were intending to within the next 12-24 months.
Perhaps your business will be one of them.
To hear more insights on the power of AI to drive business resilience, watch the full webinar on-demand:
*2021 Accounts Payable Spend Management Survey, Institute of Financial Operations & Leadership