Artificial Intelligence: Fad or Business Necessity?

Basware is a Business Reporter client.

According to techjury.net, 77% of the world’s population use artificial intelligence (AI), but only 33% are actually aware they’re doing so. Your smartphone that’s sitting beside you or perhaps in your hand, the video games your kids are playing in the next room, the Spotify station you’ve got on in the background, and the list goes on—all utilize AI while you go about your life.

Business process operations, such as smart email categorization and automated customer support, routinely use it. But even though most people utilize AI in their day-to-day activities, many are still skeptical about how these technologies can and should be used more intentionally in business.

What is AI, and how does it contribute to financial visibility?

At its core, AI is a technology’s ability to use algorithms (sets of instructions) to process data, and to optimize the outcomes of these algorithms based on the data it collects—therefore displaying a sense of “intelligence.” AI learns from past processes and improves its algorithms to become the best digital coworker your team could ask for as it works in the background to help your business. AI uses data to increase automation across business processes and operations, and to improve decision-making by providing insights and smart recommendations to help your organization do the right thing.

One of the biggest takeaways from the pandemic is that financial visibility is key to ensuring business continuity. Understanding cash flow and supply chain and finding ways to stay agile through disruption are vital to the success and growth of any organization. AI informs automation, which drives the data needed to inform real-time insights into cash flow. This sort of analytical visibility helps keep suppliers operational, cash flowing and businesses in action.

How can AI boost e-invoicing and procurement?

As top businesses implement AI, the value realized after implementation is often clearly evident—and you can rest easy knowing that your workforce won’t be replaced with blinking, square-headed robots. AI works entirely as servant, not master. And since it runs in the background of your operations, you’ll hardly know it’s there.

Let’s take a look at how AI can improve your procure-to-pay (P2P) process.

For starters, if you’re a multinational firm with a history of mergers and acquisitions, your financial tools may be varied and disparate. At Basware, we build a layer on top of those existing tools to harmonize your entire financial process, and then integrate it with the existing landscape.

These modern technologies enable AP and procurement departments to achieve efficiencies such as:

• Automating conversion of machine-readable PDFs to electronic invoices (e-invoices) with close to 100% accuracy.

• Saving time and energy across all P2P functions and redirecting resources to more strategic initiatives.

• Improving cash flows and generating savings through early-payment discounts and DPO optimization, with faster invoice processing times.

• Drastically reducing manual handling of business documents in both procurement and AP.

• Identifying increased savings potential by gaining visibility over 100% of your organizational spend.

• Achieving high-performing supply chains by analyzing supplier performance and quality.

• Considerably increasing both data quality and accuracy.

AI strategy is here—for the short, middle and long term

According to Forbes, “90% of leading businesses already have ongoing investment in AI technologies. More than half of businesses that have implemented some manner of AI-driven technology report experiencing greater productivity.”

NewVantage research from 2020 shows that 91.5% of top businesses surveyed report having an ongoing investment in AI. And 54% of business executives in a recent PwC survey say their adoption of AI within the workplace has led to significant boosts in productivity.

For example, our own experience paired with research from multiple sources shows the ways businesses are using AI to improve their organizations:

• 36% of executives say their primary goal for AI is to optimize internal business operations (Harvard Business Review).

• 36% of executives say their primary goal for AI is to free up workers to be more creative by automating tasks (Harvard Business Review).

• 79% of executives worldwide say artificial intelligence will make their job easier and more efficient (The Economist).

• 72% of business decision makers say AI can enable humans to concentrate on more meaningful work (PwC).

• AI can warn of late payments to increase early-pay discount capture and increase overall savings.

• AI can process millions of financial transactions to analyze and provide insights.

This all shows that AI is here to stay. For the short and middle term, AI will dominate the finance landscape. In the long term, it will combine and analyze external and internal data to drive further efficiencies.

Learn more about how Basware’s advanced AI technology can help your business take the next step.