Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

April 20 news: for risk-averse accountants and chief financial officers (CFO), change can be hard. However, with the advent of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies, financial personnel who do not adapt to this trend may be eliminated.

"Financial people tend to be inherently conservative and managing risk is always at the core of their work," says Myles Corson, head of global and Americas strategy and marketing at Tuyuan Pexels Ernst & Young Financial Accounting Consulting Services. "this is especially true when technology is developing faster than regulation. So there is a need for guardrails in this area, and CFOs want to see where information is shared."

While it is doubtful whether artificial intelligence-supported chatbots are ready for large-scale use in finance, sitting back and waiting is by no means the best option. A recent study by Gartner, a market research firm, predicts that by 2026, half of the best-performing corporate finance departments will need to have a background other than finance or accounting under the influence of artificial intelligence and automation. In today's financial field, only 18 per cent of financial staff have digital capabilities, while only 11 per cent of their managers have such capabilities.

In the eyes of investment companies, the trend has also changed. Mark Bean, managing director of Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, a Boston-based private equity firm that focuses on financial, business and medical technology companies, said the company sees CFO software and services as a particularly attractive growth area.

At the company's own investment company, managers noticed that many CFOs were using Excel to handle complex tasks while they were asked to do more at less cost. "over time, the Excel financial model becomes very complex and prone to problems." Bean said.

Nevertheless, for the CFO's office, artificial intelligence technology is still in its infancy. "of course, financial staff will have to be exposed to this technology over time. Cutting-edge tools are particularly useful for financial budgeting and forecasting, saving a lot of time. This technology is not only for the most likely business forecasts, but also for several scenarios and the possibility of these situations." Said Bean.

Some companies are trying to apply artificial intelligence technology to finance. Dev Dev Ahuja, chief financial officer of industrial aluminum company Novelis, has taken a step forward to develop internal machine learning technology for cash flow forecasting on a pilot basis, which is expected to be deployed this year. "A quick victory can be a huge driving force for bigger projects," Ahuja said. "it's more about empowering the organization and really creating the right vision."

However, industry insiders say that "our biggest threat is inertia", and the data seem to confirm this claim. A recent survey of more than 700 global financial executives by Prophix Software, an Ontario-based provider of enterprise performance management software, found that 65 per cent of respondents said they planned to automate more than half of their business by the end of the year. But 62% said deployment technology was the biggest obstacle, not cost. "Unfortunately, our biggest competitor is actually Excel," said Alok Ajmera, chief executive of Prophix Software.

However, when the technology is successfully deployed, the finance department, which is often regarded as a cost center, can more easily change its position in the company. "A lot of analysis is helping finance and finance teams become part of the core business," said Faizul Faiz Ahmad, global head of trading services at Bank of America.

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