CFOs are experimenting with AI use cases to free up capacity for business-critical work. Generative AI has the potential to transform the finance function. By taking on some of the more mundane tasks that can occupy a lot of time, generative AI tools can help free up capacity for more high-value strategic work. For chief financial officers, this could mean spending more time and energy on proactively advising the business on financial strategy as organizations around the world continue to weather ongoing geopolitical and financial uncertainty. CFOs can use large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools to support everyday tasks like generating quarterly reports, communicating with investors, and formulating strategic summaries, says Andrew W. Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris professor and director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "LLMs can't replace the CFO by any means, but they can take a lot of the drudgery out of the role by providing first drafts of documents that summarize key issues and outline strategic priorities."

CFO Journal talked to Kristin Reinke, vice president and head of finance at Google, about those new technologies and how they accelerate the quarterly close, the use of spreadsheets in finance and the things that cannot be automated. This is the fourth part of a series that focuses on how chief financial officers and other executives digitize their finance operations. WSJ: What are the core parts of your digitization strategy? Kristin Reinke: We try to focus on the most important things: Automation and [how] we can improve our processes, being better partners to the business and then [reinvesting] the time we save into the next business challenge. WSJ: Which tools are you using?

For years the finance industry, which encompasses organizations in financial services, insurance, and banking, has been a strong adopter of artificial intelligence (AI). Financial organizations are using artificial intelligence in multiple ways, including to improve service, better understand customers, gauge risk and predict market movements, and speed claims processing. For example, chatbots and natural language processing (NLP) assist with customer support, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) helps with the ingestion of information from documents, computer vision analyzes images and videos to speed claim processing, and machine learning models assess risk, detect fraud, and help determine rating and pricing. Results from GlobalData's 2021 ICT Customer Insight survey reveal that between 25-27% of digital spending by companies in finance will go towards artificial intelligence and machine learning. Interestingly, GlobalData's survey indicated that the portion of budget allocated to disruptive technologies is slightly higher for small financial organizations than for the largest businesses, as show in Figure 2.

Depending on who you ask, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are at different stages of maturity in the finance industry, but there is widespread agreement that the technologies are trending upward. This ebook, based on the latest ZDNet / TechRepublic special feature, advises CXOs on how to approach AI and ML initiatives, figure out where the data science team fits in, and what algorithms to buy versus build. On a global scale, AI is expected to become a major business driver across the financial services industry, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Seventy-seven percent of finance executives anticipate AI "to possess high or very high overall importance to their businesses within two years," according to the findings of a WEF survey released in January. Specifically, AI will be incorporated into generating new revenue potentially through new products and processes; process automation; risk management; customer service; and client acquisition within the next two years, according to 64% of the WEF survey respondents. The survey included responses from 151 financial institutions in more than 30 countries.

Finance transformation is actively embracing digital transactions and going paperless with digital invoices, digital payments, and electronic documents. The proliferation of advanced digital technologies – big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics process automation, chatbots, digital assistants, mobile payments, blockchain, IoT, and many more – presents unprecedented opportunity to disrupt the costly, administrative, and bean-counter mindset of the back-office to give way to a modern data-driven finance organization: a connected, cognitive, cost-effective, and customer-centric finance organization. Solix has put together a whitepaper, outlining how CFOs can lead digital transformation with the help of top big data technologies such as Machine Learning and AI. The CFO organizations in an enterprise are looking to drive a competitive edge to business through advanced analytics with data-driven technology solutions such as Emagia Finance Analytics based on the Solix Common Data Platform (CDP) and artificial intelligence with cognitive assistants such as Emagia's recently launched Gia, a CFO's virtual assistant. To access the free whitepaper and learn how to employ data-driven finance best practices, fill the form to your right.

The pace of technology innovation is undeniably moving faster, growing more intelligent, and becoming inescapable. With each advancement, midsize companies are expanding the scope of their digital transformation efforts – from integrating technology into their business to fundamentally changing their workplace culture, organizational operation, and customer experiences. No organization understands this reality better than finance. The IDC InfoBrief, "The Finance Role in Best-Run Midsize Companies: Improving Decision-Making Using Intelligent Technologies," sponsored by SAP, recently revealed that finance organizations in best-run companies are embracing digital transformation and intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and machine learning. And in return, most of them are improving timely decision-making, running more-efficient and less error-prone operational processes, and empowering knowledge workers to engage in higher-value business activities. Notably, such changes are making finance more than a highly efficient function of cash-flow insight, effective spend management, and invoice and payment processing.

RPA is changing the Finance and Automation (F&A) function. It is now possible to remove most of the manual work and help talented F&A team members focus on business growth. Would you like to radically improve your cost efficiency? Are you looking to innovate and improve speed and accuracy? Would you like to utilize your Finance team better?

Together with ERP, blockchain can help CFOs streamline processes, enhance transparency, and create new ways of working with partners and customers. Can you imagine a future in which your finance organization and external business partners have a common system to transact, store, and access records for payments, orders, and reporting--a future in which processes that were once manual and laborious are carried out automatically? Not only would you be able to cut out dozens of costly and time-consuming steps, you'd also be able to create a more trusted environment for everyone involved: vendors, business users, and customers. Blockchain can pave the way for this future. The technology promises other benefits, as well: Internet-connected devices seamlessly uploading data, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems tapping into historical records and proactively suggesting actions that finance professionals can use to bring their company to the next level in their digital transformation.

We've all seen it coming: disruptions everywhere, from radical technology innovations to trade policies, taxation, Brexit, and supply chain risk. In 2018, the realities hit home as the ground beneath us began to shift – for good. How will the finance community adjust to deal with uncertainty, manage risk, and help their organizations stay ahead? How will finance stay relevant in the age of artificial intelligence? How will CFOs need to rethink and reinvent their roles?

The continuous integration of data, processes, and algorithms is profoundly reshaping finance organizations. However, confusion on how far-reaching the possibilities can be remains prevalent among CFOs and finance leaders. For this reason, SAP and the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW Berlin) joined forces to research how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing finance organizations all over the world. I want to thank the 164 professionals, which included finance specialists, CFOs, and other top executives, who participated in our study. With their insight, we uncovered how the true potential of AI is going beyond teaching machines to think, converting image and speech into captured information, and automating rules-based tasks and process.