Last year, businesses across India faced numerous challenges to adapt quickly to the changing way of work. Digital transformation and adoption of the latest technologies have helped immensely during such dynamic times, with digital solutions aiding businesses in maintaining viability and operational productivity. For some, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the solution to quickly replicate tasks and processes that were formerly done by people. More finance departments started to lean on AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms to make quick decisions backed by near real-time financial transparency to meet their business needs. But according to a recent study by SAP Concur, merely 11% of Indian organisations have embraced fully digital finance and administrative processes.

Money saved is money earned. This is true more so today than ever for procurement and supply chain leaders. Increasingly they're expected not just to reduce costs, but also fund innovation and future business growth. Procurement leaders must increase savings - without sacrificing supplier performance and delivery risks. Supply chain leaders need to manage costs, but also ensure continuity and responsiveness of their complex, multi-tier supply chains.

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.

Basic machine learning technology is already used by some procurement applications in areas such as spend analytics and contract analytics. This is mostly limited to automating the processes of collecting, cleaning, classifying and analyzing expenditure data in an organization -- to identify savings or paths to greater efficiency. Today, procurement technology vendors are creating cognitive procurement advisors (CPAs) and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) that use natural-language processing (NLP) and natural-language generation to further increase automation and efficiency. "A procurement VPA can improve the end-user experience of traditional procurement tools and increase spend under management by guiding people to the correct purchasing tool," said Magnus Bergfors, research director at Gartner. "A CPA can provide summaries, recommendations and advice in everything from supplier assessments and performance management, to risk management and compliance."

Basic machine learning technology is already used by some procurement applications in areas such as spend analytics and contract analytics. This is mostly limited to automating the processes of collecting, cleaning, classifying and analyzing expenditure data in an organization -- to identify savings or paths to greater efficiency. Today, procurement technology vendors are creating cognitive procurement advisors (CPAs) and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) that use natural-language processing (NLP) and natural-language generation to further increase automation and efficiency. "A procurement VPA can improve the end-user experience of traditional procurement tools and increase spend under management by guiding people to the correct purchasing tool," said Magnus Bergfors, research director at Gartner. "A CPA can provide summaries, recommendations and advice in everything from supplier assessments and performance management, to risk management and compliance."