Are finance leaders ready for what AI will bring? 

Are finance leaders ready for what AI will bring? 

Artificial intelligence is set to transform the finance function. At the recent SuiteWorld event in Las Vegas, NetSuite offered a glimpse of what’s next – an autonomous close and dashboards only a prompt away. But are finance leaders ready for it? 

Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, large language models (LLMs) have changed how people make decisions, solve technical issues and even create art. 

While many have dabbled with artificial intelligence (AI) in their personal life, its full impact on the workplace is still unfolding. This transformation is reshaping all sectors, not least the finance function.  

For finance teams, the AI revolution could soon bring an autonomous close, dashboards at the click of the button and the end of repetitive tasks. But are they ready for the change?  

Impact of generative AI 

AI’s impact on the finance function recently took centre stage at SuiteWorld in Las Vegas, where NetSuite founder Evan Goldberg unveiled NetSuite Next, which layers conversational AI and agentic AI capabilities across the ERP platform’s suite.  

The product isn’t being released in the US for another 12 months, but the preview offered a glimpse into how AI could fundamentally change finance function workflows.  

Evolving the finance function 

James Chisham, Oracle NetSuite’s vice president of product management started his career as an accountant and remembers the manual grind all too well.  

“I look back at some of the things I did where we’d be poring over transactions and reconciliations, but even then, we didn’t think technology would remove the need for those time-consuming tasks,” he told AccountingWEB. 

“Today’s automation can already process vast data sets to uncover insights and identify exceptions. To think now that we can almost automate that completely is something I never thought would happen when I started in accountancy.” 

Shorten close time 

Among the use cases at SuiteWorld was how agentic AI will be used to eliminate the financial close as we know it. In a demo during day two’s keynote, NetSuite showed how a network of agents can continuously monitor activities throughout the accounting period to identify and resolve potential errors. 

“Being able to apply autonomous AI to shorten the close time is going to be a massive benefit,” said Chisham. “For businesses to be able to cut reporting timelines, that’s something that every finance team strives to do.” 

For Nicky Tozer, the EMEA senior vice president at Oracle NetSuite, these use cases will become a lightbulb moment in businesses’ AI adoption. “We will then be able to quantify whether it’s a reduction in the number of ‘close days’ and the better management of what people can do with their time,” she said.   

More agile FDs? 

For chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance directors (FDs), practical use cases like this will enable them to become more agile and interrogate what’s happening in the business by prompting the system.  

“Not every controller or FD has time or will be spending time in the system,” said Chisham. “If they need to, they can simply ask a question, get the answer they’re looking for, and validate it instantly, without having to rely on someone else. That’s going to be a really critical change.” 

SuiteWorld’s agentic AI workflows may grab the attention of the West Coast tech aficionados, but it’s these everyday efficiencies that will make a difference to those on the ground.  

As Gary Wiessinger, senior vice president of NetSuite application development, put it, the best AI solutions don’t start with the product, but with the end user. “Bank reconciliation, journal entries, creating reports, invoicing… it’s the basics, but that’s where people spend time,” he said.  

“I think there will be a real efficiency gain made by actually understanding the data and having better data quality,” added Chisham. “I think it’s the old age adage: rubbish in, rubbish out. That will be one of the things that really fuels finance teams, because I think understanding their data and its quality is going to be huge.” 

This article is sourced from the following link: 

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/tech-pulse/are-finance-leaders-ready-for-what-ai-will-bring