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Just being knowledgeable on the tools gives you, essentially, a seat at the table.
Thats what Michael Ragsdale, VP of Finance, Strategy and Analytics of the Kansas City Chiefs, said at Excelerate Summit 2023 during the panel discussion, Practical Applications of AI and Automation in FP&A. He was joined by Priya Jain, SVP of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer at 6Sense, Austin Wiseman, a finance and accounting leader at OpenAI and Brandon Grant, Vena VP of Cloud Operations, as the moderator.
While the speakers cited AI in their personal lives—popular culture recommendations, time-activated health settings, dietary planning (especially valuable for Michaels family of five) and even robot chefs—the hour explored the current and future states of AI and automation in FP&A. They talked about use cases, emerging in-demand skills, success criteria, finance transformation and their five-to-ten year outlook.
In this blog, discover how our panelists are using technologies in AI and automation for their planning processes and read the sessions highlights.
Michael defines AI and automation as looking at large amounts of data and receiving recommendations.
His team uses AI to receive recommendations, make decisions and automate tasks to streamline processes. They route (dependent by vendor, approval level and dollar amount) AP invoices to department heads, analyze fan behavior and improve their revenue forecasting accuracy. The Kansas City Chiefs report ticket sales data—under short post-game reporting deadlines—and also use AI to support their sales team with predicting churn accounts and identifying priority accounts. They use AI to reforecast company-wide at least once a year.
Priya defines AI and automation as tools that help identify human errors, remove bias and automate repetitive tasks.
Her team uses AI to automate their spreadsheets of actuals. They use intent data and predictive analytics (deal value, deal time, time to reach customer and propensity to buy) in their bottom-up forecasting models. 6Sense also uses AI to reforecast earlier in the quarter during more economically uncertain times, as well as to generate conversational email (which features ChatGPT technology) to improve efficiency for their internal teams and customers.
Austin defines AI and automation as two inseparable tools that prepare and generate assumptions and analyses, which will shift finance professionals toward more of a review role.
His team uses AI to automate their spreadsheets of actuals. They use AI to reforecast after quarter two. With AI, OpenAI models quicker and at the intersectional data level. They perform natural language queries and generate data visualizations from their CSV files.
"ROI."
Michael wants to know the time, effort and money spent on these tools, the hours they're giving back to the team's workday and if they're helping the team to avoid adding headcount that would perform only simple tasks.
"Another one is no black box—we should be able to go behind and look at the logic."
Priya looks at the organization's readiness to adopt (data hygiene and sufficient skill sets on the team to interpret the AI outputs), the ability to look at the AI outputs were developed, change management and some trustworthy/responsible AI factors such as security, compliance and data governance.
"Shifting our attention to places where we can really make an impact."
Austin assesses the reallocation of efforts from tedious work to value-added work.
"We've had a lot of success here with democratizing data."
Michael has used AI and automation to make data more widely available for the Kansas City Chiefs. His finance team receives more feedback and recommendations from the organizations budget owners. He imagines finance teams leveraging AI to generate those recommendations themselves and taking pressure off the budget owners, by feeding data into their AI models and then reviewing the outputs.
"The organization is going to be more action-oriented. Course correction will happen more timely we'll start connecting the dots within finance for sure, but outside finance with the field, with legal, HR, data team, product team."
Priya has used AI and automation to generate 6Senses reforecasts earlier and quicker. She expects finance teams to further connect their finance data with operational and other non-financial data to make more holistic data-driven decisions.
"When we're preparing month-end fluxes trying to interpret numbers for management, it feels like at times we can be the last ones in the organization to understand what's actually happening we'll be much more embedded in organizations, much more proactive have less update meetings and more decision meetings."
Austin has used AI and automation to automate their spreadsheets and reforecast halfway through their fiscal year. He predicts that finance teams will have the ability to search internal messaging platforms to retrieve information upfront without relying on the back end, which will accelerate decision making.
"AI allows somebody that maybe is not overly technical to be able to build reports, do simple analysis by leveraging these AI tools that are built in that you don't have to have heavy coding or modeling experience. But on the other hand, I think it's valuable to look for maybe more diverse backgrounds within finance."
Michael foresees the finance professionals with data science and data engineering skills who bring knowledge and experience in AI becoming more valuable for finance teams.
"The collaboration between AI and humans will skyrocket it's already happening now at different scales and it's going to continue to evolve, and it'll be a really essential component of day-to-day operations for companies."
Priya expects organizations to require their leaders to make more decisions on AI applications and for them to further develop a more holistic knowledge of the business. She also imagines the increased importance of change management and employee retraining as AI will eliminate roles and create new ones.
"Everybody in the finance organization, including accountants, will somewhat become strategic finance almost all hands on deck will become forward looking."
Austin predicts that time savings from applying AI and automation will allow—and force—everyone in the finance department (not only those in FP&A) to become strategic.
While FP&A leaders continue discovering use cases for their businesses (automated data entry, variance analysis and predictive forecasting are a few to name), its clear that Michael, Priya and Austin agree that its the professionals who are embracing and experimenting with these new technologies in AI and automation who will earn a seat at the decision-making table.
To learn more about use cases, emerging in-demand skills, success criteria, finance transformation and the five-to-ten year outlook of AI and automation in FP&A, watch the full panel discussion, Practical Applications of AI and Automation in FP&A, on demand.
Want to use AI and automation to earn (or keep) your seat at the table? Vena Insights can help you boost your businesss productivity, drive better decision making and transform your planning processes.
See how leaders in the finance and planning space are harnessing emerging technologies in AI and automation to power their plan for anything.
As Senior Director of Content and Communications, Jonathan Paul leads content strategy and execution at Vena, overseeing the development of owned media and content experiences that help finance professionals fuel business health, as well as their personal and professional growth. When he's not dreaming up new ways to offer audiences value through content creation, Jonathan loves to lose himself in an immersive video game with a solid narrative, lose golf balls pretending to be good at golf and lose time dreaming about time travel.
