Financial Processes Are Tailor-Made for Agentic AI, Once Humans Are On Board

Corporate financial processes such as accounts receivable and accounts payable are ideal candidates to capitalize on AI and indeed, some finance leaders are using AI aggressively to do so – but also to help their businesses scale when and where it’s difficult to hire people.

As they plan or execute AI projects, finance leaders recognize a clear-cut need to put in place change management programs to both train their people and build their comfort level with the changes AI is bringing. For those that embrace it, AI can be a powerful amplifier of human talent that helps overcome headcount, legacy data, and other business constraints.

Those were key takeaways from a financial AI roundtable at Community Summit NA in Nashville on Wednesday, where execs from Microsoft customers, financial AI software firm Fazeshift, and Microsoft discussed the state of AI in finance along with near-term challenges and opportunities.

Copper State Bolt & Nut Co. is struggling to keep up with its business growth – driven in part by the explosion in data center construction — which is requiring a lot of adaptations to the firm’s Dynamics 365 F&SCM implementation.

Copper State’s growth is also driving the need for AI agents that automate order entry and mobile CRM functions for outside salespeople, said Carl Spackman, CFO for the Phoenix-based company. “Without the advent of agentic AI, we would be screwed. We can’t hire people fast enough.”

Spackman said key qualities of finance processes – structured data, standard operating procedures – make them ideal use cases for agentic AI.

Roundtable attendees cited another big benefit they’re realize with agentic AI, namely the oft-cited opportunity to use AI to capture “tribal” or institutional knowledge that was previously confined to specific individuals and their history. “Now I have that knowledge in systems and anybody can pick it up and run with it,” said Jim Rowell, CFO, Duraplas LP. “It works great.”

To capture that knowledge, AI requires company-specific nuance, according to Fazeshift CEO Caitlin Leksana. “Every company probably has different processes for AR, AP, M&A. So the question is, how do you combine the processes that are done today with a lot of tribal knowledge with the power of AI technology on top of your data?” Fazeshift, for example, makes AI agents that automate key financial processes. Its software syncs billing and payment information in customers’ existing tech stack, breaking down data silos and backlogs in financial processes. and leveraging insights to make informed decisions.

The People Problem

In order to deliver on AI’s promise in financial processes, participants recommend a sharp focus on people and change management. In fact, success with AI starts with people, according to Dewain Robinson, VP of AI Analysis and Training at Dynamic Communities.

He advised customers to start any AI initiative with individuals and focus on their day-to-day work, seeking ways to free them from mundane, repetitive aspects of their jobs. The message to workers on how AI can help: “We free you up from doing that minutiae stuff to think, to innovate…and that’s how you open up AI within your organization.”

In fact, once customers have AI up and running and people see its productivity benefits outweighing job threats, it can help even top performers elevate their work — a critical consideration when it’s tough to find enough people or AI skills. “You can pick the ones that that have that knowledge, those great people that work for you, and you can amplify them,” Robinson said.

The amplification concept is one that works for the company from a productivity standpoint and from a financial standpoint. “Nobody’s going to complain about the person that didn’t get hired because you’re growing and you didn’t need to add that person,” Spackman said. “It’s about the acceleration” that companies can realize with AI agents.