As Artificial Intelligence permeates more and more aspects of both life and business, you are seeing the increasing introduction of AI assistants and interfaces being rolled out by SAP and other software partners. In the finance world, more and more customers are looking to practical applications of AI to automate mundane tasks, reconcile data and transactions, improve accuracy, ensure compliance, and provide greater visibility for stakeholders and decision makers. Preliminary results of SAPinsider benchmark report Automating the Record-to-Report and Financial Close Process to be published at the end of January found that 50% of respondents are evaluating Artificial Intelligence technologies to help them optimize close and record-to-report capabilities. In this way, financial automation partner Trintech has created the Trintech CoPilot. In a video overview of this solution on their website, Trintech drills into the example of creating an adjusting journal entry. This is a common process within the close process and can be complex because it requires that you navigate several systems, perform manual calculations, and often involves back-and-forth communications between various individuals. “Just one adjustment takes an average of 8 minutes to complete with some companies creating thousands of journal entries per month,” reports Trintech.

LLMs

Trintech’s CoPilot technology is based on their closed and secure Large Language Model (LLM) which reflects decades of closing data. The demo focuses on an email request that asks the accountant to move a specific number of hours attributed to a specialist from one General Ledger Account to another. Using a simple natural language interface, the user can enter the request into CoPilot and then is prompted to answer a few questions such as “What template do you want to use?” CoPilot then automatically accesses the ERP to collect the data necessary to complete the transaction. When it needs additional information it automatically requests it, and then generates the Journal Entry output. The user can then check the output and make any further adjustments. The entire process in the demo takes less than one minute generating an overall time savings of 87% for this one process. According to Trintech a company that needs to create on average 1,000 adjusted journal entries per month could save three weeks of work effort. Larger organizations who generate closer to 10,000 entries per month could eliminate 30 work weeks or more. For Trintech, CoPilot represents just a piece of their overall AI strategy. They have created a two-pronged internal organization to further conceptualize, build and test new AI capabilities. They have established an Innovation Lab that is dedicated to exploring the latest AI technologies and how to integrate them into their existing and emerging solutions. Trintech also has established an AI Center of Excellence to support project development. Trintech is not alone in their effort to leverage AI to innovate the finance and accounting space, and it is an exciting time for business and IT professionals looking for greater efficiencies. SAP has created its own AI interface, known as Joule, and we will be covering this and other partner options in upcoming articles. For now, keep an eye out for these exciting developments and how you need to prepare to support them and be successful.

What this means for SAPinsiders

Experiment with AI assistants and tools. There are a host of virtual assistants generative AI interfaces that you can try now for free. Of course, ChatGPT is one of the leading tools that provides an interface for using natural language to engage. By using these technologies, you will better understand their capabilities, their potential impact on your business, and how to ask meaningful questions. Develop a comprehensive understanding of your top partner’s AI strategies. Every single partner you are working with has an AI strategy or is in the middle of developing one. They are constantly trying out and introducing new functionality like Trintech’s CoPilot. Make sure you are on top of these innovations and working with your partners to experiment with them and explore the potential benefits to your business. Taken an inside out approach to AI education. This means bringing in AI experts to your organization to teach your business and IT teams about AI, and sending your teams out to meet with partners, experts, and startups to understand what is being developed and how organizations like yours are leveraging AI. The stories are out there, but you need to be aggressive in searching for them.