By Ben Clarke, Director, PwC UK
From automating routine activities to analysing vast and diverse datasets, artificial intelligence (AI) can help power the reinvention of finance business partnering. How can you make the most of the potential?
AI as the game-changer
Clearly, emphasising and uplifting the business partnering role is an imperative for finance teams. Up until now, however, this has been held back by the age-old distractions of poor data quality, ad hoc queries and manual reporting. Now, AI – including generative AI (GenAI) – can help clear away these constraints and open a gateway to the future.
On top of boosting productivity and freeing up time, AI can supercharge data extraction and analysis – generating insights in seconds that would previously have taken weeks. Continually learning and adapting, AI solutions can mirror your presentational styles and adopt your business terminology.
The benefits of this AI-augmented business partnering role are likely to come in three waves:
Incremental change
Doing things faster and better, using collaboration and generative tools:
- transcribing discussions, summarising takeaways and analysing stakeholder contributions
- synthesising research into core messages and actionable insights
- creating first drafts of management packs.
Strategic change
Doing things differently, to enrich insights and interactions:
- interacting with data through natural language and contextual searches
- augmenting insight with interactive data visualisations and dashboards
- identifying causal patterns and targeting prevention and intervention at source.
Transformational change
Doing new things, in search of untapped insights:
- combining disparate datasets – structured and unstructured, financial and non-financial – to generate fresh insights
- dynamically modelling performance scenarios as market conditions change
- identifying the true drivers of profitability in products, customers and operating territories – and suggesting actions.
Finance leaders see data mining and analysis, financial planning and analysis and digital tooling and technology as the three key value drivers from AI over the next 3-5 years.
Unlocking the potential
But AI reinvention demands far more than systems alone. Organisations must build in four key areas:
Build skills and buy-in
Finance business partners are drawing on familiar skills in embracing AI – commercial understanding, curiosity and critical thinking, along with collaboration and influencing skills. Increasingly, data visualisation and business storytelling will hold the key to unlocking the value of new insights.
Build trust
With the AI potential comes the risk of hallucinations (false answers) and toxic outputs (including bias). That’s why it’s so important to build trust in the data and how it’s used.
Finance business partners can play a crucial role in challenging data and driving accountability for quality. Part of this will be harnessing AI to help expose data quality issues, isolate root causes and explain their consequences. Business partners should also help create the right governance and guardrails, understand data limitations and promote the transparency needed to build confidence.
Build momentum
Work with partners and business teams to identify the right use cases, tools and data sources. By focusing on the insights and outcomes that can deliver ‘early win’ value for the business, you can build credibility and momentum for further applications of AI.
Build a bold and curious mindset
Start small and simple, experiment at pace and foster creativity and curiosity. A key part of this journey is learning what’s feasible and where value can be found. Finally, celebrate successes, highlight positive impacts and share experiences.
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