AI technology holds an amazing amount of potential for FP&A teams and their organisations. It can provide you with the insights you need to make better internal decisions and grow your organisation. So, why does AI still seem so far out of reach for so many businesses—both large and small?
Recently, we discussed the many benefits AI can offer your organisation through your Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) team, such as:
- the ability to scale faster
- create efficiencies in your processes and
- identify trends that can transform your business.
In this article, however, we want to address the ever-growing issue of why so many FP&A teams are still struggling to adopt AI as part of their strategy and approach, despite these numerous benefits.
From the outside looking in, it appears as if the costs associated with AI technology are just too challenging for many businesses to overcome, however, let’s take a much deeper look to gain a better understanding and see what can be done to make AI more accessible to all businesses.
How might an FP&A team approach AI?
While every organisation is different, there is a standard approach that most businesses will generally take when it comes to adopting AI.
To begin, the CFO will first look to add to their FP&A team by hiring the right talent capable of operating the incoming AI technology. This, in itself, is an expensive and time-consuming process.
Next, the CFO and their team, including their new hire, will have to conduct extensive research to determine the AI technology that is right for them. This process can take several months, and once complete, the organisation will need to purchase the technology and integrate it with their internal systems—typically costing more than half a million dollars.
Once installed, the FP&A team must conduct several experiments and pilot runs to confirm that this technology is going to work as intended for their organisation, as well as whether their talent and resources are capable of effectively operating it. This phase is, once again, financially and time intensive.
Once the initial stages are completed, AI becomes valuable
Should all experimentation go to plan, AI technology then becomes an extremely valuable part of the FP&A team’s strategy, and the organisation will soon begin to reap the rewards and benefits that AI can bring.
However, if this doesn’t work out, the CFO and their team find themselves back at square one, having potentially spent up to 12 months and more than a million dollars on this unsuccessful implementation!
Unfortunately, this is the reality for many organisations when it comes to adopting AI, making it easy to see why so many choose not to implement it in their business at all.
Let’s take a deeper look at the typical roadblocks that most businesses face with AI adoption
All businesses may have their own unique barriers to AI success, but here are some common roadblocks that most face:
- 1. Upfront costs of purchasing, installing and experimenting with AI technology
As we mentioned, AI technology can easily cost hundreds of thousands to implement into your organisation. This considerable cost is just far too prohibitive for many smaller organisations—and even some larger ones as well.
- 2. Finding the right talent with the skill set to manage the technology
As it stands, there is not a large pool of talent when it comes to finding experts in AI technology, and the learning curve can prove too steep to simply expect your existing FP&A team to take care of it. Even if you do manage to find an AI expert for hire, they will not come cheap.
- 3. The overarching reality that success is not guaranteed
Even after outlaying huge sums of money and months or years of time, AI technology may still not be right for your organisation. This fact alone is often why most businesses choose not to adopt AI in the first place.
It’s no surprise that using AI for Financial Planning and Analysis may seem too challenging
As you can see, for most CFOs and their team, AI is simply too far out of reach.
Even for those that do manage to successfully implement AI, several smaller challenges also exist, such as how to incorporate AI results into your current reporting, how to
make sense of insights gathered using AI, and what KPIs to measure—making the entire journey just seem all too complex.
Despite all this, however, we cannot overlook the benefits AI can bring to your organisation.
So, how can you experience the benefits of AI without the exorbitant costs and risks?
There is a better way.
Here at Minerva, we have a deep understanding of the challenges that CFOs and their teams face when looking to adopt AI, and we believe it’s unfortunate that the benefits of AI cannot be accessed by so many organisations.
That’s why we’ve developed a solution that helps bridge these accessibility gaps and place the benefits of AI directly into the hands of your organisation—without the financial, time and resource costs that are typically associated with this technology.
Through offering Artificial Intelligence as a Service, Minerva will be able to provide you and your team with easy access to innovative AI technology and support so that you can get the insights you need to grow faster and make better business decisions.
Minerva can make AI more accessible to your business
Using Artificial Intelligence, your FP&A team can:
- improve the accuracy of their short and long-term forecasts
- access precautionary insights to help minimise risk and
- reduce the time it takes to produce reports and forecasts.
We can work together with your organisation to understand your goals and requirements, before providing you with the right systems and procedures, and then building the data stacks you need to get the most out of your data—helping you to become truly better at what you do.
If you’d like to learn more about how Minerva can help your business, contact us on 1800 646 378 or email info@minerva.com.au. For more great data management and AI content, follow us on LinkedIn.
