Issue/opportunity
Cash flow forecasting is often a labor-intensive process. And despite the work associated with it, many companies struggle to achieve a reliable forecast. This can lead to companies taking on higher borrowing costs for operations and potentially missing investment opportunities. Generative AI offers the potential to reduce the manual effort of data aggregation and increase the accuracy of the forecast output—ultimately saving costs and enhancing returns.
Datasets often reside across multiple systems in structured and unstructured formats. A Generative AI-enabled solution can aggregate all sources into its analyses. It might also begin to own part of the process. When gaps or inconsistencies in the data arise, the technology might research and resolve issues by following a set workflow (e.g., prompting sales representatives with requests for sales forecast confirmation) or leveraging historical trends and probabilities.
Finance teams could access unlimited scenario-based insights and predictions, allowing them to focus less time on generating reports and more time on analysing potential impacts.
How Generative AI can help
Exponential data consumption:
Generative AI can process and interpret data at unprecedented scale and speed. It can ingest and analyse historical company data as far back as it dates and can also factor in external data from various sources, in multiple formats. Collectively, richer data forms the foundation for the cash flow forecast, leading to more robust analyses and more accurate forecasts.
Predictive analyses:
Generative AI can identify the biggest drivers of cash flows and utilise a larger sample of parameters to forecast future cash flows more accurately.
For accounts receivable, this might include factoring in customer trends, such as average delay, percentage of payments delayed, average number of invoices per payment, total open amounts, and time between payments. Additionally, it could consider invoice factors, such as previous payment times, month due, day of the week due, invoice value, and total current invoice value. It could also keep a pulse on public data and extract economic patterns and customer activities that might affect future cash flows. This additional level of granularity and ability to predict with precision can offer business leaders more confidence in their plans.
For accounts payable, this might include projecting expected trade payables factoring in specificities related to vendors, based on importance and payment terms. For larger cash outflow drivers, such as taxes or payroll, this could involve correlation of data from other sources (e.g., financial statement projections for taxes or Human Resources (HR) information for payroll) to enhance forecast accuracy.
Foreign exchange assessment:
Generative AI can continually monitor international markets, factor volatility into its forecasting, and develop hedging strategies. Armed with this information, leaders can gain more confidence that their associated decisions are rooted in reliable data.
Variance reduction:
With manual processes, forecasting relies on different perspectives to provide, review, and analyse historical financial data. Generative AI can streamline and standardise the process, leading to a significant reduction in potential for error variance to actual results. Forecasts could be further enhanced with integrated visualisations to improve interpretation and confidence, quickly and with less overall effort.
Managing risk and promoting trust
Transparent and explainable:
Important decisions are made from cash flow forecasting; therefore, it is critical for decision-makers to have visibility and accountability into how Generative AI works. Forecasts will also improve over time, as the models have more opportunities to run larger datasets.
Safe and secure:
The financial information that will form the basis of the data models for Generative AI must be invulnerable to unauthorised access or unintended uses outside of the intended purpose for which the model is built.
Robust and reliable:
Generative AI will require early manual input and tuning of data and tools to realise the benefits of automation. Companies will need to identify how granular to get, as well as guidelines and guardrails.
Potential benefits
Timely market analyses:
Generative AI can conduct real-time, ongoing reviews of multiple media sources and internal data that inform forecasts and potentially improve accuracy and reliability.
More accurate forecasting:
The more data that Generative AI can leverage, the greater the possibility for reliable, accurate information for planning purposes.
Reduced borrowing costs:
Better visibility into cash flows and more confidence in forecasts could reduce the need to tap into revolving credit lines and reduce associated borrowing expenses.
Enhanced investment returns:
Companies with a strong cash position can confidently take advantage of longer-term, higher-yield investment opportunities.