Generative AI for Finance

A brief history of AI’s future

Mike Bechtel, Deloitte’s Chief Futurist, provided an insightful perspective on technological progression. He emphasized that technology evolves gradually, rather than in sudden leaps or revolutions. This evolution predominantly happens across three areas: interaction, information, and computation. Interaction relates to the ease with which we interface with technology. Information pertains to the volume, accessibility, and precision of data handled by technology. Computation refers to the speed, efficiency, and accuracy with which technology processes information. Artificial Intelligence (AI), at times misconstrued as a fresh concept, is simply the frontier of what our current technology can achieve. It represents the next stage in the evolution of interaction, information, and computation. Far from being a magic cure for every business problem, AI is a powerful tool designed to streamline and accelerate end-to-end processes. AI can be thought of as a co-pilot, a machine that complements rather than replaces the human operator. It lends itself well to two primary areas. Firstly, it can automate routine administrative tasks that can be burdensome for humans. Secondly, it can facilitate supervisory tasks traditionally done by humans. By taking these duties off human hands, AI allows more time for tasks where humans still excel — tasks requiring creativity, complex problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. The aim for AI isn't to outperform the highest-performing employees, but rather, it's to perform better than the slightly below-average employee. By raising the baseline performance, AI can help elevate organizational effectiveness. This is true for every department in a company, whether it's Finance or any other function.

Gen AI @ NN

Tjerrie Smit, the Chief Analytics Officer of NN Group, is a strong advocate of AI's potential. He recognizes that the rapid development of AI, particularly Generative AI (Gen AI), opens up immense opportunities for businesses. In collaboration with Microsoft and Open AI, NN has made pioneering strides in Gen AI. Notably, this collaboration led to the creation of ChatGPT tailormade for NN’s specific needs. This solution takes into account crucial factors such as data privacy (in compliance with GDPR) and ethical rules. Primarily, at NN, Gen AI is used for automating call logging and interacting with the knowledge base – two areas where AI can significantly enhance efficiency. By summarizing agent calls, ChatGPT saves an impressive average of 3.5 minutes per call, which can potentially equate to a saving of 7 million minutes. In the case of knowledge base interaction, ChatGPT enhances agents’ access to information, thereby reducing client wait times during calls and improving overall customer experience. Emphasizing the potential of Gen AI, Tjerrie views it as a tool to free up employees' time for more value-adding activities, thereby optimizing efficiency. Importantly, he highlights that the introduction of Gen AI at NN has not led to job losses, dispelling a common fear associated with AI.

Gen AI for Finance: real-world use cases

During the event, participants were shown eight concrete use cases of Gen AI in finance, demonstrating its practical implications:

• Joris Marcelis and Joep Schoofs showcased PriceCypher, Deloitte's Gen AI tool for pricing optimization. By harnessing internal and external data, PriceCypher calculates optimal prices, potentially driving a 1-1.5% revenue uplift. The tool is seamlessly integrated with SAP S/4HANA, enhancing the Order-to-Cash (O2C) process through predictive analytics.
• Simone Emilie Stieglitz introduced the Finance AI Analyst - another innovative Gen AI tool from Deloitte. This advanced tool provides on-demand access to financial and non-financial data, expediting data interpretation and analysis via a chat interface. It categorizes data, identifies gaps, and enriches dashboards with insightful overlays, generating in-depth commentaries, including variance analyses.
• Addressing vendor queries in mixed ERP environments can be challenging. Jeroen Bijsterbosch, along with Yusha Kareem, demonstrated how Gen AI equips AP helpdesk agents to efficiently handle queries about invoices and payments—regardless of their source—and generates summarized information to address agent/vendor inquiries.
• Ivan Kukhnin introduced SustainNext, Deloitte's Gen AI tool designed to assess an organization's sustainability reporting readiness. It offers real-time insights into gaps in climate and sustainability reporting at both global and entity levels, suggesting relevant content to fill the voids.
• Mark Boersma demonstrated how Gen AI on Google can streamline and accelerate the RFQ process for an Ocean Carrier. It swiftly computes an optimal price, makes bid/no bid recommendations, and leverages reusable content.
• Luuk Hofman showcased Moonlit.ai, Deloitte’s Gen AI tool capable of answering complex legal and regulatory questions. The tool merges an LLM's capabilities with an information retrieval system for factual text generation, providing valuable input for decision making e.g., CAPEX investments.
• Blackline, our alliance partner, exemplified how they use Gen AI to spotlight reconciliations that need R2R specialist attention. Their AI dashboard presents health ratings per balance sheet reconciliation along with detailed recommendations to rectify anomalies.
• HighRadius, another alliance partner, presented their Gen AI solution, FreedaGPT. This tool optimizes the O2C process by addressing Collections analysts' manual workload concerns, call preparation time, and lack of insights. It provides real-time call summaries, chat-to-analytics services, and an AI-managed email inbox, streamlining the Collections process.

Taking Gen AI for Finance beyond: what's next?

As AI continues to evolve, so do its possibilities. However, to harness the full potential of AI, businesses need to understand its capabilities and explore how they can be integrated into their specific operations. If you are interested in learning more about the Generative AI for Finance use cases showcased during the event, or if you would like to organize a Gen AI session for your own Finance team, we invite you to reach out to us. Whether you are considering developing Gen AI for Finance use cases at your own office or at the Garage, or if you want to have a broader conversation about the Future of Finance, our team is here to assist you. Together, we can explore this exciting frontier and delve into the Future of Finance, powered by Gen AI.