Controllers Council recently hosted a panel discussion entitled, How to Improve Cash Flow Management with AI sponsored by BILL
BILL is a leading financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). As a champion of SMBs, BILL automates the future of finance so businesses can thrive.
Our expert panelist was Amol Thatte, Director of Product Management, AI at BILL. Our moderator was Joe Flesher, Webinar Content Marketing Manager at BILL.
Following are key takeaways to this discussion. If you are interested in learning more, view the full webinar archive video here.
Machine learning is a subset of AI that enables systems to learn patterns and make decisions from data. Generative AI is a brand of AI focused on creating new content, such as text, images, music, or code, using machine learning tools.
How does generative AI differ from other approaches to automation?
Think about how OCR has transformed over the last 10 years. Like if you go back and look at new technology called natural language processing or NLP, it’s not only able to interpret zero and over, it’s able to detect this as an amount. It’s able to detect a certain text pattern as a name of a vendor, as a name of a person, a particular string of words becoming an address. It’s able to detect patterns on the document to say, “Okay, this is a table, and this is likely the header row for the table.” So, think about how OCR itself has transformed over the course of these last 10, 15 years. And the generative AI builds on top of natural language processing. It’s able to interpret that. It’s able to summarize the information in the table. It’s able to glean anomalies and differences. It’s able to interpret and provide more context on the question that you as a user are looking for.
How Can Finance Leaders Apply Advances in AI to Identify Opportunities to Improve Cash Flow Management?
First one I would look for is the predictive cash flow forecasting, which is analyzing historical trends in your data and your transactions to project out what your cash flow needs could be. And then if you look at BILL, we have a financial planning and analysis module that allows our customers to look at various alternative scenarios, to look at the previous transactions and then plan for the next quarter, plan for the next year. And in a spot of that, they can project out multiple alternative scenarios. So, the algorithms and the AI we have in this space looks at the previous data and helps our users actually project what could be, and help them out with all those “what if” scenarios that they need to analyze to better plan for their business and business growth.
Second is anomaly detection. A lot of times mis-posted transactions create all kinds of churn and time spent. We can leverage AI in analyzing transactions and predicting the correct GLs. We have multiple places in BILL where we develop this type of anomaly detection.
Third is automating certain financial reporting and analysis. If you go to BILL’s FP&A module, we can generate a quarterly report with just a click of a button, because all the data that is required to actually summarize the last quarter is actually available. But we don’t have like a verbal summary or a verbal summary that can be generated just with the click of a button. And that’s what you need to generate a report that you can send to your leadership.
Fourth is scenario planning and simulations. You have various financial scenarios, changes in revenue, changes in staffing, various types of economic conditions, whether you expect gain or loss in terms of the overall market trends. As I’ve said before, there is a financial planning and analysis module with BILL that allows you to perform all of those tasks.
Fifth is optimization of working capital. We have several models at BILL, where we look for patterns. We look for repeat bills to see if a particular vendor is essentially very significant and regular pattern of when the vendor invoices you and when you pay them. So, we can look at those key vendors that you’re paying potentially and analyze payment schedules, collections from customers to see what type of optimization could possibly be done.
Lastly is automated financial reporting and analysis. In terms of analysis, you can literally upload multiple bills, such as AWS bills. The example comes to mind to look at last month and this month, and identify what was the “delta” or difference, what were the meaningful differences. And that is going to kind of summarize the spend in a way that is more actionable, that alerts the differences to you in such a way that you can action them.
How would you advise the finance and IT leaders work together to establish goals in an organization that uses AI to help manage cash flow?
IT people aren’t exactly finance experts, right? I mean, they know the basics of accounting and that’s about it. But, you know, you don’t go beyond a certain point in terms of expertise.
Here are some of the key points that you need to keep in mind when you’re dealing with the IT teams:
- Align Strategic Priorities: Align on overall business goals such as improving cash flow accuracy and optimizing working
- Ensure Scalability and Flexibility: Implement AI systems with partners that are scalable and flexible
- Create Cross-Functional Teams: Establish cross-functional teams to monitor an AI system’s performance and drive continuous improvement
- Set Data-Driven Objective: Identify key metrics
- Ensure Governance and Compliance: Create governance policies around data usage, security, and regulatory compliance
To view the complete webinar, download here.
ABOUT THE SPONSOR:
BILL is a leading financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). As a champion of SMBs, we are automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive. Our integrated platform helps businesses to more efficiently control payables, receivables and spend and expense management. Hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on BILL’s proprietary member network of millions to pay or get paid faster. Headquartered in San Jose, California, BILL is a trusted partner of leading U.S. financial institutions, accounting firms, and accounting software providers. For more information, visit bill.com.
