What Finance Teams Actually Want From AI

Of all industries, it feels like it’s the finance industry that’s in the best position to benefit from AI integration, especially finance teams. After all, it’s those teams that typically have to manually deal with data — and that’s just the kind of thing that AI can help with.

With that said, though AI can be beneficial for finance teams, it’s far from a slam dunk. AI integration among finance teams has been slower and less extensive than it could have been, and that’s in large part because employees haven’t been given the AI tools that they actually want, or which make their jobs easier.

So, what do finance teams want from AI? Let’s take a look.

Less Time In Spreadsheets

The best finance professionals spend a significant part of their workday doing tasks that an AI could easily handle, and nowhere is that seen more clearly than in spreadsheet work. Things like variance analysis, data prep, and reconciliation can take hours yet rarely require any judgment. With AI, a lot of the heavy lifting could be done even before the finance professional opens the spreadsheet.

Fewer Meetings

Finance teams have been trying to cut down on meeting time for years, but the fact of the matter is that it hasn’t always been possible. When you need to understand something or ask questions, there has historically been no other option besides jumping on a call.

AI can’t eliminate meetings altogether, but it can severely reduce their number. A good tool can provide summaries, log decisions, and produce a list of action items, all of which can help to prevent the need to have those ‘check-in’ meetings that pull finance teams away from genuinely value-adding tasks.

Tools That Fit Into How They Work

Finance professionals are often asked to use new tools that essentially require them to change their whole workflow. That’s not what they want from any tool, and especially AI tools. Instead, they want tools that fit into how they already work. Tools like Microsoft copilot for finance can easily integrate into the places — such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams — where the work is already taking place. This doesn’t just make the professional’s life easier, but it also increases AI adoption. After all, if the tool can’t effortlessly fit into how they’re already working, then it’s much more likely that it’ll be ignored.

Help With The Boring Tasks

The best finance professionals want to spend their days doing engaging, high-value tasks, not wasting hours on repetitive tasks that waste their talents. By utilising AI to perform report prep, compliance checks, and finding data, the professional can free up their time to do the all-important tasks, such as investing in client relationships and working on complex cases.

Ultimately, what links all these ‘wants’ is that they work to make the finance professional’s life easier. It’s not about replacing the professional, but about providing the working framework that allows them to do their best — and that’s both good for them and the business.