AI driven enterprise resource planning within the financial services sector was the topic discussed during GlobalData’s most recent executive roundtable event, organised in partnership with Workday. In early December, last year, senior finance executives convened in central London to discuss how a new generation of AI driven enterprise planning tools can address increasingly volatile market shifts.
As early adopters of frontier technology, financial services firms must balance this technology first approach while operating in a highly regulated and, oftentimes, risk averse business environment. That said, the promise of enterprise AI is beginning to have a demonstrable impact on workflow efficiency and resource planning across many industries – and financial services institutions are at the forefront of this adoption.
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However, as AI hype evolves into discussions about tangible return on investment, finance directors are faced with decisions about which enterprise AI tools bring real value, making a business case for them and planning for implementation, all against a backdrop of uncertainty around both human and financial capital.
AI driven adaptive planning for financial services
The financial services landscape is evolving faster than ever, driven by market volatility, regulatory change, and shifting customer expectations. In this environment, the ability to plan, budget, forecast, and adapt in real time has become a critical competitive advantage. Emerging technologies—from AI and predictive analytics to dynamic scenario modelling—are enabling that agility.
Delegates all saw the value in a unified data platform powered by agentic AI to enable real-time visibility across all parts of the business. But all were at a different stage of adopting AI embedded solutions.
AI driven adaptive planning addresses pain points
Described at the event as a “trigger phrase”, legacy systems integration remains one the biggest pain points executives face when evaluating new AI driven solutions. The dream of integrating all these systems into a unified data platform is still a primary goal for most finance executives relying on data from disparate sources across their business.
Data silos are another pain point. Here, an adaptive planning solution like Workday’s Illuminate can unify such data siloes within operations and finance functions to create the kind of agility required for today’s rapid market shifts.
But it’s the specific use cases that need exploring and fine tuning. Finance directors are keen to implement agile planning into their monthly close, for example, reducing a process that typically takes weeks, down to days. For multinational companies, in particular, this means integrating data across geographies and divisions into on unified model. Automated tasks such as eliminations, currency conversions and other consolidation tasks lead to real-time visibility enabling faster anomaly and fraud detection.
All agreed on the benefits of dramatically reducing data collection and reconciliation processes to make the close cycle more efficient. Most importantly, this allows for more of the higher value work of deeper and quicker analysis and strategy planning. This shift in the finance function focus from mundane data collection tasks to meaningful analysis and planning would transform the whole monthly close process into a growth driver rather than a routine enterprise process.
The unintended consequences of greater visibility
The fraud and anomaly detection AI use case, better enabled through a unified data system, raised a point in discussions about unintended consequences, or rather, a challenge arising from greater visibility. Using a real-time, unified data platform with built in agility has, for some executives, meant identifying large volumes of fraud that then required greater resources to address. “A good problem to have,” as it was described.
Most agreed that early use cases such as AI and predictive forecasting features to predict business volumes can be a definite competitive advantage. But the key is to get the data layer right. “A system is only as good as the data it’s using” may be a well-worn mantra but it holds true. And choosing the right data partner, as well as the right enterprise AI tool remains part of this equation.
‘Enterprise resource planning: AI driven tools to meet today’s changing financial services landscape’ – a GlobalData executive roundtable in association with Workday – took place on Thursday, 4 December at the Pan Pacific Hotel, London.
