How to find the real value of AI for your business in 2023

From efficiency gains to business growth

AI has arrived and it’s transforming businesses in unexpected ways. Discover how this exciting tech can save you time, money, mistakes and deliver deep insights to drive business growth.   

Crunching the numbers like never before

AI is quickly becoming the go-to solution for businesses looking to save time, lower costs, free up resources and reduce human error.

Crunching the numbers is an obvious place to start, with AI-based accounting tools providing many benefits for the finance department including automation for increased efficiency and accuracy, improved customer services and enhanced security.

There are many ways to use AI in business in 2023, especially in accounting and finance. Some of the ways you can leverage AI tools includes:

• Accounts payable and receivable: Process a higher volume of invoices faster with zero errors to improve vendor and customer relationships.
• Audit planning: Assess the scope of audits, complete risk assessments and enable automated tracking of transactions for reporting.
• Expenses management: Automate the processing of expenses to ensure zero errors and fast detection of fraud and data breaches.
• Cashflow: Collate data from many sources, reconcile financial activities quickly and predict future cash requirements.
• Support: Solve user queries quickly, track outstanding invoices and automate the collection process with AI-chatbots.

Mining big data for deep insights

Beyond the efficiency of saving time and boosting accuracy, using AI to mine data and produce real-time analytics around financial performance and market trends enables next-level decision making.

By leveraging the insights gleaned from AI Analytics around internal performance, market trends, customer behaviour and competitors, businesses are empowered to:

• improve products and services
• develop more effective marketing strategies
• optimise pricing strategies
• enhance customer experience
• elevate customer loyalty
• increase operational efficiency
• get ahead of competitors to secure market share.

Simplifying supplier management

Supply chain AI is another rapidly developing field that can transform the complex and time-consuming process of supplier management across procurement, review and compliance.

To start, AI can streamline the supplier selection process and speed up decision making by automating the analysis of supplier databases, performance metrics, and important factors like cost, quality, reliability and sustainability.

Next, AI-powered tools can collate and centralise access to all your supplier details including contact information, pricing agreements, product catalogues and payment terms. This eliminates time-consuming documentation and searching, and enables easier collaboration.

As your business grows, so does your supply chain – and the work involved in managing supplier relationships and expectations. More suppliers across a globalised supply chain network means less visibility and greater difficulty keeping a handle on your exposure to risk. Cyberattacks, governance failures and questionable ethical practices – such as modern slavery and environmental harm – threaten the reputation of your brand and your back pocket with costly fines and penalties. Not only do you need to be across your immediate supplier chain, but also their suppliers too. Ensuring supplier compliance is where AI really comes into its own.

Results that speak for themselves

Case studies are now emerging that demonstrate the compelling return on investment (ROI) of AI usage.

For example, Aiwyn is a leading AI-based technology company that helps accounting firms streamline their work-to-cash cycle and practice management operations. In 2022, it announced the collective results of customer case studies conducted in 2021 quantifying how the company’s Intelligence-Based Billing™ (IBB) platform consistently delivers measurable and valuable results for CPA firms.

The IBB platform delivered the following year over year improvements for individual firms, in the first 30 days of use:

• 41% increase in overall collections
• 300% increase in online payments collected
• 69% increase in the number of clients who paid an invoice < 7 days of invoice issuance
• 1 in 4 clients paid more than one invoice (vs. precedent behaviour of one by one payment)
• 450% increase in credit card payments.

Aiwyn CEO, Justin Adams, said, “The accounting profession embraced our transformative technology and has paved the way for AI to support firms and their clientele. We’re looking forward to evolving the accounts receivable processes further with the introduction of even more sophisticated, yet user-friendly, technologies.”

Innovate with AI and get ahead

Embracing AI is no longer a task to tackle ‘one day’ but a business imperative if you want to keep up with competitors. With the capability to transform many functions of your business, make sure you prioritise those that will deliver most value. If in doubt about how to plan your transition, it pays to get advice from an AI-informed accountant who can guide you through the process.

Leverage AI to transform your business with expert accounting advice. 

Ask for a callback from Scotts Chartered Accountants.