AI in Finance

Workday is drawing a clear line in the enterprise AI agent debate: for high-stakes workflows in HR, payroll, and finance, the safest place for AI inference and orchestration is inside the system of record, not on neutral third-party platforms. Through its controlled openness model—open APIs and MCP for developers, proprietary governance within Workday—the company argues that context, business logic, and security controls are a competitive moat that cannot be safely externalized.

Applied Materials is using SAP Taulia Dynamic Discounting as part of its Agile Finance program to accelerate supplier payments, improve supplier liquidity, and build a scalable, AI-first finance operating model. The initiative shows how enterprise working capital programs can evolve from transactional efficiency tools into strategic platforms that deliver both supplier value and measurable financial returns for large manufacturers.

This article looks at how finance teams in professional services firms are beginning to adopt AI, moving beyond simple automation toward more autonomous, insight-driven operations. It highlights early use cases such as forecasting, reporting, billing, and productivity gains, and outlines practical steps CFOs and finance leaders can take to pilot AI safely while reshaping how their organisations work.

This piece examines the journey from traditional finance automation to AI-powered autonomous operations, outlining how technologies such as machine learning, generative AI, and intelligent agents can take on more of the end-to-end workload. It explores what “autonomous finance” means in practice, the steps needed to modernise processes and data, and how the CFO’s role evolves as finance shifts from manual control to AI-driven decision support.

Hitachi Construction Machinery America used Microsoft Power Platform AI Builder and Power Automate to automate supplier invoice processing into Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, significantly reducing manual AP effort. By streamlining how invoices are received, read, validated, and posted, the organisation now automatically processes around two-thirds of invoices with near-perfect accuracy.

Priority Commerce EVP Steve Tackett joins ERP Today Live to explain why AP workflows keep escaping the ERP, what breaks down when they do, and how supplier enablement and AI-driven transparency are reshaping how mid-market organizations think about payment modernization.

Most finance teams are using AI, but measurable impact remains limited. A Zuora webinar shows how quote-to-cash workflows expose the real constraints: integration, auditability, and control.

Addovation's partnership with Snowfox enables IFS customers to automate over 90% of invoice processing within existing finance workflows using embedded AI, addressing rising invoice volumes and enhancing operational efficiency without requiring system redesigns.

Research from the IBM Institute for Business Value reveals finance functions are evolving from retrospective roles to proactive decision-makers in enterprise performance, highlighting a stark performance gap where only 12% of organizations exhibit advanced maturity in strategic influence and digital agility.

Workday is advancing its “lights-out finance” vision with an AI-driven Financial Test Suite that continuously detects fraud and anomalies before transactions are completed.

ERP projects often face significant challenges not during implementation but years later due to underlying financial architecture decisions—including chart of accounts and entity structures—being overlooked in favor of immediate functionality, which can hinder scalability and complicate management reporting as business complexities evolve.

A new study examines where ERP systems fall short in accounts receivable, highlighting how automation gaps, system fragmentation, and rising complexity affect cash-flow execution.