You’re as likely to see technology and software in mainstream news headlines today as you are on the business and tech pages. Warnings that rapid advances in artificial intelligence is outperforming humans, obliterating jobs and possibly even destroying humanity have been hard to ignore.
If you’re a finance or accountancy professional – the latest technology developments might not be your top priority. You have enough to worry about as it is, with little time to reflect on how the latest software could change your world. So the decision is to put the issue to one side until the situation has settled down a bit. But what if it doesn’t settle down?
To get a true insight into what might lie ahead in 2024, Matt Lewns, Partner Manager at iplicit has spoken with some of the brightest people in finance and accountancy about what they saw as the key trends in finance tech and software in 2024 and beyond.
What will A.I. in finance actually do?
“People are always slow to adopt new tools – but with AI, you’re not going to be able to bury your head in the sand for long.” – Russell Frayne, Gravita.
The current buzz about AI is largely down to the rapid advance of large language models (LLMs) – products such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, which scrape vast amounts of data in order to respond to natural language.
However, it’s worth noting that AI tools have been in use for some time now. John Toon of Beever and Struthers points out that many of us already use OCR (optical character recognition – i.e., software that can recognise text in documents) and various kinds of automatic data entry. “That’s AI, but no one ever talks about it,” he says.
AI is likely to boost the effectiveness of the kind of automation that many finance teams already use.
“A lot of those tools have been in the marketplace for a long time. AI is just going to supercharge that,” adds Russell Frayne from Gravita.
Frayne, continues, “AI really has the potential to transform the profession in terms of forcing through automation for routine, mundane tasks that really we should have been embracing automation tools for already. Not everybody’s where they need to be on that.”
Ryan Pearcy, Associate Partner with Scrutton Bland, says he is “very cautious” about the idea that AI could take on tasks such as forecasting any time soon.
“I think we will see a big boom in the utilisation of AI, but there will be more talk than delivery in 2024, in my opinion. If software vendors can solve little pain points, iteratively, over time, then I think they’ll be delivering a lot more value than if they say ‘Oh, we can solve this big pain point right off the bat’,” says Bland.
We need software to integrate better
“It’s no longer about one piece of technology doing what you need it to do in its little bubble, then another piece of tech doing what it needs to do. Different apps need to talk to each other.” – FD of the Year Becky Glover, Yutree Insurance
Arming your team with the right software is no longer just about shopping for the best applications. Increasingly, it is about how well that software fits together. After years of work by developers on new ways to make common software systems speak to each other, now could be the time to really reap the rewards of integration.
Becky Glover, Finance Director at Yutree Insurance, who was named FD of the Year at the Accounting Excellence Awards 2023, says: “It’s no longer about one piece of technology doing what you need it to do in its little bubble, then another piece of tech doing what it needs to do. Different apps need to talk to each other.”
Glover continues, “It’s a bit like having an iPhone. You don’t just use the phone section of it to ring or text people; you might take a picture and then text it to someone. Tech companies increasingly don’t want to work in isolation. They want to take the best of everything and work with something like a little App Store.
For example, you might have one piece of technology that inputs AP invoices, and then another technology that looks at those invoices and can forecast the next year’s costs.”
In recent years, organisations have been given more ways to integrate apps. The options fall under three headings:
- “Out-of-the-box” integrations which are ready to go as soon as you install the main product.
- Integration through APIs (application programming interfaces) – the most customisable option, requiring some development capacity on the customer’s part.
- The new generation of iPaaS (integration platform as a service) options, led by the massively popular Zapier. These allow the user to easily connect applications so that an action in one program triggers the required response from another.
“Advances in integration have made a huge impact and will continue to do so if they’re made simpler and simpler,” says Garry Mumford of Insight Associates.
“When we get to the point where someone with a reasonable amount of nous can do it themselves, rather than involving a technician to make it work, that will be a huge next step,” says Mumford.
John Toon of Beever and Struthers adds: “I think the challenge for a lot of businesses is that actually, they don’t have those systems and processes well documented. And so they don’t fully comprehend what the change management challenges are. They need to know: If I rip out Xero and put in another system, what’s the impact? What do I have connected already? What’s working well and what’s not working? Where did my efficiencies and inefficiencies lie, and what are the opportunities?”
Sometimes, if you find yourself seeking better integrations, it might be that the better option is an upgrade to a feature-rich finance system instead.
Lauren McIlroy of AAB says businesses have traditionally bolted other applications onto their finance software because they didn’t want the disruption of changing systems. “If you ever suggested to the finance team that you wanted to change their system, that was met with a lot of sighs and groans. And that’s because the implementation stage has always been difficult,” says McIlroy.
McIlroy adds, “But failed integrations are even worse because you’ve got a huge number of people, all of whom were kind of happy with their system before, and who are now all very unhappy. We’ve seen that a number of times with our clients unable to get numbers, unable to get reporting into the business and to the investors and that just doesn’t work.”
Technology can make your business more human
The workplace of the future need not be a land of robots. Almost all the finance and accounting experts interviewed believe software will take on ever more of finance’s mundane tasks, so human beings can concentrate on the things they do best.
Is AI really coming after your job? Should we be plugging ever more apps into each other? Our interviewees have called it as they see it – 2024 should be the year when software really starts to make the finance function easier.
iplicit will be exhibiting at Accountex London on 15-16 May 2024 at ExCel London. Join the mailing list to be notified when free registration opens, here.
