Robots Are The Future Of Analytics
The area of analytics is constantly developing and is an area that used to require a lot of manpower but is now moving into the digitized age. Essentially, finance and business people alike can pull the numbers directly from a BI or front end graphics platform and start asking WHY something happened instead of what happened as that will be available right there in front of them. This means you, the CFO, can disband your army of finance people that were doing reports simply to tell you and your business stakeholders what happened in a given week/month/quarter/year. However, your stakeholders still need someone to tell them why it happened and more importantly come with suggestions as to what can be done about it.
Your business stakeholders get the report delivered straight to their "inbox" and turn to their Financial Analyst, FP&A Manager, Finance Business Partner etc. and ask why a certain development happened. Immideately they will start to crunch the numbers until they have at least 80% of the explanation. This still takes a lot of time and while it does play a role in decision-making it doesn’t really tell your stakeholders what actions to take which is which is what impacts whether value is created or destroyed. Consider instead of asking someone in Finance why something happened your business stakeholders ask a robot instead.
Ask a robot you said? Well, it’s really not much different from when doctors ask IBM's supercomputer Watson about what possible treatment options they have given some specific symptoms. The robot will quickly look through all available material and come up with a few suggestions. This would’ve previously taken hours or a ton of experience to do for the doctors themselves. The doctors will still have to make the decision about what treatment to apply but the robot is doing most of the groundwork now.
Let’s look at another example from my own backyard i.e. shipping. The most common question asked in shipping is “How many containers did we load last week?” You can easily setup your BI to show you the answer (i.e. what happened) in a nice an appealingly looking way. However, your BI won’t tell you why you loaded 105% to forecast. Most often there are multiple answers to this question.
- Demand was stronger than expected
- Some bookings shifted from one week to the next
- You didn’t account properly for seasonality
- You were able to get some extra moves in the terminal by paying overtime
- You had an extra sailing
If all this information is available somewhere in your systems or can be derived from some simple analysis then there’s no reason a robot couldn’t tell you the answer at least with 80% degree of certainty. You simply click on the number or variance you want to have explained and the robot looks it up for you. Simple huh?
So what does the finance team do?
When robots could take over this specific task then you ask yourself what do you and the finance team do then? That’s also simple. You spend the time figuring out what actions to take to maintain over-performance or in another case perhaps rectify under-performance. That’s what business is about, in any case, i.e. making choices between different actions to take be they related to a product, production, sales force etc. Here’s where Finance also helps quantify and qualify the different options ultimately leading to a recommendation and a decision. Once again robots are not really taking the jobs from people but rather enabling them to spend time on what really matters. That’s a win-win for everyone and not least for you, the CFO!
As always, let me know what you think of the article by liking, commenting and sharing! You can follow me on Twitter for continuous updates about what’s happening in the finance function and continue reading below for additional insights about finance business partnering.
I encourage you to take a tour of my old posts on finance transformation and not least “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” which is really that starting point for the transformation. Last but not least, you should join my Finance Business Partner Forum where we will continue to discuss this topic.
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Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Head of Global Finance PMO for Maersk Transport & Logistics and is working with the transformation of Finance and business on a daily basis. I have participated in several transformation processes such as a (business) finance transformation at Maersk Line, going Beyond Budgeting at Maersk Drilling and transformed a finance team from Bean-counters to Business Partners. I would love the chance to collaborate with you on your own transformation processes to help you stay out of disruption. Don’t be shy! Let’s get in touch and start helping each other.
Director at UBS
5yAgree Anders. During a SAP upgrade project I worked on,, all automation we did, only resulted in the whole team moving up the value chain. A win-win situation for the company and the team.
Accounting Team Lead
6yI think the technology can one day replace the manpower just click a button and you will get all the data you need with the great analysis represent all the information that the user need but , I believe there is thing behind number the analyst touched it the fingers ( Creates business seniorities , simulations, plans) if in the further the technology can develop a smart Artificial intelligence this revolution will change the business in all the world .
CEO and Managing Member of Stramiss Accounting and Tax Consultants cc
6yQuite interesting topic and i would like to get involved as well as the future is what we need to plan in order to satay ahead of the game.Robots will still need interactive human intervention to ensure the figures are accurate whether being done by human or robots.
Sustainable Agri-food Systems | ESG Controller | ESG and Financial Reporting | Audit and Controls | EHS | Risk and Resilience Management
7yAbsolutely agree on the megatrend of automation and robotic accountant or analyst. The one unsettled question I have is more on broader social issue. Having worked on transitioning transactional work to India, China, labor intensive (relatively still) at those countries. There is probably basic social safety net that government would like to provide for the young and hungry generation that needing, wanting a job. I guess is probably a question on how fast the pace of automation or robotic will move at those countries. But regardless of automation, there is pressing need to redefine the identity of finance – what meant to be an effective finance biz partner, what is value add in a well-rounded manner.
Accounting Associate at SA Ledgers Ltd
7ySo, what route do you recommend finance staff take in order to stay leading management information. BI is a big deal and can help to change opinion and inertia (dogma and ingrained beliefs)to enable swift moves to correct or exploit either customer or supplier behaviour. I would view it as turbo-charging KPI's by providing the underlying data to drill through to. That needs new skills in data handling, how to gain them is the question.