Finance teams still wary of giving AI control: PEX

This story was originally published on CFO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CFO Dive newsletter.

Finance teams might be interested in the possible benefits artificial intelligence could bring to their day to day workflows, but most aren’t ready to hand the finance reins over to AI, according to a recent survey by spend management provider PEX.

Though 31% of finance and operations leaders reported using AI today — and 66% reported they were interested in doing so — only 28% said they were comfortable “letting AI decide” routine finance decisions, PEX’s State of Finance benchmark report found. The New York-based platform provides spend management tools including corporate cards and receipt management.

The gap between interest and use can be summarized in a single word: Trust, PEX CEO and founder Toffer Grant said.

Though finance teams might be intrigued by AI, they still want to be able to have control over financial processes, and, at the end of the day, integrating automation into those processes can create a “level of tension” which individuals need to work through, Grant told CFO Dive in an interview.

Securing the easy wins

Trust in the accuracy of AI’s output remains a key sticking point, cited by 36% of respondents as the top barrier to its implementation, PEX’s survey of 687 finance and operations leaders found.

The lack of comfort widens a “want-versus-have” gap when it comes to AI’s actionable use. Across seven capabilities for AI, including cash flow forecasting, audit documentation automation and AI-generated financial reports, most respondents reported they were interested in, but not currently using, the tool.

For example, while 61% of respondents reported interest in tapping AI for AI-generated financial reports, only 14% said they currently use the technology for that task: A 47 percentage point gap, according to the survey.

To cede any type of control over to an AI or automated system, professionals need to have faith that the tool will be able to accurately conduct the task or show the right numbers — something those at the start of their AI journeys remain wary of.

“I think a lot of the folks who are kind of on the early end of their adoption are not going to let a tool like PEX just pay a $15,000 invoice,” Grant said. “You have the vendor relationship to manage. You need to know that the system isn’t going to pull $150,000 instead of $15,000.”

An experienced finance executive, Grant founded the spend management company in 2007, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before PEX, he served as a VP of sales for TSYS Prepaid and as a VP of sales for Clarity Payments Solutions.  

There are some “easy wins” where teams can lay the foundation of that trust, Grant said, such as using the technology to help wade through a 20-page credit card statement and simplifying the review process and adjudication of those transactions, still a wrinkle for finance operations. PEX offers an AI agent that works to enhance the receipt upload process, help set spend policies and create tags for tracking and reporting, according to a blog post.

Such tools help to free up time for the finance team and create a level of comfort with those routine processes across the whole of the business. For example, rather than an accountant chasing down an employee for a missing receipt, the tool can take that on, and “now, what somebody is doing is getting very comfortable on relying on a platform to do the annoying work of being the enforcer, and also the annoying work of doing the chase down,” Grant said.

Crawl, walk, run

As well as a lack of comfort with AI or automation, another area where businesses can falter in implementing new technologies is simple inertia, Grant said. Many companies still have expense reporting processes that are very manual: Such as requiring employees to submit receipts taped to a physical piece of paper, that is then physically submitted to an individual or office.

After a lack of trust with AI accuracy, the next biggest barrier to the technology’s implementation was a lack of interoperability with existing systems, cited by 20% of respondents. Using AI to simplify that bulky process can lead to tangible benefits: Of the 340 respondents who said they were piloting or using AI, 69% said they had cut their time for manual review, while 51% reported they had cut down their close time, the survey found.

To combat that inertia, PEX’s survey cites a “crawl, walk, run,” approach in which companies at varying stages can tackle challenges with AI implementation in a way that still fosters the necessary trust and comfort with the tool.

For instance, those at the “crawl” stage should focus on simply automating one thing — a “low-lift, no project team required” capability, the survey recommends. “77% of crawlers run nothing at all, so the first capability is where everything starts,” the survey states.