4 ways to control spend at scale using automation.
4 ways to control spend at scale using automation.
AI has limitless potential, but its benefits are already proven.
According to a survey of 100 respondents from companies headquartered in the U.S. and Canada, 71% say artificial intelligence is a top priority for optimizing spend management results going forward, and 79% consider automation and digitization of processes the most significant spend management trends at their companies.
AI can be applied advantageously to expense management workflows in several ways — but when the potential feels limitless, finance leaders need to know where to focus the applications practically and securely today. To drive efficiency, savings, and productivity, it’s best for finance leaders to focus first on leveraging the proven, accessible applications of AI in expense management in four key areas:
1. Expense policy compliance automation to save money and time
2. Accounting automation to close the books faster and more accurately
3. Analysis and insights to improve decision-making
4. Conversational agents to perform tasks and answer questions
Below, we’ll go into more depth about each of these key best practices:
One
Automate policy compliance and reporting.
With AI, several steps across the entire expense process from card swipe to month-end close can be automated, including:
Auto-filled receipts and memos
Fast and more accurate categorization
Smarter suggestions for a premium travel experience
Automated expense reviews and flagged exceptions
Instant insights to accelerate decision-making
Two
Close the books faster with accounting automation.
Three
Get real-time analysis and insights with the help of AI.
Artificial intelligence can take inputs about how your employees are spending to provide smart suggestions for things like budget selection and approvals, as well as automatically guide employees for improved accuracy in expense reporting. It can take those same inputs and flag anomalous transactions, including expensive purchases or expenses that exceed per-diem limits, as well as notify you when it detects high month-to-month increases by user, department, merchant, or category so you can address issues. AI can also learn your company’s spend patterns and use them to perform deep analysis to benchmark performance and compare current business activities to similar companies in your industry.
Combined, such AI-led functionalities help finance leaders and managers streamline routine tasks, understand performance trends, and unlock new business opportunities.
Four
Let conversational agents and AI assistants unburden your teams.
Expense assistant can help with manual tasks related to memos, receipts, budgets, and policies to reduce overall time spent on expense management while increasing policy compliance.
Accounting assistant serves rule suggestions to help accounting teams automate their GL coding and shorten the tail end of transactions that need manual attention.
Finance assistant helps finance teams understand trends, anomalies, and optimizations. It currently flags anomalous transactions like expensive purchases and month-to-month spend increases for action.
Automate your way to long-term success.
Finally, it’s helpful to keep in mind that these tips are best practices, not the only practices. As AI and ML continue to evolve, so will your interactions with them — and so will business’ abilities to harness them. And Brex will be right alongside you, helping to push AI to its full potential in expense management.