R "Ray" Wang
R "Ray" Wang
News Analysis: Finance In The Age Of AI - Microsoft Copilot for Finance
The Leap Year Brings Announcement Of A New Copilot - Finance
Microsoft announced the public preview of Copilot for Finance. With tools such as Copilot, the user experience begins and ends with generative AI. In conversations with Corporate Vice President of Business Applications Engineering - Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President of Business Applications Marketing - Emily He, Vice President of AI-led ERP Engineering - Georg Glantshnig, users can now apply generative AI across departments such as sales, service, finance, and IT with Copilot for M365, Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, Copilot for Finance, and Copilot Studio.
As with all Microsoft Copilot experiences, Copilot for Finance changes where and how users interface with transactional applications which changes the user dynamics of how roles, workflows, and insight transform work. For example Copilot for Finance:
- Allows users to engage in their preferred environments such as Excel or in email, instead of in a traditional finance application.
- Guides users to the next best action
- Accelerates automation efforts
- Orchestrates information across internal and external financial systems
- Uses pre-built business logic to surface the right insight at the right time
- Supports human in the loop
- Provides transparency that allows users to understand the data analysis process, veracity of data, lineage of decisions, and sourcing of where data is used to provide assumptions.
Public Preview Supports Three Scenarios
Copilot for Finance focuses on Collections, Variance Analysis, and Reconciliation. These three scenarios represent some of the most labor intensive and and costly operational tasks finance teams face on a daily basis. The goal - shift tedium away so that finance professionals can focus on more strategic tasks. Copilot for Finance will also expedite and simplify the connection to existing financial systems, data sources, planning tools, and others via pre-built connectors.
Finance professionals will be able to:
- Conduct a variance analysis in Excel. By using natural language prompts, financial analysts can identify risks, anomalies, unmatched values, and other irregularities.
- Simplify reconciliation using Excel and automated nudges, suggestions, and guided troubleshooting.
- View rich customer account details in Outlook
- Turn raw data in Excel into visuals and reports for sharing.
The Bottom Line: Finance Professionals Can Now Augment With Generative AI
Automating high volume, highly repetitive, and highly regulated tasks show where the power of generative AI and AI can augment human work. Copilot for Finance enables the shift from tasks to workflows when using AI. Microsoft's latest offering may be what CFO's have been looking for. faster, better, and even cheaper innovations.
Your POV
Ready to start with Finance? What Copilots do you plan to start with? Will your office of the CFO start with Gen AI?
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