Our “Global CIO AI Indicator Report” sheds light on IT leaders’ thoughts about AI’s potential—and its potential pitfalls. A platform that integrates AI while keeping people in the driver’s seat can utilize the technology responsibly and help drive a financially healthy future.
In this article we discuss:
When it comes to AI, business leaders are in agreement—it’s no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a mandate.
Today, 98% of business executives say their organizations would realize immediate benefits from implementing AI, according to the “Global CIO AI Indicator Report,” based on a survey of 2,355 executives and created by Workday in collaboration with FT Longitude.
What are the top benefits IT leaders in particular believe AI can help deliver?
Still, leaders have their reservations about AI, primarily questions around security, privacy, potential bias, and possible AI-induced errors. What’s more, about half say their organization isn’t prepared to adopt AI.
Fortunately, organizations that are farther along in their AI digital maturity are proving that the future can look bright.
Workday research shows a correlation between these AI pioneers and metrics such as productivity, risk reduction, and time spent on strategic value. For example, just 23% of AI pioneers express dissatisfaction with the number of administrative tasks their teams must complete, according to the Workday “Global CFO AI Indicator Report.” In a sector such as finance—where time-consuming, manual tasks are a way of life—that can be a game-changer.
Data-rich functions and organizations can make plenty of gains. Of early AI adopters, 53% say their data is easily accessible compared to 41% of overall organizations, per the “Global CIO AI Indicator Report.” That’s critical, considering that quality data is the backbone of successful AI. Unfortunately, data is exactly where many organizations struggle.
To apply AI meaningfully, organizations need clean, consolidated data. Yet 63% of finance leaders and 60% of IT leaders acknowledge that their company’s data is somewhat or completely siloed. And IT leaders regularly cite siloed, low-quality data as a top barrier to achieving their goals, says Stefan Ball, senior manager, product marketing, Workday.
“AI is an opportunity to build urgency and alignment around solving their data problem,” Ball says.
And CIOs are uniquely positioned to be agents of change in finance, promoting a collaboration with not only CFOs but the C-suite as a whole.
AI can help finance teams shed their traditional role as number counters mired in spreadsheets, reduce their manual work, and help them take on the role of true value creators—all of which reduce the amount of time required for the monthly close.
While nearly all business leaders agree on the potential of AI, many are wary of some of its pitfalls. The top concern for finance leaders, for example, is potential errors, while IT leaders are most concerned that they’ll be under pressure to decide where and when to apply AI, even outside their expertise, Workday research shows.
Making use of AI shouldn’t provoke anxiety. Workday earns users’ trust by taking a human-centric approach to AI. This involves providing transparency to users around the data sources that train the machine learning (ML) models—and giving humans the first and final say on whether to use an AI application.
The aim of a human-centric approach to AI? Using the technology not to replace humans but to amplify their potential.
With Workday, AI isn’t just a task-based problem-solver. The technology is embedded in the foundation of the platform. Integrating AI into the platform enables users to leverage evolving AI capabilities without requiring application redesign. AI features are treated like any other feature on the platform, which is always the same, latest version. That means less data movement and a smaller, more manageable security footprint.
So, when users opt in and turn on the AI features, they benefit from a single-service strategy that delivers AI’s capabilities all at once, with the flip of a switch. This replaces the traditional approach of building each individual use case for AI from scratch. Plus, users’ feedback continually informs and improves the AI features.
For finance, the possibilities of AI are vast. AI can help elevate finance teams beyond their traditional role as number counters mired in spreadsheets, reduce their manual work, and help them take on the role of true value creators—all of which reduce the amount of time required for the monthly close.
As an example of AI in action, Workday Journal Insights uses AI to analyze massive amounts of data and detect errors, then surface them so that users can assess and correct them as needed. Users approve or dismiss the errors—which, in turn, informs the ML model and makes its detection accuracy even smarter moving forward.
“The main point is to help finance decrease the time to complete month end, moving even closer to a zero-day close,” says Andrew Clark, senior enterprise architect, Workday.
A human-centric approach also applies to generative AI. When finance professionals use AI-enhanced Workday worksheets, they can ask the program to generate a formula to maintain the spreadsheet—without having to possess highly detailed spreadsheet knowledge about functions and formulas. The human-centric approach doesn’t end there. The AI feature then presents the formula to the users and asks for approval to apply the formula. No approval? No action.
When deployed for contracts, gen AI can assess documents and alert the user to a discrepancy, say, between the contract and an order form. In this instance, the AI-enhanced program serves as an ever-ready assistant, flagging the problem and asking the users what they’d like to do about it.
Integrating AI into the enterprise management platform frees up IT’s resources, so they don’t have to manage separate AI stacks and their organizations don’t have to hire for hard-to-find skills. A human-centric approach to AI intelligently automates manual, repetitive tasks that IT and finance teams don’t have the time, or frankly the desire, to perform—while keeping them at the center of decision-making and bigger-picture thinking.
“We’re helping them move from tactical work to more strategic thinking,” Clark says.
Organizations using true cloud platforms are best able to manage their finance, people, and data in a way that provides unprecedented transparency and agility that best prepares them for a future of growth.
Finance leaders should work to improve trust around AI to help improve adoption of the technology and enable digital transformation to achieve greater productivity, Workday CFO Zane Rowe said.
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