Learn more about BlackLine Cash Application
When you talk to people about Artificial Intelligence (AI) it’s easy to conjure up images of killer robots, but the use of AI has become increasingly common across industries as organizations apply it to help reduce the drudgery of everyday tasks.
Intelligent Automation (IA) is simply the use of highly evolved algorithms to automate tasks and enable finance departments to become leaner, fitter, and more streamlined. In a nutshell, systems with the ability to learn are able to match ultra-fast automated processing with real decision-making. And this is the big difference. Automated systems (think robots building cars) simply carry out tasks in the way that they have been programmed by humans. Yes, they do these tasks quickly and consistently, but they don’t learn. The addition of Artificial Intelligence means that when conditions change, or when there are non-standard tasks to be done, Intelligent Automation is able to cope and learn as it goes.
Imagine a typical accounts receivable setting. Payment advices arrive via email in PDF format into a standard Accounts Payable folder. These have been set up by staff to be read by the system, and the system knows where it will find information, such as the invoice number, date, total value, etc. All goes well until the customer changes their advice format. With a standard system, this is where it all breaks down and finance staff will need to point their system to the new location for the information.
With Intelligent Automation, the system understands that something has changed, and just like a human would, it looks around the invoice for the new location of information. No need for human intervention, no reprogramming. Of course, this is a very simple example, but it beautifully illustrates the kind of“fire-and-forget” philosophy that underpins Intelligent Automation: get the machine to do the thinking and only involve humans where the problem is insoluble.
