How to use business AI to maximize efficiency, productivity, and growth: use cases and guidance for increasing value

The potential for business AI to maximize efficiency, productivity, and growth is clear to finance and other business leaders. Over half told us recently of planning to invest in business AI, with 61% hoping to improve efficiency, 64% to automate mundane tasks, and 67% to make forecasting more accurate.

The rub is, there’s a knowledge gap, too, with 58% of CFOs confessing to understanding very little about AI in finance. Read on for information to help close the gaps, such as:

• How the application of business AI can improve productivity in business travel and accounts payable (AP)
• Why AI-powered travel, expense, and AP solutions offer a competitive advantage
• Best practices for business AI implementation
• Upskilling your finance workforce to use AI tools
• Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of business AI

Business AI use cases for travel and AP productivity

Much of the conversation around the applications of AI in business involves higher-level and strategic issues, such as technology ROI and persistent talent and skills gaps. There’s much talk about efficiency, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness, but let’s drill down to specific AI use cases. For example, in many concrete ways, business AI is already enhancing efficiency in AP and impacting business travel. Let’s dive into how business AI improves travel and AP productivity.

How business AI enhances AP efficiency

AI’s strength lies in its ability to take in massive amounts of data and analyze, learn, recommend, and act upon it. Awash in details, AP presents an ideal AI use case. Business AI solutions can:

• Empower fraud detection by automatically scanning every invoice for information and spotting patterns and anomalies.
• Improve cashflow by automating entries, bolstering forecasting, and ensuring timely payments.
• Spot early payments by finding invoices available for discounts and prioritizing them.
• Automate tax calculations across jurisdictions, managing value-added taxes (VAT) and taxable employee benefits while reducing the risk of audits and penalties.
• Strengthen decision-making as real-time spending data enables insights that drive growth and profitability.

Examples of AI’s impact on business travel

Business travel is being impacted by multiple kinds of AI, from machine learning that simplifies receipt capture and expense reports to generative AI (GenAI) producing personalized recommendations. Use cases include:

• Pre-trip approvals delivering accurate price ranges based on trip parameters, allowing travelers and managers to know costs ahead of time and assuring policy compliance.
• Personalized recommendations derived from a traveler’s historical preferences, ensuring cost and sustainability considerations are met and shortening trip planning.
• Real-time guidance throughout the process, from in-app chat help for booking and filing expenses, to recommendations and notifications about neighborhood safety and travel disruptions.
• Deeper analysis and insights for travel leaders from solutions that sort through data, find opportunities to save costs, and provide benchmarks for improvement.

The competitive advantage of business AI

Businesses implement AI productivity tools to gain efficiency and solve problems. And in their finance, travel, and expense processes, they envision improvements that can supply an edge. But what does the competitive advantage of business AI look like?

SAP Concur offers several AI-driven solutions, for example, that deliver a competitive advantage by enhancing productivity, compliance, employee experience, and growth:

• Concur Expense speeds report processing – with 5X more efficiency – while supplying data that informs decisions.
• Concur Travel provides faster bookings for travelers, with messages alerting to the best bookings based on their preferences and company policies.
• Concur Request Assistant uses GenAI to estimate trip costs based on dates, locations, and preferences – saving travelers the time of manually pulling information themselves from multiple resources.
• ExpenseIt lets travelers snap pictures of receipts, reads the details, feeds the information to expense reports, and reduces report-rejection rates.
• Concur Invoice automatically extracts spending details, accelerating visibility and improving cash management.
• Intelligent Audit and Verify check expense reports, establishing the validity of receipts and verifying amount, spend category, date, and other essentials.

By pursuing AI with speed and intention, organizations can seize the AI advantage to stay one step ahead of competitors.

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Best practices for a successful business AI implementation

Early objections in AI projects, often stemming from misperceptions, can create significant barriers and delays to deployment. But with the right proof points and strategy, you can foster stakeholder buy-in and set your project up for success from the get-go.

• AI is hard to integrate. AI is already embedded into existing Concur solutions, which are easily implemented and connected with your current systems.
• Our data is at risk. Data security and privacy is our foremost objective, which is why your data is protected by an industry-leading security infrastructure meeting all regulatory standards. We won’t share it with public LLMs like ChatGPT.
• It’ll take too long to figure out. Our AI-driven solutions are intuitive for organizations and employees and have a long track record of success. We also provide comprehensive onboarding and training, limiting the burden on IT teams.
• It’s hard to make a data-driven business case. Measuring ROI of your business AI application can be challenging. But it’s fair to look to Concur Expense for perspective: 7 months to recoup initial investment and a three-year ROI of 628%.

How to steer clear of AI implementation errors 

As you develop your AI implementation strategy, it’s valuable to understand best practices and the common mistakes that IT leaders and others make when rolling out business AI solutions. Best practices include:

• Set clear goals and outcomes – no matter how entrancing you find AI, resist the urge to dive in headfirst without knowing what you’re trying to accomplish.
• Define an integrated data strategy, because dispersed, siloed sources can hinder insights and automation.
• Create standards for AI use, so teams clearly understand how objectives align with organizational goals and values.
• Assemble a project team that goes beyond IT to include travel, finance, HR, and other stakeholders.
• Draft a change management plan outlining deployment strategy, timeline, and training plan. Secure adoption champions and focus on the impact to the entire company, not just within IT.
• Establish consistent communications with employees, as their support and understanding not only increases adoption but dispels concerns about jobs going away. Give them training that’s relevant to their evolving roles.
• Seek out proven implementation processes and trusted providers, recognizing that an already-burdened IT team cannot do this alone. SAP Concur has extensive implementation experience, and that extends to nearly a decade of business AI use.

How to upskill your finance workforce for the AI era

The challenges facing finance leaders are continuously and rapidly evolving. For example, finance teams are short of talent and skills. And employees expect simpler, personalized technology . AI-infused solutions can play a sizable role in making finance more productive, strategic, and future-ready. But if your workforce doesn’t know how to use the tools, it’s unlikely the finance team will experience their full benefits. Finance employees agree that there’s a skills deficit:

54% think they’re not developing skills the future requires.

87% of younger employees want more training around technology.

“Finance professionals need opportunities to upskill and reskill, especially in analytical and critical thinking skills that cannot be easily automated. This will help incentivize and motivate employees to stay, and solve the labor crunch,” says Theodora Lau, Founder at Unconventional Ventures.

A key step in building a future-focused finance department is providing your team with the skills to get the most from a business AI application. With automation handling once-manual tasks, upskilling initiatives should focus on technical skills like forecasting and budgeting as well as softer skills like communication and collaboration. Effective approaches can include:

• Combining internal development with external courses and certifications.
• Retaining outside experts to focus on highly specialized skills or new technologies.
• Using internal subject matter experts to mentor or lead workshops.
• Collaborating across departments to build cross-functional skills.

How to measure the ROI of business AI

Having decided to invest in business AI, a critical piece of the puzzle is determining whether your organization is reaping dividends of your AI productivity tools. As with any new technology, learning how to measure and maximize ROI can be tricky.

Metrics to consider include:

• Productivity and efficiency gains such as number of invoices processed, expense reports requiring follow-up, and time saved booking travel or preparing reports.
• Fraud or mistakes prevented, such as detection of fake invoices, duplicate payments, and early-payment discounts not taken.
• Costs of integrating the data used by business AI applications and creating standards for responsible and ethical use.
• Non-financial measures including employee satisfaction, whether from being able to focus on more satisfying work or having streamlined tools for booking travel and expense reports.

Conclusion

There’s obviously much to take in and act upon as you learn how to use business AI to maximize efficiency, productivity, and growth at your organization.

SAP Concur spend management solutions across travel, expense, and AP provides you with a pathway and tools to fuel growth. As one business leader and Concur customer, Gillray Cadet, Finance Director at Amazon Business, observes:

“We must continually invest in our people, in both technical and soft skills. This reinforces a culture of

growth and development and serves to motivate the team to maximize available opportunities … opportunities generated from tech investments that we're making.”