Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Strategic Advantage in FP&A

At Firmbase, we see on a daily basis how much of a strategic advantage businesses can gain when their FP&A team starts leveraging AI. Firmbase’s agentic AI platform, designed for the needs of FP&A teams, is so intuitive to use that it effortlessly becomes a powerful tool for FP&A within a company, enhancing and expanding their strategic impact. 

Strategic Advantages of AI in FP&A

The key strategic advantage of leveraging AI in FP&A is that it frees the function to shift from a focus on what has happened, to a focus on what should be done. 

The nature of FP&A is to have far more emphasis on the future than other elements of finance (hence the “planning” in the name) and AI empowers FP&A teams to fully own and align themselves with that aspect of the role. 

There are a number of ways in which AI helps FP&A to shift emphasis in this way, including:

• Faster, automated reporting
• Identifying budget versus actual discrepancies early 
• Making scenario planning simpler, for a greater range of scenarios
• Real-time adjustments to forecasts, for example reflecting changing market conditions
• Inclusion of unstructured data, such as news reports and customer calls, to ensure the department is grounded in the “now” rather than the yesterday
• Identifying drivers more easily by pinpointing complex relationships and key drivers to help find out what truly moves the numbers – so the professionals can work out what should be done to get the right results

The Mundane is Also Strategic 

An important aspect of the benefit of bringing AI to FP&A teams is to lift some of the burden of manual, repetitive work and processes from human shoulders. 

There is nothing intrinsically human required to perform these functions, and yet the most recent FP&A Trends Survey found that FP&A professionals only manage to spend about 35% of their time on high-value tasks, because so much is taken up with routine. 

Firmbase’s users have found that once they begin using Firmbase’s agentic AI in their work, they can automate up to 80% of their manual FP&A workload. That is a very significant shift in the amount of energy and resources that becomes available for other things. 

Although this seems like a change that operates on a small scale, because it affects so much time, it represents a strategic advantage as well. The focus, energy level, and priorities of the professionals working in the department can all change, to expand the insights and impact of the FP&A function. 

FP&A Increases Strategic Impact

It’s not only about what the FP&A department does itself, of course. The nature of the role is cross-organizational, and is in many ways defined by the kind of impact it can have on the direction, success and risk mitigation of the company. 

Since AI enables FP&A professionals to spend far more of their valuable time on strategic efforts, with more and better data and improved in-depth analysis, the impact they can have within their organization naturally increases. 

More than that, however, by leveraging AI FP&A professionals can increase the likelihood of their recommendations being adopted and fully embraced by other departments. For example:

• Data from across the company. Firmbase’s agentic AI platform makes it easy to gather all the data from across different systems and databases in one place, meaning discussions and decisions across departments can be based on shared business understanding and information. 
• Creating recommendations personalized to their specific needs. With AI, you can say goodbye to generic reports and recommendations, and replace them with pinpoint relevance and accuracy. 
• React right now. Things change quickly within the wider world and inside your organization. AI can ensure that FP&A teams become aware quickly of factors that may seriously impact predictions or goals, so that they can advise accordingly. 
• FP&A can play a role in strategic planning. Beyond financial planning, leveraging AI in FP&A makes it possible to bring a detailed financial understanding and analysis to bear in discussions such as price increases, product launches, market expansion opportunities and more. 

FP&A teams see so much of the big picture of an organization, with visibility not only into data from diverse departments and external sources but also analysis of how these interplay and impact one another. That means that FP&A is uniquely positioned to help a company remain grounded in reality, and thrive no matter what the circumstances. 

The Time is Now

At this moment, leveraging AI in the right ways for your company represents a significant strategic advantage for your organization. The technology is already sophisticated, tailored to FP&A needs, and highly effective. 

Yet since many companies perceive the barrier to entry as much higher than it is (integrating with Firmbase’s platform, for example, is very fast, simple and streamlined) they are hesitating to find out more, and so those who move earlier have the opportunity to outpace and outperform competitors. 

At this time, leveraging AI effectively in FP&A represents a clear strategic advantage for an entire organization. It won’t be long before it’s considered essential to business functionality, as happened with cloud computing a decade or so ago. 

FP&A is a Strategic Center for AI Use

Due to its cross-organizational nature and potential for significant impact across a company, allied with the role’s natural future-focused bent, it makes sense to ensure that FP&A gets the advantage of AI. There are few other areas of a company with such ability to drive success.

The benefits of adding agentic AI to an FP&A department quickly trickle to other parts of the business as well, because among other reasons:

• FP&A gains greater insight into other areas of the business by collecting data from across the organization in a single platform where analysis is easy and fast
• FP&A works with other business functions frequently, making it natural to explain and evangelize the opportunities
• Having the ability to query the data and answer key questions during a meeting with diverse stakeholders benefits everyone
• Platforms like Firmbase, which are designed to be super simple to use, can be leveraged by other departments as well, enabling tight collaboration and alignment

By strategically integrating AI, FP&A can fulfill its full potential as a department and a profession, to become a true strategic driver of business growth, providing agile, data-driven foresight in dynamic markets.