blogSmarter Decisions, Faster: Integrating AI into Financial Planning
By 2026, 90% of finance functions will deploy at least one AI-enabled technology solution. At the same time, headcount reductions will affect less than 10% of functions. That’s Gartner’s prediction, and it’s a surprising one.
Looking at how AI-enabled solutions like Firmbase’s platform can make financial planning smarter and faster helps make this evolving dynamic clear, and shows why integrating AI into financial planning should be a priority for your business.
AI Enhances Financial Planning Without Replacing Human Expertise
When it’s done right, financial planning is a deeply thoughtful, analytical and intentional process.
These are the plans that, hopefully, guide an organization to an optimal balance between increasing revenue and efficiency, while avoiding or mitigating risk. They’re based on a strong, solid understanding of the reality of the business’ finances, industry, workforce, strengths and weaknesses, and more.
The crux of this role is very human. The big picture comprehension, understanding what lies behind correlation or causation, and putting it all together into a plan that can be understood and accepted across an organization, is quintessentially a job for a human.
As described above though, the process of financial planning is complex and laborious, including huge amounts of data gathering and data analysis. The more parameters you add, the more accurate you can be – but, if you add too many, humans are likely to be overwhelmed, make more mistakes, and overall probably achieve less accuracy.
Moreover, no financial plan survives contact with the enemy of time and change. You need to be able to reassess in the light of shifting results and trends, and you need to do it fast.
AI is the solution to all of this, not instead of human effort, but to supplement and enhance it.
How AI Can Aid Financial Planning
AI is an excellent fit for finance generally, and for financial planning and FP&A functions in particular. Effectively, it takes on the work you would like to hand off to an assistant who was fantastic at crunching numbers and never needed sleep. You might use AI for things like:
- Instant analysis of business drivers
- Creating forecasts and planning for a range of scenarios 10x faster
- Finding and fixing data errors – no more spreadsheet scrambling
- Collaborating across teams using a single source of truth for clearer budgets that reflect reality
- Improving financial transparency across departments
- Identifying areas in the organization that require improvement, either compared to past results or predicted ones
- Pinpointing areas of potential growth
- Assessing impact of past decisions to inform current planning
Evolution, Not Revolution
Some teams find the idea of AI improving financial planning to be offputting, because they think it will require overturning all of their established processes and methods of working. The opposite is true.
Particularly if you use a dedicated platform like Firmbase, which is designed to be AI-first, easy and intuitive to use, and precisely what finance teams need, AI can become part of your existing processes within minutes and make financial planning and other projects smarter and faster without requiring any other changes.
You don’t need to know how to code to use Firmbase. You just need to think about what questions you’d like to ask your data, and tell the AI agent to find the answers you need. It’s that simple.
Designed for the Challenges of Today
Today, things move faster for all organizations than ever before. Financial planning needs to keep up if it is to remain relevant to the business and its needs. With AI, teams can gain the knowledge they need about their own business, and adapt quickly to things changing both internally and externally, no matter how many parameters are involved or how quickly things need to happen.
In other words, with AI, finance professionals can ensure that they and their teams stay ahead of the shifting sands in a fast-paced world.
