Most finance functions are behind other functions in AI implementation.
According to a survey of 130 finance leaders and 91 associates in administrative support functions by Gartner in June this year, 61% of respondents either have no plans for AI implementation or are still in the initial planning phase.
Survey highlights
- Only 9% of finance organisations are in the scaling and using phases, compared to 20% of other administrative support functions, such as HR, legal, real estate, IT, and procurement.
- Four out of five finance leaders anticipate the cost and effort they allocate to deploying AI within finance will increase over the next two years, with 52% of finance leaders expecting cost and effort to increase by more than 10%.
- Finance’s lag is even bigger if with generative AI with just 1% of finance functions having adopted or an intention to invest in the technology—This is compared to customer facing and IT functions where approximately 10-20% have adopted or intend to invest in generative AI.
Other priorities preventing AI investment
Finance leaders cite four primary reasons for the sluggish AI implementation: other priorities, lack of technical capabilities, low-quality data, and insufficient use cases, the advisory firm pointed out.
Three of these commonly cited reasons (lack of technical skills, suboptimal data quality, and insufficient use cases) are related to workflow- and capability-based limitations, the firm said.
However, the most frequently cited reason for not using AI is that finance leaders have other priorities, the firm noted.
AI use highly variable but largely impactful
Finance organisations currently using AI—such as in developing pilots, production, and scaling AI solutions—are doing so in diverse areas within finance, Gartner said.
No one area of AI use in finance is disproportionately represented among early AI adopters, the firm added.
The three most common areas of AI use within finance include accounting support, anomaly/error detection, and financial analysis, the firm observed.
“Despite varied uses of AI within finance, the experience has been largely positive. This should be encouraging news for CFOs and other finance leaders who are contemplating whether they should invest and, if so, where they should direct that initial investment,” said Marco Steecker, Senior Principal in the Gartner Finance Practice.
