Innovation Isn't All about the Future

Putting AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to work today.

There are big things on the horizon. Huge advances in technology that will save time, redeploy headcount, and entirely eliminate other costs from your budget. These advancements will revolutionise how we work, and that’s great news for forward-thinking companies.

But you don’t have time to wait.

So let’s talk about the innovations available today that actually direct where your company goes in the future. Yes. It’s possible to bring next-gen innovation to a key financial function — right now — in a way that dramatically affects your entire organisation.

The impact of artificial intelligence is real.

Humans aren’t perfect, and when we type in our expenses, we make mistakes, we guess, sometimes a few of us even make things up.

Automating the process, however, and using AI to get expense reports that write themselves, not only simplifies the steps, it adds certainty to the numbers. Add to that an AI tool that analyses receipts, credit card transactions, and bookings, and you can:

• Reduce expense report errors up to 66%
• Capture 10 times the amount of errors and fraud before reimbursement
• Shorten auditing time by as much as 90%
• Audit 100% of expense reports

Machine learning is nothing short of brilliant.

Yes, the robots are getting smarter and, no, you don’t need to worry. Machine learning (ML) technologies are a subset of artificial intelligence that use algorithms to process billions of bits of data and “learn” along the way. They can use and evaluate structured data to help you manage issues like compliance.

For example, ML can tell the difference between a Long Island iced tea and an iced tea, so when a business traveller forgets that alcohol isn’t covered under corporate policy, the algorithm sends the transaction back to the employee before the expense is submitted.

Natural language processing turns images into information.

Natural language processing feeds the benefits of AI and ML. How? By taking unstructured data from images of receipts or invoices and translating those details into usable data. So when a user snaps a photo of a receipt, the system reads it, interprets it, and populates it into an expense report. Then AI and machine learning can take over to determine what to do with that data — without any time-consuming and error-prone intervention from your team.  

These are just examples of how savvy businesses are using these three technologies to innovate now and deliver a tangible impact quickly. But this is just the beginning. There are new opportunities every day that take advantage of the cloud, analytics, and AI/machine learning/natural language processing. It’s how you make your processes more efficient, your people more productive, and your business more valuable.

So when is the robot takeover? Find out in this whitepaper.

Read further for a deeper understanding of how AI, ML, and other technologies are reshaping the travel and expense landscape and giving you greater control over your second largest budget line item. You’ll see what to expect as tech advances and what that can mean for your company.

Blog #2 in series, to read blog #1: Robots Aren’t Going to Steal Everyone’s Job, But They Will Do The Parts No One Likes