Posted by ERP News on July 24, 2024
In a rapidly evolving financial landscape, technology continues to play a pivotal role in enhancing operational efficiency and productivity. Auditoria.AI, a trailblazer in automated AI-powered intelligent apps for finance, has recently announced a groundbreaking reseller partnership with Workday. This collaboration aims to revolutionize supplier management and accounts payable operations for customers, providing a comprehensive AI solution that streamlines processes and reduces errors. We had the opportunity to discuss this exciting development with Rohit Gupta, CEO and Co-founder of Auditoria.AI. In this interview, Rohit shares insights into the partnership, its impact on financial management, and the future of AI in the fintech, accounting, and ERP software sectors.
1. Can you provide an overview of the new reseller partnership between Auditoria.AI and Workday? What are the key objectives of this agreement?
Workday has announced its first-ever SKU for a reseller partner solution with Auditoria. The benefits for Workday Financial Management customers are an absolute game-changer. Auditoria.AI SmartBots for Workday provides new and existing Workday customers with a more comprehensive solution to improve and automate specific AP and GL functions that fall outside of our Workday Financial Management capabilities.
It allows for certified direct integration and frictionless procurement of the Auditoria SmartBots for Workday, with a Workday SKU for Auditoria’s AP Helpdesk and AP Accruals solutions from within Workday Financial Management, and for purchasing Auditoria.ai products directly through existing Workday contracts.
This is a reseller agreement rather than a traditional partnership and is part of a larger strategy, and cross-functional effort to expand the Workday Financial ISV Ecosystem.
2. How will this partnership enhance supplier management and accounts payable operations for Workday customers?
A company’s shared AP inbox plays a critical role in the overall procure-to-pay process. It is the primary way to receive vendor bills, drives supplier communication and experience, is susceptible to fraud and spam, and is a point of communication for internal stakeholders to ensure proper accounting.
AP staff typically fully manage AP inboxes. This work can be mundane, requiring staff to cross-reference many data points to ensure the validity of the liability and extract the proper data needed for the ERP. This is in addition to answering high-volume inquiries into the status of invoices and payments by suppliers and internal stakeholders alike.
This unengaging work can lead to human error, which is troublesome for an area that drives the largest expense for many organizations. Not deploying talent appropriately can lead to employee dissatisfaction and churn. It also can lead to a subpar supplier experience, particularly in times of high-volume engagement with AP teams, such as month end.
Slow close cycle times for AP and accruals can be expected. With Auditoria, AP teams can reduce time spent on AP Helpdesk and AP Accruals by 70% and 60% respectively after using their products.
Key features include:
- Executing data entry, preventing bad data from entering the system of record, and reducing errors and omissions
- Automating email replies to supplier inquiries related to invoices and auto-generating accrual entries based on email collaboration with suppliers
- Automating tasks such as outreach and journal entry creation so AP teams elevate work to focus on analysis and action
- Enhancing vendor relationships through increased response time and improved relationship management
3. What specific capabilities does Auditoria.AI bring to Workday Financial Management, and how do they complement its existing functions?
The Auditoria SmartBots for Workday + Workday Advanced AP Automation offers Workday Financial Management customers three unique and valuable finance solution offerings that work together to drive better productivity:
- Invoice / Statement automated document recognition and data extraction with the Workday OCR module.
- Vendor email processing automation with Auditoria’s AP Helpdesk built with Intelligent App intent detection and bi-directional communication.
- Accruals automation with Auditoria’s AP Accruals to help improve vendor spend compliance.
Purpose-built for finance with NLP, AI, and ML, SmartBots act as AI “teammates.” Adoption and execution are accelerated with the English language, business terminology configuration, and intent detection for finance processes. Next-generation generative AI and machine learning-built technology deliver a 70% workload reduction for finance teams.
Auditoria’s proprietary, patented small language model (SLM) offering combines LLM capabilities with finance-specialized data that allows for fine-tuned and
customized finance context, expanding the AI advantages of Workday.
This specialty-built SLM comprises three billion tokens designed to understand and generate human-like finance text but is smaller in scale and yields more accurate results to radically improve outputs and workflows.
More specifically, the Auditoria modules offer the following:
AP Accruals
Reduce Risk • Improve Accuracy • Expedite Close
Auditoria AP Accruals delivers autonomous supplier outreach to automate the month-end supplier expense accruals process and eliminates the long hours needed to close the books.
Using machine learning and natural language processing, Auditoria’s SmartBots create journal entries, estimate supplier accrual expenses, match with third-party data sources, and reconcile with the general ledger. AP Accruals delivers an industry-first capability to automate the typically arduous and error-prone period-end supplier process.
AP Helpdesk
Speed-Up Response Time • Reduce Resource Requirements • Improve Vendor Satisfaction
Auditoria’s AP Helpdesk increases speed, accuracy, and efficiency in the finance back office using generative AI-enabled SmartBots to automate redundant and manual monitoring and responding to requests in the shared AP email box.
These intelligent SmartBots are trained in finance concepts and handle more than 90% of the incoming inquiries received, executing authorized tasks and requests.
4. Can you share some examples or case studies demonstrating the improvements in productivity and efficiency that customers can expect from this AI solution?
AP Accruals Faster Period Close
- Improved team / FTE productivity by 40%+
- Reduced process workload by 55%+
- Speed up the collection of GL entries by 90%+
- Reduce errors and omissions by 85%+
- Close books 20% faster
- Improve overall compliance
- Elevate cash visibility
AP Helpdesk Streamline the AP Shared Inbox
- Recover 1000s of hours for AP teams
- Improve vendor serviceability by >75%
- Minimize vendor risk and fraud by >50%
- Achieve >50% AP productivity improvements
- Increase response rates by 80+%
Denny’s
- Centralized finance inboxes to streamline workflows and increase response times
- Reduced process workload by 60+%
- Improved employee morale and vendor satisfaction
- Identification of duplicate invoices to save time and effort processes invoices already in the system
- 95% of received emails in the shared inbox are processed by SmartBots
5. How does Auditoria.AI’s solution help reduce processing time, errors, and costs associated with managing the accounts payable inbox?
AP Helpdesk automates vendor email processing and request fulfillment. AP shared inboxes are automatically processed using tech that deciphers the context and intent message. Responses are composed on up to 90% of the inbox, shifting team member focus to more impactful work.
- Eliminate the need to login to shared inboxes, saving time and increasing productivity
- Deliver consistent, accelerated turnaround of email-originated AP requests and inquiries
- Reduce operational expenditure by streamlining workflows for manually executed and auto-processed AP tasks
- Simplify AP communication and improve vendor satisfaction
6. What impact do you foresee this partnership having on the overall financial management landscape for companies using Workday?
Resource Scalability and Reliability
- With a pre-configured, built-in finance context, minimal time is needed to get the project up and running, allowing more time for other projects. The Auditoria platform was built with extreme scalability to handle an infinite number of requests, working in real-time. Always on the job, the technology rarely makes mistakes, ensuring a more efficient, accurate, and productive finance office.
Outstanding Time to Value
- With rapid delivery and implementations for Auditoria’s SmartBots, customers see value in days, not weeks or months. A sandbox could be installed in less than a day, with a go-live typically rolled out in four to eight weeks.
- SmartBots training takes minutes, unlike human onboarding programs that may take weeks, months, or even years. With quick onboarding, typical ROI payback could be demonstrated in just two quarters.
Best-in-class AI Ecosystem for Workday
- Auditoria’s purpose-built domain-specific language models for Finance, Accounting, and Procurement allow Workday Financials customers to leverage highly tuned language models to automate business processes, thereby driving greater efficiencies, productivity, and business transformation.
Pure SaaS Certified for Workday
- With certified connections with Workday Financial Management, mailboxes, and other systems, Auditoria extends application investments with secure, cloud-native, seamlessly integrated APIs that increase the value of implementation investments while reducing the cost of ownership over time.
7. Can you explain how the AI solution aids in reducing close time and eliminating manual, error-prone supplier accrual outreach processing?
AP Accruals automates scheduled requests for PO and PR status updates and estimations for accrual entries. By automating the accruals workflow, the collection of GL entries is accelerated, errors and omissions are reduced, and the books are closed faster.
Value Proposition
- Anticipate supplier expenses and have less unplanned spend
- Improve supplier expense accruals accuracy and completeness, and reduce close time
- Detect anomalies and identify erroneous or unusual activity to reduce compliance risk
- Provide leadership visibility into projected spending and accruals backup
8. How does the integration of Auditoria.AI’s intelligent apps with Workday Financial Management enhance the user experience for accounts payable teams?
Collaborative Mode brings increased accuracy in responses, higher productivity, and stronger trust in automation. By allowing human oversight, the system
minimizes risks associated with potential errors or omissions. This synergy between human insight and AI capability marks a significant advancement in streamlining finance office operations.
The ability for human operators to manage data flow and approve data input and
outflow before writing to systems of record. Reporting lists with system-generated decisions, giving finance managers the ability to review and audit software and team performance.
Teams handle large volumes and process requests efficiently and rapidly to mitigate fluctuations in operational expenses and minimize negative financial impact.
Business intelligence and reporting are critical to generating insightful reports and real-time visibility into key indicators. Auditoria’s intuitive user interface empowers business users to create, update, and maintain templates, rules, and
correspondence with drag-and-drop functionality. This low-code, no-code technology reduces dependence on IT. These types of features optimize accounting processes, enhance vendor relationships, and enable efficient decision-making.
9. What are the anticipated long-term benefits for customers who adopt this comprehensive AI solution for their accounts payable and general ledger functions?
Auditoria’s SmartBots for Workday built with GenAI will bring the power of assisting, advising, and recommendations will empower CFOs to simplify finance processes, accounting closes, filings, planning, analyses, and broad decision-making. Tasks that were once arduous, time-intensive, and manual, will become routine, often running in the background, freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives.
This transformation doesn’t just boost productivity; it propels finance teams toward a future where decisions based on real-time data, analysis, and recommendations become the norm. The CFO will be equipped to focus on forward-looking, business value-focused activities, leading to significant enterprise-level benefits.
10. Looking ahead, what are the next steps for Auditoria.AI in terms of further collaborations or innovations in the fintech, accounting, and ERP software sectors?
Auditoria will be introducing a wealth of AI innovation purpose-built for finance, accounting, and procurement teams. In the immediate short term, Auditoria is introducing a first-of-its-kind order-to-cash remittance processing solution built on GenAI and LLMs. This allows for automated remittance data processing, streamlined cash application mapping, and automated payment record processing.
Furthermore, Auditoria has additional plans to augment its capabilities in AP, AR, and GL, and deliver advanced Finance Operations analytics giving finance teams the operational insights they need, all as part of their FinOps workflows.
