How AI Automation Can Drive Business Success

Evolving technology – like Artificial Intelligence (AI) – brings opportunities and apprehension. However, using AI to automate payables, analyze data or improve collections can help your business succeed.

One great aspect of AI is its potential to enhance workplace efficiency. While some jobs in certain industries may experience shifts in job roles, it will likely be more of the exception than the rule. Rather than replacing employees, this technology has greater potential to enhance an employee’s value to their company. AI can do this by reducing the amount of low ROI everyday activities an employee must complete, allowing them to focus on much higher ROI functions within the business. 

Comparing Typical Payables Processes

For many businesses, making payments remains painfully manual. A typical manual process may look like this:

Multi-Step Payables Process for Employees

Checks	ACH	Wires
Check File Created	ACH File/Templates Created	Wire File/Templates Created
Checks Printed	File and Templates Uploaded	File and Templates Uploaded
Checks Signed	Remittance Emails Sent	Remittance Emails Sent
Checks Placed into Envelopes
Postage Applied
Check Positive Pay File Created
Positive Pay File Uploaded

At minimum, 13 steps are needed to complete the process above. This is worsened when a business cannot produce NACHA or FedWire formatted files. In these cases, generally, payables team members have to resort to using business banking templates to complete electronic payments. Templates are typically completed per payment, adding far more work to the process. It’s not uncommon for payment runs to take several hours, or even a full day, to complete for many businesses.

This process could dramatically change by introducing AI. AI is well suited for many tasks in the payables process and may perform all or most of them in fractions of a second. A typical AI automated payables process may look like this:

Automated Payables Process

Employee Actions	Computer Actions
Payment File Created	Check File Created
	Checks Printed
	Checks Signed
	Checks Placed into Envelopes
	Postage Applied
	Check Positive Pay File Created
	Positive Pay File Uploaded
	ACH File Created
	ACH File Uploaded
	Remittance Emails Sent
	Wire File Created
	Wire File Uploaded
	Remittance Emails Sent

The manual, 13-step process is reduced to one single step, creating a payment file that your payables system, with the power of AI, uses to produce all the payments for a business. This could save businesses hundreds of hours per year in efficiency gains. Even better, these systems are designed to be more accurate, reduce errors and ensure payments go out correctly.

These time savings can be used toward payables activities, creating significant benefits to a business. For example, many clients who automate the payables process reallocate their payables team members to helping vendors sign up for electronic payments, which are safer and more predictable than paper payments. Some businesses have team members apply payments via virtual credit cards, which then can earn the business cash in the form of interchange rebate.

AI cannot replace the human employee, but it can enhance their role’s effectiveness and value to a company. To learn more about how AI automation can help drive success for your business, reach out to your Bankers Trust Treasury Officer.