Trusted AI and automation transforms finance operations from manual transactional activities to intelligent operations that support business growth and resilience.
This is according to speakers at an executive breakfast in Johannesburg hosted by Sage, in partnership with ITWeb.
Tasneem Dajee, Head of Presales at Sage, and Nonhlanhla Sibeko, Intacct Solutions Consultant at Sage, outlined how Sage Intacct is proving transformative for finance, streamlining workflows and giving executives visibility across finance, operations and business performance, enabling faster and more informed decision-making.
Dajee said Sage Intacct with AI is enabling teams to close books up to 90% faster, automate up to 90% of manual tasks and deliver up to five times return on investment (ROI). Sage Intacct allows organisations to automate manual tasks such as consolidations, currency conversions, inter-company eliminations, revenue collection, billing, reconciliations, allocations and vendor payments and approvals, she said.
She noted: “Accounting can be messy when using Excel and relying on manual tasks. Sage has built bots to handle all the mundane tasks and free up time for finance to focus on higher value tasks."
She outlined Sage agents such as the AP Automation Agent, Time Agent, Close Agent, Financial Assurance Agent and Financial Intelligence Agent – a generative AI assistant that answers questions about any report or transaction, offering instant insights, variance analysis and real-time answers.
“Sage is a leader in financial AI and automation. When Intacct is the right fit for an organisation, it delivers transformative and trusted AI,” she said.
She added that the Sage Intacct AI Gateway secure connectivity layer also allows organisations to bring in external AI agents and custom agents to interact with Sage data within a safe space. Sage Agent Builder allows partners and developers to design and deploy specialised, industry-specific AI agents, while the Sage Intacct Marketplace offers certified, partner-built solutions.
Sibeko demonstrated key features and capabilities of Sage Intacct, including the role-based dashboard. “For example, the CFO can see performance across the organisation in real-time, and has the ability to drill down into information, slice and dice data, and view underlying transactions, documents and entries,” she said.
“Reporting can be stressful, with many teams spending more time compiling reports than analysing them. Sage Intacct AI helps them compile those reports faster, and also helps analyse them.”
Manually capturing invoices can also be a headache, she said. “Sage AI and automation help you do this automatically – importing and extracting the data, and presenting it for humans to review and approve,” Sibeko said. “For month-end close, Sage Close Automation streamlines the process, with checklists of tasks and automatic reminders to avoid delays.”
Dajee emphasised the importance of finding the right Sage product for each organisation and each use case. “When transforming finance, organisations should look at AI and automation to take on the most time-consuming tasks, and find ways to stop problems before they occur. Businesses should start small, but think big,” she concluded.
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