AI is transforming the finance function into a strategic growth engine, according to executives from Sage, who were speaking during a webinar on AI in finance this week.
Erika More, Sage Intacct Director for Africa and Middle East at Sage, and Tasneem Dajee, Manager Presales: Sage Intacct at Sage, highlighted how generative AI and agentic AI were saving finance teams time, improving efficiency and giving them deeper insights into organisational finances.
Despite AI’s capabilities, a poll of the webinar audience showed that 35% don’t use AI in their business.
Erika More noted: “Sage research found that globally, 86% of CFOs said they have adopted AI, but only 49% have deeply integrated it into their finance.”
Attendees learned that the Sage Intacct cloud-based accounting system now incorporates several AI agents to automate accounting processes and gives users real-time visibility, automation and scalable control.
Erika More said Sage – as the leader in finance AI and automation – was focusing on embedding native, accurate and authentic AI across finance functions: “It's a trusted and responsible AI built for Sage,” she said. Erika More noted that Sage Intacct AI Agents now include an Accounts Payable Agent, Timekeeping Agent, Close Agent, Assurance Agent and the recently-released Finance Intelligence Agent.
Tasneem Dajee explained: “Sage Intacct is cloud native, so users can log in from any device at any time. Four releases are issued automatically each year, so users always have an up-to-date system. We are always improving it – in the last financial year, we brought over 230 new functions. It caters for multi-entity, multi-currency businesses, with the necessary permissions and security to allow various users to access the information they need.”
Tasneem Dajee demonstrated a number of features and use cases for Sage Intacct Copilot in the general ledger – for example, using AI for statistics or to highlight inconsistencies.
She said: “Intacct operates by using dimensional accounting and dimension tags, so we can easily extend our analytics. It also offers greater control over outliers, flagging them and giving users a history of a transaction, the ability to query and collaborate about a transaction and authorise an outlier transaction. It also retains an audit trail around this process.”
She also demonstrated accounts payable (AP) automation. “This is a complete game-changer for customers using it," she said. “It allows transactions from suppliers to be e-mailed to a designated address, which is linked to the Intacct instance where the user can review and post it accordingly.”
Erika More and Tasneem Dajee noted that the Sage presales team welcomed opportunities to demonstrate Sage Intacct’s full capabilities. For more information, visit Sage.
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