Dive Brief:
- Microsoft’s finance department has incorporated various artificial intelligence agents into its toolkit as the team ramps up its years-long digital transformation push, an official said.
- The agents add to a mix of AI-powered tools that are helping the team streamline a range of functions, including procurement, payment collections and financial forecasting, according to Cory Hrncirik, the company’s modern finance leader.
- AI is “driving so much change at the company … saving us thousands upon thousands of hours” as well as millions of dollars, he said at a finance conference last week at the University of Southern California.
Dive Insight:
The arsenal of AI agents deployed by the finance team includes off-the-shelf Microsoft tools such as an analyst agent that can perform advanced data analysis, according to Hrncirik. The team is also using custom-built agents that it developed for specialized functions, including a tool designed to simplify the process of sourcing suppliers.
The sourcing assistant is saving the company an estimated $10 million in costs per year, while also resulting in an estimated 15,000 hours in annual time savings, according to a PowerPoint slide shown during the presentation.
Besides generating cost savings and productivity gains, AI initiatives have also helped to bend the finance team’s “headcount curve” over the past decade, Hrncirik said.
“Whereas we always had to rely on hiring a lot of people, armed with nothing other than Excel spreadsheets and a ... desire to power through broken systems and processes, we now have been able to really streamline a lot of the work that we do,” he said. “We’re seeing the opportunity to really empower every person that works in our finance division to achieve more.”
The event, sponsored by the University of Southern California and Financial Executives International, a professional organization for finance leaders, featured Hrncirik as a keynote speaker.
Hrncirik’s career at Microsoft spans a period of nearly 17 years. As part of his current role, which he assumed in 2018, he helps guide the digital transformation of the tech giant’s finance team in addition to sharing ideas with finance executives of other leading companies, according to his LinkedIn profile. His prior titles at the company have included senior business analyst manager and finance manager.
The finance team at Microsoft began its AI journey about a decade ago, long before OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool grabbed the world’s attention, according to Hrncirik.
“It started with traditional machine learning, primarily in the forecasting domain,” he said. The use cases quickly expanded to include areas such as audit reviews, he said. Eventually, the team also began using AI for purposes such as automating invoice payments, reconciliations and approvals of all kinds.
“We have learned a lot about AI and applying AI to finance over the past decade,” he said. “But we’ve seen more progress in the past couple of years than we’ve seen in a long time ... With the evolution of ChatGPT ... AI became common language ... and it’s at our fingertips. And that accessibility has opened up new ideas.”
The team’s AI push came after the groundwork was laid by CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood, Hrncirik said.
After becoming CEO in 2014, Nadella sparked a cultural shift in the company when he pushed the overall organization to embrace a growth mindset, Hrncirik said.
“Amy and all of our finance leaders have leaned into that concept,” he said. “It’s really important, especially for risk averse finance and accounting professionals, who don’t always love change and don’t always love changing a system or process.”
He said the cultural shift was crucial in that it challenged people to ask themselves how they could “do things better, cheaper, faster, more efficiently.”
“There are some areas [where] you want to change things more methodically than others [to avoid running] afoul of any compliance or regulatory issues, of course,” he said. “But there are so many areas where we can move really, really fast.”
