AI is changing everything – here's how to get on board

To demonstrate the potential of AI, Sage asked David Abrahamovitch, founder of coffee chain Grind, to share the many ways he's benefiting from it.

From empowering his finance team to enhancing the way he works with his accountant, David finds generative AI and automation helps him perform faster and at a much higher level.

Read on for real-world takeaways you can implement today.

Become a strategic powerhouse

You've heard the grand promises about how AI is the future for small businesses. You've seen some impressive demos. But how does automation and generative AI fit in with the things you actually do?

For David, the shift came when he realised generative AI could enhance how he works with his accountant. He says:

"I realised I couldn't get the information, or the way that the accountant needed it, and it ended up just being like 50 or 60 individual PDFs."

He used AI to consolidate everything he needed.

"And in two minutes, I had [it] perfectly formatted. I was like, 'OK, wow, this is amazing'."

Automation is great but AI is even better

While automation makes life easier by automating process steps to get you from point A to point B faster and with fewer errors, generative AI is your pocket assistant, proactively bringing things to your attention and helping drive better strategic thinking.

One example is Sage Copilot, a dedicated AI-powered productivity assistant that's found in products like Sage Accounting and Sage Intacct.

Automation and generative AI work best together, in synergy. Here's what automation could bring to your business:

• It consolidates several manual steps and takes them off your to-do list. For example, you can use software to compile all your invoice data into a report – something you'd normally have to do manually.

• It can easily record and reconcile invoices, shaving hours of time off your monthly close.

• It could help you chase late payments. Automation takes care of email reminders after invoices reach 10, 20 or 30 days unpaid.

While automation can funnel data to the right place, generative AI can:

• analyse it on a 24/7 basis

• add any relevant external input

• give you insights

• suggest contributions to your strategy

• automatically compile reports based on previous history or need

This puts strategy at the heart of your business, because you're always prepared with up-to-date data.

To get the best out of both tools, you should choose a financial management system that integrates both, such as Sage Accounting. This creates a single source of truth, which is essential when ensuring compliance and managing risk.

Having this in one place will elevate your business thinking to the next level, allowing you to be proactive and strategic.

Generative AI and automation together

David Abrahamovitch says:

"Once you go through the process of linking all of these systems together and getting it into a big database, the opportunities you get to go and interrogate that data are amazing."

Generative AI and automation can work together to consolidate financial data efficiently, which will reduce your administrative burden by hours, if not days.

To do this, consider the following:

• Make sure your AI software understands specific standards, insights and your industry, as not all tools will be tailored to the financial sector.

• Find financial management software that has AI and automation capabilities built in so you can get the double benefit of both.

Here are some real-world examples of AI and automation:

• Asking AI to analyse your business financials and create a forecast report.

• AI flags to you if there's something odd about your accounts payable or receivable process, as it's always running in the background, day and night, monitoring transactions.

• AI could tell you if you need to follow certain compliance procedures in a new country you're about to sell in, so you can employ the correct accounting standards.

Focus your free time

David has seen the real benefits of using generative AI and automation tools, even within his own finance team.

They now have more time to focus on creatively solving business problems and strengthening relationships.

He says:

"The team can then spend their time partnering with other parts of the business and looking at the data rather than producing it, or getting involved in too much admin."

Instead of a day spent endlessly dealing with manual admin, outsourcing these multiple time-draining steps to AI and automation will give you and your finance people more time back.

With your new-found free time you can:

• improve other areas of your business

• explore a broad overview for at-a-glance finances

• enjoy access to all details in a few clicks

• delegate tasks easier with multi-level access and customised reporting

• reposition your skills as strategic rather than manual

Make the move to AI today

Generative AI and automation tools can fast-track data output and run through more efficient financial management processes than you can manually do on your own.

Explore how Sage Copilot within Sage Accounting can change the way you do your accounting. 

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