Major US business software vendors, including Microsoft and SAP, have launched a new wave of artificial intelligence-driven innovation in recent months, rolling out a series of new “AI agents” designed to perform tasks in the corporate finance and other business functions.
The recent industry developments come as many executives face increasing pressure to make the kind of AI investments that can bring optimal value to their organizations after the experiences of the past two years, analysts say. It also comes, they say, as some of the initial hype around generative AI – spurred largely by the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 – has started to fade.
“There was this phase where people were in love” with technology, Mark McDonald, senior managing analyst at Gartner, said in an interview. “They, I kind of took that first step in the water to try it out and got varying levels of results, most being pretty ho-hum.
McDonald said he had spoken recently with customers who were “We are done with the “experimenting and imagining what we can do” phase of AI adoption. “Now it’s about turning these AI ambitions into concrete plans,” he said.
The coming year presents the opportunity to scale and advance AI capabilities across the enterprise, and a majority of organizations are turning to AI agents (tools capable of working independently to complete tasks and adapt in real time) to help them achieve this. KPMG said in a January 9 statement announcing the results of the investigation.
According to the study, more than half (51%) of organizations are exploring the use of AI agents and 37% are testing them.
Agentic AI technology is poised to revolutionize industries, handling complex tasks with human-like decision-making, but it also poses risks such as hallucinations, where a tool asserts errors as if they were trueaccording to Shomit Ghose, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
Mitigating the risks of agentic AI will require transparent design, strong security measures, and governance to maximize benefits while minimizing harm. Ghose said in an article published last month speak Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley.
“Ultimately, perhaps no agentic AI will be fully autonomous: humans may still need to be involved… especially when material actions are necessary,” he added.
Here is a list of some of the biggest players in the tech world developing or delivering AI agents to streamline finance and other business functions:
SAP
At its annual conference TechEd Conference in OctoberSAP announced the launch of new innovations, including AI agents, to complement its generative AI co-pilot known as “Joule”.
The deployment included agents designed to “streamline key financial processes by automating invoice payments, invoice processing and general ledger updates while quickly correcting inconsistencies or errors,” according to a press release.
“We will definitely have a lot more (AI deployments) over the next year,” Walter Sun, global head of AI at SAP, said in an interview.
As part of its approach to mitigating AI risks, the company supports the policy that “the human must always be in the know,” according to Sun. “Joule agents and SAP AI provide recommendations to the user, which the user then checks and decides how to act,” he said.
The company said it was not prepared to disclose whether the agents had been fully rolled out to the public or how pricing was being managed. “We will announce news at our Business Unleashed event on February 13 that will provide more details on this,” a spokesperson said.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow announced in September that it was plans to integrate agentic AI in its platform with the potential for “massive scale across all use cases.”
Since this announcement, the company has delivered its first two agentic AI use cases, one for customer service management and another for IT service management.
The software provider is now focused on adapting AI agents for more use cases across functions, including finance, procurement and human resources, Kirsten said. Lögering, ServiceNow vice president of product management, finance and supply chain workflows, said in an email.
A host of potential agentic AI use cases related to finance are being evaluated for the coming year, according to Lögering. This includes tools to assess potential risks such as market volatility, credit defaults or fraud, as well as automation of the entire invoice management process.
Regarding pricing, Loegering said: “We are announcing pricing and packaging updates for our AI Agents very soon, but the first customers were measured through our Assists – the consumption element of our GenAI SKUs. The final model will evolve based on the number of interactions with the AI agents.
As part of its approach to mitigating AI risks, the company supports the principle that users should always be in control. “ServiceNow AI agents evolve from more familiar prompt-based activity to deep contextual understanding, keeping people in the loop with monitoring and governance” Lögering said.
Oracle
At its annual CloudWorld conference in September, Oracle announced that it was release 50+ role-based AI agents within its Fusion Cloud suite of applications. Agents are designed to help “achieve new levels of productivity in finance, supply chain, human resources, sales, marketing and services,” according to a press release.
Among other tools, the company deployed a “ledger agent designed to help organizations monitor and analyze account balances, exceptions and anomalies, as well as detect whether revenue from a specific line of business are out of forecast before the end of the quarter. It also announced an “advanced prediction agent” capable of providing revenue forecasts by leveraging internal and external data factors.
Many of the agents announced in September are already available to customers, including use cases in customer experience, supply chain and human resources, said Hari Sankar, vice president of product management group at Oracle, in an email, adding that financial use cases at Oracle Cloud ERP and Oracle Cloud EPM will be rolled out this year.
“In 2025, we are focused on broadening and deepening agent capabilities across the Oracle Fusion Applications suite, as well as introducing new agents to help finance leaders improve processes like account reconciliation and vendor payments,” Sankar said.
He said Oracle AI agents “work within Oracle Fusion Applications and use retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to help reduce hallucinations and provide more accurate responses and better solutions.”
working day
At its annual Workday Rising conference in September, Workday announced the launch of new AI agents as part of a broader “Illuminate” framework aimed at transforming enterprise finance and HR functions.
The effort aims to “help and augment humans, not replace them,” said Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday. said during an opening speech for the conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The AI agents revealed “are the first of many coming from Workday as the company seeks to radically simplify business processes for end users and elevate humans at work,” according to a statement at the time .
The deployment included a recruiting agent designed to automate tasks such as creating job descriptions, sourcing candidates, and scheduling interviews; an expense agent that can match receipts with credit card transactions and automatically create the expense line; and a “backup agent” aimed at helping managers identify and develop future leaders within their organization.
The release states that the recruiting agent will be immediately available on the company’s HiredScore platform and “will be further integrated with Workday in spring 2025.” Fees and estate agents are expected to be available in early 2025.
Andy Kershaw, general manager of the CFO office at Workday, told CFO Dive that the company currently does not charge customers extra for its AI capabilities unless “we are completely transforming a business process.”
“This is where there will likely be an additional cost,” Kershaw said in an email.
The company supports the “responsible development of AI technologies” and regulation as part of its risk mitigation approach, he said.
Microsoft
In late October, Microsoft announced the introduction of 10 new autonomous agents, including two aimed at financial professionals, in its Microsoft Dynamics 365 enterprise resource planning platform.
A new account reconciliation agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance automates “the reconciliation and clearing of transactions between subsidiary ledgers and general ledger, helping them accelerate the financial close process,” according to a blog post written by Bryan Goode, corporate vice president at Microsoft. The company also introduced a new financial reconciliation agent designed to help teams prepare and clean data sets.
The software giant said it was not ready to reveal whether the agents had been fully rolled out to the public or how pricing was managed. “We look forward to sharing more details as these agents become available in public preview in the coming weeks,” Georg Glantschnig, vice president of Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI ERP, said in an email.
Sales force
Salesforce in September unveiled “Agentforce,” a suite of AI agents designed to handle service, sales, marketing and commerce tasks, with the goal of “driving unprecedented efficiency and customer satisfaction.” according to a press release at the time.
“Our vision is bold: to empower one billion agents with Agentforce by the end of 2025,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in the release. “This is what AI is supposed to be.”
THE The company did not immediately respond to a request for additional details.