Agents of artificial intelligence – tools designed to assume work tasks – could fundamentally collect the financing function of companies in the coming years, making certain obsolete jobs while creating new ones, according to Georg Glantschnig, vice -president Dynamics 365 AI ERP at Microsoft.
Technology is still in the early stages of development, and some analysts say it can be too early For rapid adoption Regarding functions such as business financing.
Finally, however, AI agents could act as “qualified virtual colleagues, working with humans in a transparent and natural manner”, according to a MCKINSEY report published last year.
Microsoft is considering all the trade processes of an organization affected by AI agents, CFO DIVE told GLANSCHNIG. These agents can help finance the automating teams with high labor intensity and financial closure, he said.
The following is a Q&R, made by e-mail, between Cushion And Alexis Alexis of CFO Dive. The exchange was published for more clarity and conciseness.
Diving at CFO:: How do you define the agents of AI or agentic AI, and what part of a potential game changer This emerging space with regard to business automation, in particular in the business financing function?
Georg GLANTSCHNIG:: An agent uses AI to perform tasks and take measures on your behalf. The agents work alongside or on behalf of a person, a team or an organization and go from simple and fast agents who carry out a simple question or one task such as the approval of the invoice to more agents Advanced and entirely autonomous which orchestrate processes from start to finish such as order to species.
Ensuring the accuracy and conformity of financial operations and reports is a fundamental responsibility for each finance service. With financial data dispersed on several data sources, the financial transactions circulating and recorded from internal and external sources, the maintenance of the financial precision of the data is an intimidating task, often carried out manually and subject to human errors.
By taking advantage of agents to automate key financial processes, finance professionals can benefit from time research between systems without sacrificing, or even increase accuracy and conformity.
In addition, the agent’s ability to adapt and learn dynamically constantly makes automation focused on the agent much more sustainable than that traditional based on rules that requires more continuous maintenance.
Diving at CFO:: Are fully autonomous AI agents a reality or simply an aspiration at this stage and is the market ready for this?
Georg GLANTSCHNIG:: The confidence and confidence of our customers in AI are in the lead for us. Therefore, we started with assistance capacities in 2024 in our full ERP portfolio. Today, 50% of our users use co -pilots in Dynamics 365 applications. In the same responsible way, we introduce agents, gradually increasing their autonomy at a rate adapted to each individual client. Different customers and teams differ in their AI journey and how speed they adopt new technologies, but we already see many examples for customers travel quickly.
Customers are already building their own agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio. For example, pets at home, the largest pet care company in the United Kingdom, Created an agent So that their profile protection team compiles more effectively for a qualified human journal, which could have the potential to achieve an annual seven -digit savings. Organizations like McKinsey & Company, Thompson Reuters, Clifford Chance, and more in the world are also See an incredible impact Construction of their own personalized agents in Copilot Studio.
Copilot for Finance also offers an experience of assistance agent and automated to complete data reconciliation, allowing the user to choose the required automation level. With assistance, users are involved in each stage of the process and can “graduates” with fully agentic experience once confident.
Diving at CFO:: From the point of view of your business, what is the importance of the human element with regard to the adoption and use of AI agents, and how could it change as technology evolves and becomes more mature?
Georg GLANTSCHNIG:: Agents automatize business processes and can vary in complexity, in range and autonomy – of the generation of information on request to the execution of discreet tasks, to planning, management and orchestration of complete processes of independently. The agents will not interact directly with the end users but with the co -pilots of these users. In IA-First companies, we plan that each employee will have his own co-pilot and that they will be supported by tens of thousands of agents. Our goal is to have a co -pilot for each worker and an agent for each business process.
We plan that over time, humans will play a more supervision role, supervising the work carried out by agents and the agent’s learning processes.
The agents created in Copilot Studio are limited by the actions and tools which are explicitly defined by the author. Each interaction that an author has with an agent is recorded, so that the authors can examine the registration to see which actions are called by the agent and why.
Agents created for Dynamics 365 include “human in the loop” approvals. For example, the account reconciliation agent in Dynamics 365 Finance examines and automatically reconciles transactions between fabric and the great general book. When he finds deviations, this degenerates them to a human for a more in -depth review.
Humans remain in control by selecting the functions that the agent manages and can update these parameters at any time. The agent suggests solutions for deviations based on previous human resolutions. As it works alongside humans, the agent learns and proactively offers rules and actions to become gradually more independent. At any time, humans can examine the agent’s operations, ensure full visibility and establish confidence.
Diving at CFO:: Is there a risk that certain roles within the financing function of companies can be moved by AI agents in the future? If so, to what extent could we see?
Georg GLANTSCHNIG: AI agents help to revolutionize many financial workflows, by automating and rationalizing processes with high intensity of labor like Financial Close. In doing so, financial professionals are able to spend more time focusing on the provision of strategic knowledge and business growth, while ensuring accuracy and organizational compliance. We note that AI agents help generate similar changes between sales, services and other commercial functions and are optimistic about the future of IA-FIRST trade processes.
We consider AI revolution as a revolution that fundamentally reshapes work and how work is done. Although it is too early to determine the exact impact on the financing market, it is likely that certain jobs will disappear and that some new ones will emerge. As mentioned above, administrative jobs could transform into supervision roles, and we note a new role of the “business administrators of emerging agent – with the responsibility of the implementation and continuous improvement of agents .