Market Perspectives

Historically, it’s been difficult to convince chief financial officers to invest in technology that makes it easier to spend money. That’s probably because before digital technologies, the natural impediments to spending stood as crude but effective strategies for fiscal control. Today, however, not using technology to streamline corporate spend actually increases costs and decreases control. The right software can increase efficiency and visibility into how money is spent, provide always-vigilant automated supervision, and enforce process conformity. Increasingly, artificial intelligence is providing finance and accounting with the means to improve spend-related processes.

Emburse is a global expense management and accounts payable automation software company.Recently, Emburse launched Emburse Audit, which is an AI-powered expense auditing capability that builds on an organization’s internal controls to highlight duplicative, wasteful or fraudulent spending. With Emburse Audit, finance departments can increase efficiency and ensure compliance using software geared to deliver accurate and in-policy expense reimbursement with the help of machine learning and a team of human auditors.

Emburse Audit embeds expert level auditing that is complemented by a human line of defense, which enables a more efficient, accurate and time-sensitive approach to processing expenses. The new offering builds on Emburse’s existing expense management controls by allowing flexibility to choose the level of audit that best suits an organization’s needs. It does the groundwork for analyzing expense transactions against pre-defined criteria to assess compliance. Any instances that have a high probability for error are routed to human auditors for review, reducing workloads for managers and others while reducing errors and enhancing controls and compliance.

The audit capability is available in several of Emburse’s products, including Chrome River spend-management software for large and global enterprises, Certify spend management for small to midsized organizations, or through Nexonia’s expense reporting, invoice management, time tracking, and travel applications for midsize and larger organizations.

Emburse Audit gives finance executives a means of reducing annoying and unproductive workloads for operating managers while streamlining finance processes, increasing internal controls and reducing unnecessary costs. It is representative of the practical use of AI, which uses technology to assist rather than replace individuals. Moreover, because AI systems "learn” over time, organizations can become increasingly productive as the system adapts to specific procedures and processes.

Organizations are embracing the digital transformation of finance and accounting to increase efficiency, lower costs, enhance control, deepen visibility and ensure continuity. Ventana Research advises finance and accounting organizations to adopt AI wherever practical to increase operational efficiency, reduce process cycle times and free up time spent on easily-automatable routine activities. We recommend organizations investigate Emburse’s spend-management applications to improve performance and enhance worker satisfaction.