Facilitate your Finance Tools Using AI and chatbots

Not having a single end-to-end Procure to Pay process requires many resources to maintain each app for your core business processes, such as procurement and payment. Each app used to be in its own silo, individually updated with no connection from each other. Therefore, both the employee and user experience suffered the consequences of using several apps for each practice, which required more manual work between tasks. Fortunately, you can facilitate your finance tools with Microsoft AI services to focus on the end-to-end user experience. 

Microsoft delivers an AI-first architecture to upgrade your Procure to Pay process, aiming for a real user experience that quickly provides essential information with an interactive bot that meets the fundamental goals: 

• Anticipate the user’s intention 
• Deliver a smooth user experience with a specific context 

The perks of conversational AI

A consolidated service 

Microsoft consolidated the sixteen discrete services composing the Procure to Pay platform, unifying the end-to-end user experience where functionalities, presentation layer, APIs, and master data are all connected to each other. This consolidation process was made by automating the front and back-office operations thoroughly.

Technically speaking, Microsoft integrates a Procure to Pay support layer beneath all services. The Finance Digital Assistant incorporates into Procure to Pay services to manage user activity and provide support, giving the chance to seamlessly shift from the bot to an employee for additional assistance without users noticing.

The 5 essential tips for implementing a bot

1. Clear objectives: Define your organization’s goals and expectations before implementing any strategy.
2. Define ROI: Make a balance between cost savings and revenue improvements, comparing manual work vs. automated work.
3. Prioritize use cases: Identify bots’ roles and difficulty level to choose the right one that will improve your customer experience while lowering support-ticket cost.
4. Understand your users: Keep your bot’s content upgraded to identify user intent and deliver solutions in fewer words, providing higher customer satisfaction.
5. Fallback strategy: Create a strategy that keeps your user experience in mind with a backup plan if something goes in a different direction with complex questions. Allow the user to request live agents or your bot to auto-create a support ticket for additional service.

Prioritize user experience

When creating a bot, delivering a high user experience must be your number one priority. They solve the user’s issues quickly and efficiently regardless of the platform or device the customer uses, providing an easy-to-use bot interface.

“As we reimagine how we offer services to our customers, we need to put our customer lenses on and provide AI-driven simple solutions that stitch the seamless experience across the services.”

—Ashish Sayal, Principal Software Engineering Manager, Finance Procure to Pay, Microsoft

Microsoft keeps helping companies become more data-driven with an AI-first approach, updating finance operations while delivering improved results with a modernized architecture.