How can finance functions add more value? It's a challenge accountants and finance professionals in business and industry increasingly face.
One way to boost efficiency and productivity is by speeding up financial root cause analyses with artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data analytics software Microsoft Power BI. These tools can do in minutes what takes hours with Microsoft Excel. But switching gears can be daunting, so here's an interactive, step-by-step example to get you started.
Imagine we're accountants in the finance department of Pro Flight Grips Inc., a fictitious company that manufactures grips for recreational products for customers across North America. The company has three product lines
- plastic, cord (rubber with cord fabric for moisture absorption), and regular (rubber) - and it manufactures and sells the following products: golf grips (full-cord, half-cord, and cord grips for put-ters; regular swing club grips; and grips without seam), ski handles, and tennis racket grips.
While preparing financial statements for top management, we notice a significant drop in sales in a month that typically shows more robust demand. How do we quickly determine the underlying cause of this problem in anticipation of management's questions?
Historically, this question might have taken hours or days to inves-tigate. Now, data analytics assisted by Al can quickly provide a summary and detailed analysis in a fraction of the time.
In the example of Pro Flight
Grips, we identify possible causes at a high level with the help of Power BI's Al "Analyze" feature,