“AI is much more than a tool; it is an entirely new way of doing business”

The AI revolution is well underway, driving unparalleled progress in business and finance. Microsoft Ireland CFO Áine Nolan shares her experiences and insights

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a valuable opportunity for Ireland to enhance our productivity and solidify our digital leadership in Europe. 

This is according to Áine Nolan, FCA and Chief Financial Officer with Microsoft Ireland, who spoke at the recent Chartered Accountants Ireland Technology Conference, about how AI is revolutionising the finance function and driving unprecedented efficiencies. 

“We have a thriving tech scene in Ireland, a highly educated workforce and really smart government policies. We can really become a hub for AI advancements,” Nolan said.
The potential is significant, driven by the rapid emergence of AI as a commercial proposition and its popularity with users in both their lives and work.

“The rate of AI adoption currently is somewhat unprecedented,” said Nolan. “Generative AI is capturing, distributing and democratising intelligence for everyone and that is a powerful concept.” 

AI uptake in Ireland

Microsoft Ireland recently partnered with Trinity College Dublin Business School to conduct research into the uptake of generative AI in the Irish market.

Published in March 2024, the Generative AI in Ireland 2024 report found that 49 percent of respondents were already using the technology in some form in their organisation.

“This research is less than a year old and already out of date, which just shows you how fast the rate of uptake is. We are due to release new research in March this year, which shows that adoption rates have since risen to about 70 percent,” Nolan said.

Despite its proliferation in Irish workplaces, not all employers are, as yet, fully equipped to manage the implications of the AI age.

“Through our research with Trinity, we have found that employees are bringing their own AI to work, with or without their employer’s consent. This ‘shadow’ gen AI culture creates risks for employers who really need to have guardrails in place,” Nolan said.

“There is also sometimes a view that AI is just an add-on productivity tool you can slot into your existing workflows, but this fundamentally underestimates the magnitude of behavioural change and organisational transformation needed to unlock its value.”

It will take time and a great deal of change management to integrate AI successfully as a new dimension of work, Nolan said.

“People often make the mistake of simply asking how they can apply AI to their existing processes, but, fundamentally, they should be asking what they need AI to do and how it can make their processes more efficient or facilitate innovation—even creating a new service for our customers, for example.”

The dawn of the AI agent

Although many people currently use AI as a kind of “virtual assistant”, helping with everyday tasks, such as organising their work calendar or automating note-taking during meetings, the technology is set to assume a far more prominent and proactive role.

“In the future, AI will operate on your behalf—as an agent—allowing you to eliminate tasks from your plate altogether,” Nolan explained.

“This might mean making autonomous decisions for your IT helpdesk and, eventually, managing your full device refresh, from examining your POs right through to ordering new devices, checking your budgets and getting the necessary human approvals at the end of the process. 

“A more complex example might involve AI looking after lead generation for your business by sourcing and emailing potential customers or acting as a customer support agent in a much more complex way than a chatbot, where it is actually making decisions on behalf of your organisation.”

Microsoft and AI in finance

Already, Nolan and her finance team at Microsoft Ireland are reaping the benefits of the organisation-wide implementation of the software giant’s AI technology.

“Our global CFO Amy Hood consistently challenges our finance team to use our own technology to improve our processes. Her mantra is really clear—by adopting innovative technologies, finance will strengthen its business leadership through compliance, accuracy and efficiency.”

And, as CFOs across all organisations assume an increasingly strategic business role, AI will become even more fundamental to their work day-to-day.

“The role of the CFO is changing rapidly and, as finance leaders, we need to play a lead role in developing a clear AI strategy, ensuring our organisations have the necessary capability, technology and stakeholder buy-in. The rate of AI adoption is unprecedented and we need to be ready,” Nolan said.

“In the last 12 months alone, I have seen big changes in how our own AI at Microsoft has been able to generate intelligent comments for us, as we work through our balance sheet and P&L variance analysis,” Nolan said.

“We have had a big win in the efficiency of our contract review process, where we once had a full revenue recognition team analysing all of our contracts to account for them.

“Now, we have AI reading 10,000 contracts a year and sorting them into low-, medium- and high-risk categories for us.”

This means the revenue recognition team is only required to review high-risk contracts manually. 

“We’ve had other big wins in journal entry anomaly detection, which has helped reduce risk on our financial statement—and our AI is now able to produce the first draft of the statement, reducing time spent on this work by about 15 percent.”

Microsoft’s generative AI is creating models that recognise patterns in the financial planning and analysis data used to predict outcomes.

“We’ve moved from bottom-up to top-down budgeting, reducing time spent on budgeting analysis from six months to six weeks,” Nolan said. 

“This means we have much more time to think strategically and analytically—and to have a seat at the table in terms of our influence in the wider organisation. For us, AI is well and truly here.”