Research conducted by Vlerick Business School has discovered that in the area of AI financial planning, the technology consistently outperforms humans when allocating budgets with strategic guidelines in place. Businesses that use AI for budgeting processes experience substantial improvements in the accuracy and efficiency of budgeting plans compared to human decision-making.
The study’s goal was to interpret AI’s role in corporate budgeting, examining how well such technology performs when making financial decisions. Ultimately, it’s an investigation into whether AI’s financial decisions align with a company’s long-term strategies and how its decisions compare to human management.
The researchers, Kristof Stouthuysen, Professor of Management Accounting and Digital Finance at Vlerick Business School, and PhD researcher, Emma Willems, studied tactical and strategic budgeting approaches.
Tactical budgeting is about quick, responsive decisions, referring to short-term, data-driven financial decisions. These are aimed at improving immediate performance, like making adjustments to spending based on market trends.
Strategic budgeting typically involves a more comprehensive approach that focuses on future planning, aligning various resources with a business’s vision.
According to the research, AI is superior when performing tactical budgeting processes like cost management and resource allocation. However, the need for human insight remains important to ensure accurate and strategic financial planning over the long term.
The controlled experiment was achieved by running a management simulation where experienced managers were asked to allocate budgets for a hypothetical automotive parts company. Stouthuysen and Willems then compared these human-made decisions to those produced by an AI algorithm using the same financial data.
The results concluded that AI was superior in optimising budgets when a company’s strategic financial planning was clearly defined. However, AI struggled to make budgeting decisions when key performance indicators (KPIs) did not align with the company’s financial goals.
Stouthuysen and Willems work on the study emphasised the importance of a collaboration between humans and AI. “As AI continues to evolve, companies that use its strengths in tactical budgeting while maintaining human oversight in strategic planning will gain a competitive edge. The key is knowing where AI should lead and where human intuition remains indispensable.”
According to the study, AI can theoretically take over from humans when it comes to tactical budgeting, providing more precise and efficient outcomes. Stouthuysen and Willems believe companies need to define their strategic priorities clearly and implement AI for tactical budget-making decisions to maximise financial performances and achieve sustainable growth.
The findings challenge the widespread misconception that AI can completely substitute the need for humans in budgeting. Instead, this research emphasises the importance of taking a balanced approach, utilising both AI and humans, assigning tasks to silicon or human processes according to their proven abilities.
(Image source: “Payday” by 401(K) 2013 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
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