Which of the following topics are you most excited by?
Procurement-to-pay, Accounts Payable, and Receivable.
Why does it excite you?
It is amazing to see new innovations in the P2P field (Procure-to-pay). These innovations are helping finance teams automate close to %100 of their redundant tasks and are helping them focus their efforts on larger scale projects that are more cost-effective long term.
What are the trends in this area or products in this area that you are the fondest of? Why?
There are a lot! For instance, there is an Israeli startup named Nipendo that has been able to build a P2P 2.0 infrastructure. They are using RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to help automate and scale AP Automation, Invoice Automation, and many other key financial processes.
Also, we are seeing companies saving huge amounts of money by removing errors in accounting. They do that by utilizing AI solutions that are not as prone to errors and are able to take a load of the manual work that humans have previously done.
What are the positive impacts they can have on society?
Humans will have a chance to work in a more flexible manner while focusing on what they conceive as important. If you talk to AP managers and even to CFOs, you will see that they hate doing redundant procurement tasks. With these new products and solutions, they will be able to allocate their resources and efforts to things that they conceive as important.
What are the negative impacts they can have on society?
I used to think these AP solutions would make lots of people become jobless. But, after several conversations with financial managers, I came to the realization that these softwares are not meant to replace humans; they are meant to assist them and help them enjoy their work more.
What are your predictions on how these technologies will evolve?
I think more and more companies are going to utilize P2P automation software in order to have a competitive advantage in their fields.
What are your predictions on the ethics of future societies in relation to these technologies?
As long as these technologies are used legally, and are not set to manipulate certain tax registrations, I believe they will be adopted by future societies in a productive way.