Artificial intelligence has freed up 50 per cent of Microsoft UAE’s finance team’s time, allowing the company to create two new roles without increasing headcount, said Shereen Chalak Maalouf, chief finance executive of Microsoft UAE.
“I have two roles now on my team that did not exist exactly a year ago. I have someone who looks after strategic partnerships that we do at a country scale. And I have someone who looks after our Copilot and AI business,” she said.
Speaking at the NAFA Summit Dubai, a Khaleej Times event running in its eighth edition, Maalouf said the company redesigned its forecasting process using AI, allowing employees to spend less time gathering and organising information and more time influencing business decisions.
The system, called the UAE Command Centre, uses an AI agent to gather financial data and business updates, identify developments that could affect forecasts and make recommendations to the finance team.
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AI recommends, but humans take action
Maalouf said the system brings together financial metrics and information from the company’s regular business meetings, giving the AI agent access to both financial data and updates from different departments.
The agent follows up with business teams to gather updates on developments that could affect forecasts, whether positively or negatively. It then recommends whether certain items should be retained, removed or flagged as potential risks or opportunities.
However, the final decisions remain with the finance team, which reviews the recommendations and applies its own judgement before making changes to forecasts.
Maalouf said the time saved through the system allowed Microsoft UAE to redirect employees towards new responsibilities, rather than simply reducing the size of the team.
She said companies looking to get more value from AI need more than the right technology. They also need clean, unified data, proper security controls and employees who understand how to rethink existing business processes.
Finance professionals, she added, must be able to assess AI-generated insights critically rather than simply accepting the recommendations produced by the technology.
“The differentiator is the human element,” she said, adding that employees need to develop both the technical skills to work with AI and the judgement to determine whether its output makes business sense.
Source: Khaleej Times