Why AI is important for ERP
Artificial Intelligence; it is the word of the day. Everyone knows everything about it, and nothing about it. At its core, it is getting a computer to do something you have no interest doing by hand. Or, it is a research assistant. Or, it is a computer that tells you how to communicate with it (code). Or, it can write you blog posts, and be your own personal minion. It can also help you beautify your own pictures or create entirely new pictures of yourself doing cool things.
What it means for ERP is an entirely different story.
Although there is not definite answer or solution of AI in the NetSuite space, there has certainly been advances in AI for Salesforce and other software vendors. NetSuite should keep in mind that at some point, users will expect to interact with an AI and leverage its help when using the platform.
Learning could be a good use case. A new user of NetSuite might expect to get a short course on a new feature. “Give me a course on reporting”. And the AI would scrounge the web to find existing content in both video format and text format that the user might want to see, or even provide links directly to Help and SuiteAnswers.
Or ask the AI generic questions of a use case. “How do I reconcile my bank accounts?” and it should spit out:
You have 3 options currently. Bank Feeds, Auto Bank Statement Import, manual upload, or coming soon, NetSuite Account Reconciliation (NSAR)
And the user could ask it the best option, the pros and cons, considerations, implementation time. The AI could then guide it through useful ideas on where to get started.
As a company goes through implementation and is nearing the finish line, testing the system and its processes is considered by many to be one of the most important steps. Say a user might want to test a specific set of test scripts for the financial and accounting processes. A spreadsheet can be produced for a user to see the key test scenarios that a company should test, log the case status, note of any exceptions, etc.
Or, alternatively, a specific process can be taught to the bot to remember so that if another user from the same department has the same task to complete as someone else, say, enter a sales order, a process can be outlined and stored for the bot to repeat again, but to a new person. It can be a trainer for new users, all the while teaching with a company-approved process.
Of course, the level of help an AI can be ultimately depends on the sets of records and permissions that a user has access to. The bot should not be able to supercede core system security to be helpful. The level of guidance and help it provides will be in harmony with that of users’ permissions.
AI is important for ERP, to put it simply, because ERP systems are complex and requires that a company invests time, money, and effort to implement, but ultimately support. We expect the role of AI in ERP to continue growing as it matures and as more users fall back to AI to help in their work life.