Zomalex | Data and AI Training
Introduction to Generative AI for Finance and Procurement Staff
You will learn how to use generative AI models such as ChatGPT and Copilot, to help with common finance tasks.
Who Should Attend
Finance and Procurement Staff who want to learn how to use AI assistants to improve their efficiency and accuracy in typical finance tasks.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, attendees will be able to use generative AI assistants to improve their efficiency and accuracy across typical finance and procurement tasks. Since finance teams use Excel extensively, we’ll take a brief look how two AI assistants working within Excel: Copilot for Excel or Claude for Excel.
Course Content
The course covers:
Introduction
The section provides an overview of Generative AI and demos examples of how it can be helpful for finance and procurement staff. It includes a tour of some current Generative AI assistants: Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini.
Generative AI for finance and procurement staff in transactional roles
This section covers how generative AI can help with typical finance and procurement tasks in transactional roles such as Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable, for example:
- reconciling data from different sources, e.g., purchase orders with invoices;
- cleaning data, e.g., removing duplicates, making supplier names consistent
- extracting key information from data e.g. extract the purchase order numbers from a list of invoices;
- extract key information from an invoice or purchase order document, e.g., supplier name, amount, date, line items;
Generative AI for typical finance and procurement staff in analytic and reporting roles
This section covers how generative AI can help in typical tasks in analytical and reporting roles such as Financial Analyst or Procurement Analyst, for example:
- helping to build a financial model: how to design it, lay it out, so that it is fit for purpose, readable and maintainable;
- analysing financial data, e.g., identifying trends, anomalies, and insights from financial statements;
- generating reports from data, e.g., monthly spend reports;
- summarising long documents, e.g., contracts, terms and conditions;
- drafting standard communications, e.g., emails to suppliers or internal stakeholders;
Using Copilot and Claude within Excel
The benefit of an AI assistant within Excel is that it understands the context of the Excel workbook and can therefore provide more accurate and relevant assistance.
If attendees have access to Microsoft Copilot 365 embedded within Excel, this section will be a hands-on exercise. Otherwise, the instructor will demo these capabilities.
Course Length
This is a full-day course.
Pre-requisites
Although this is not an Excel course, since many finance tasks are done within Excel and some of the lab exercises improve and automate Excel spreadsheets with the help of AI assistants, it is useful to have a basic familiarity with Excel, for example by attending our Excel Foundation Course.
Snapshots from the course exercises
Claude in Excel reviews a financial model