Wipro framework tackles F&A leaders’ GenAI fears

Finance leaders are excited by the value generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can bring to delivering insights, forecasts, and workflow. Still, many feel held back by the threat of security issues, data bias, and hallucinations that come with GenAI territory.

Wipro’s solution is a framework designed to realize GenAI benefits across the F&A value chain while tackling those concerns. Wipro is implementing GenAI capabilities in procure-to-pay (P2P), record-to-report (R2R), order-to-cash (O2C), and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to create more visibility in integrating front, middle, and back offices, including these GenAI offerings:

• A digital tool for P2P that provides a summarized view of contracts and performs deviation analysis using natural language search from contractual documents with a linked reference into the document for optional human validation.
• A digital assistant for R2R that handles financial data inquiries and generates content for quarterly financial report creation.
• A virtual assistant for FP&A that provides financial metrics and predicts responses to “what-if” inquiries, considering changes in macroeconomic elements.
• A digital assistant for O2C that responds to customer queries related to loan services and helps onboard new customers.

Leaders need a way to navigate the negatives of GenAI

The use cases are clear, but F&A leaders need a way to navigate the security, bias, and trust issues in GenAI implementation. The Wipro Enterprise Generative AI (WeGA) framework offers responsible AI controls and guardrails to govern and reduce risk. The framework includes accelerators and design features such as language model (LM) fine-tuning, hallucination reduction, controls to support responsible AI and content moderation, and a transparency framework.

It also supports synthetic data generation, which can be tailored to F&A-specific scenarios to fill data gaps and enhance analysis and prediction.

AI is already unlocking measurable value in case after case

Clients are already benefiting from measurable results with AI across the F&A spectrum:

• Wipro used its AI-powered forecasting engine, based on AutoML, neural architecture search (NAS), and causal relationship algorithms, to accurately predict the revenue of a global fashion and retail brand. This solution resulted in a significant improvement of around 85% to 99% in revenue prediction accuracy, with prediction turnaround time reduced from two weeks to a few hours.
• A telecom provider based in the UK had real-time diagnostic dashboards designed to identify risks and potential delays in their quote-to-cash flow, including quotation, order management, order execution, and billing. As a result, the model delivered a total financial impact of $80 million, revenue protection, and acceleration.
• Wipro applied its HOLMES machine learning technology to develop an anomaly detection solution for accounts payable auditing. This solution was deployed at a leading facilities management company that had been facing issues with undocumented revenue leakage from third-party payments for over 10 years. As a result of the implementation, the client was able to recover lost spend and identify that future recoveries would be more than 2.3 times the cost of the solution.

Wipro launched AI360 in 2023 with a commitment of $1 billion in investments in AI, data, and analytics. Additionally, Wipro Ventures bridges the gap between emerging start-ups and enterprise customers via a $750 million investment fund. Over the last three years, Wipro has invested in several AI start-ups in GenAI for automation, AI translation platforms, computer vision, and AI-powered legacy modernization. HFS positioned Wipro in Horizon 3 as a market leader in the industry’s first HFS Horizons: Generative Enterprise™ Services, 2023 report.

Exhibit 1: The more regulated the industry, the lower the realization of bottom-line benefits from GenAI

Sample: HFS Pulse, H1, 2024; 605 Global 2000 leaders
Source: HFS Research, 2024

The Bottom Line: GenAI’s bounty comes with risk. The reassurance offered by frameworks such as Wipro’s WeGa paves the way for faster adoption.

Finance executives are gradually integrating GenAI into F&A processes, but governance and risk management, such as that provided by Wipro’s WeGa, will pave the way for faster adoption. F&A leaders are not alone in being tentative in their GenAI journey (Exhibit 1)—the more regulated the industry, the lower the value realization from GenAI. Executives must look to their service providers for reassurance that they have built governance and responsible AI into their offerings.