TPS Reports Get AIed

Interesting case studies are starting to emerge around AI.

One in particular I read about was Airbus SE, which The Wall Street Journal reported is using AI to squeeze cost out of its finance function.

The article reports that less than half of companies’ accounts payable activity worldwide is currently automated, according to the CFO Consulting practice at Accenture Strategy. That number is expected to rise to 80% by 2025.

Less than two years ago for Airbus Americas employees would review about 25,000 travel and expense reports filed by employees in Texas every year. Manual processing could take up to an hour to review.

The new system developed by AppZen matches reports against a repository of accepted vendors, expense types and amounts to spot anomalies. Now humans only review details seen as “noncompliant," which the Journal article reports is only one or two lines in a 30-line report.

If the report’s a go, it’s automatically validated and payment initiated, and if it’s flagged noncompliant, high risk reports are blocked from payment and reviewed by a human analyst.

Bottom line: Airbus’ initial investment of $50,000 paid off and resulted another $50,000 savings in year one, and they expect to save $100K this year and $200K in 2020.

You can learn more about some other AI cases here.

Texas Two Step

CNBC is reporting that Twitter and Facebook have suspended numerous accounts they say are tied to a Chinese disinformation campaign against pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Twitter indicated it had suspended 936 accounts likely related to the activity, and that the information was designed to sow political discord in Hong Kong. Facebook removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts, one of which had 15,500 followers.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the computer systems of 23 small Texas towns have been seized and held for ransom in a widespread, coordinated cyberattack, according to a report from The New York Times.

Texas’ Department of Information Resources was “racing to bring systems back online” after the attack, and it was unclear who was responsible but that the state had described the attacker as “one single threat actor.”

Last year, there were 54 publicly reported attacks on city, county/state governments, court systems, emergency services, and school districts in Texas. So far this year there have been 61 (excluding these most recent attacks).

Now comes that lingering question: Pay the ransom and get your systems back, or lose a lot of data, time, and resources and possibly rebuild from scratch?!

You can learn more about IBM Security solutions here.