In today’s high-pressure finance environment, leaders across finance, shared services, and audit are being asked to do more with the same resources: control costs, enforce compliance, and contribute to business strategy all while increasing operational efficiency.
But most teams lack one critical capability: real-time visibility into financial transactions. Whether you're leading accounts payable, auditing employee expenses, or reconciling cross-functional spend, blind spots in oversight processes introduce risk and prevent your workforce from focusing on what matters most.
According to Gartner, 74% of companies have lowered their growth projections for the year yet internal finance teams still face rising expectations. The gap between what's expected and what's possible is growing, especially for those stuck in manual review cycles or fragmented audit processes. As explored in our new report with SSON, The Urgency of Autonomous Finance for CFOs in 2025, finance teams are beginning to shift from traditional reactive review toward real-time, behavior-based visibility. And it’s not just CFOs driving this shift—it’s shared services leaders, auditors, and T&E analysts who are closest to the risk.
The Cost of Limited Visibility Across Finance Operations
Finance organizations spend countless hours chasing down errors, reconciling mismatched entries, and following up on out-of-policy spend. AP teams are buried in invoice triage. Audit leaders are drowning in low-value alerts. T&E reviewers struggle to catch fraud hidden behind increasingly sophisticated receipts. The common thread? Poor visibility. When enterprise teams are working from disparate systems, and reviews happen after the fact, real risks slip through the cracks. With technology that connects data across the entire landscape of spend, teams are empowered by risk that is identified by pattern identification and real-time policy violation notifications.
Real-Time Transaction Visibility Powers Every Finance Function
Whether you're managing global P2P workflows or conducting internal audits, access to live, connected data transforms your team’s impact. Shared services leaders can streamline exception handling and accelerate cycle times. Audit teams reduce noise and direct attention toward high-risk, high-value cases. T&E reviewers shift from manual spot-checks to intelligent compliance oversight. Visibility doesn't replace your team, it amplifies their efficiency, helping them spend less time on routine reviews and more time driving strategic outcomes.
What High-Performing Teams Are Doing Differently
Industry research from SSON shows that 41% of organizations already using AI in finance started with accounts payable. Others are deploying AI to detect fraud, flag duplicate payments, and accelerate exception handling. These teams aren’t just automating tasks—they’re redesigning how risk is managed across the finance function. They’ve eliminated silos, reduced manual effort, and gained the visibility to act fast.
Whether your goal is to protect working capital, streamline audit cycles, or strengthen policy compliance, it all starts with visibility. Finance teams that see the full picture, across functions and in real time, are the ones who can drive meaningful, measurable results. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll explore how behavior-based analytics are reshaping risk detection, and why the next generation of finance leaders is prioritizing pattern recognition over policy alone.
