A new report shows that, while 66% of organizations have invested in AI, many are still determining how to measure its value. The report, report, “AI-Powered Finance: New Practices, ROI and Future Outlook”, examined how finance teams in the U.S. and UK are adopting artificial intelligence to improve productivity and business outcomes. It was commissioned by Emburse and is based on a survey of 1,500 finance professionals. Emburse is a provider of travel and expense solutions.
As finance teams move beyond basic automation, the data suggests a growing need for solutions that connect AI to broader business strategy, using intelligence to optimize spend, reduce risk, and enable faster decision-making.
“Expense Intelligence is about moving from reactive expense tracking to real-time, strategic visibility,” said Marne Martin, CEO of Emburse. “This report confirms what we’re hearing from finance leaders every day — they’re ready to turn AI into business value. But it requires connecting spend data, automation, and decision-making in a unified way.”
Finance departments are adopting AI at a significant level, but gradually. On average, respondents say they use AI 3.7 times a day, and 37% of their tasks are driven by AI to some extent. Over the next five years, they expect AI to transform planning and forecasting the most (26%).
Still, there are obstacles that need to be overcome before finance can fully embrace AI automation. Finance leaders’ top concerns include data security and privacy risks (24%), AI making mistakes or introducing errors (18%), the effect on the finance role (18%), and compliance and regulatory challenges (10%). Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents say they would move jobs if their employer did not take enough precautions to manage AI risk.
Despite these reservations, most (74%) say that their company’s return on investment (ROI) in AI meets or exceeds expectations. The AI-driven finance functions currently providing the highest ROI are automating accounts payable and receivable (26%), forecasting or budgeting (26%), and fraud detection (25%).
“Finance teams aren’t hesitant to use AI. They’re embracing it cautiously and with the same rigorous, analytical mindset they apply to every strategic initiative,” said Adriana Carpenter, chief financial officer of Emburse. “What’s transformative is how this mindset is redefining the very notion of value. By focusing on the integrity of how business outcomes are achieved with AI, finance leaders are creating more resilient, data-driven workflows that elevate both business performance and team alignment.”
“For AI to deliver on its revolutionary potential, it must be designed with the specific needs of finance leaders in mind,” Carpenter added. “That means it should be purpose-built, dependable, and able to drive measurable business impact at scale.”
How exactly to measure the ROI of AI in the finance department is an ongoing debate. Some companies use standard financial metrics, such as cost savings, fraud reduction, and revenue growth. Others focus on operational efficiency metrics such as time saved or increased automation. Still others take a more qualitative approach, measuring overall customer or employee satisfaction once AI has been successfully implemented.
A remarkable 81% of respondents say their efforts to measure ROI for AI have changed the way they evaluate business costs across the enterprise, including outlays for software, systems, and vendor partnerships. In addition to a heightened focus on traditional financial or operational efficiency metrics (53%), many are shifting toward more dynamic measurements, paying closer attention to long-term strategic impact (30%) and adopting real-time, adaptive evaluation frameworks (27%).
This shift in mindset signals a powerful evolution: organizations are moving beyond static cost analysis to embrace value as a strategic, continuously unfolding metric. As AI continues to reshape how business decisions are made, now is the time to elevate how we define and measure ROI, not just for AI, but for every investment that fuels innovation, agility, and growth.
Click here to download the full report.
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Tags: Accounting, expense report, Technology
