What are you going to get more benefit from – Business Partnering or Artificial Intelligence?
The correct answer is both.
It’s not an OR question, it’s an AND question and if you are lacking in one, you are lacking in both.
Now, the noise on Finance Business Partnering has slowed down somewhat in the past 24 months since chatGPT came along and blew everyone’s minds.
Which worries me. We are going back to the finance teams of the past where nobody sees you and nobody actions anything finance notices.
And I see it in the finance teams I work with and talk to. The world is now all about AI, automation and technology.
But once it’s in……then what.
The skills and behaviours to introduce tech, and get that working well, are completely different to the skills and behaviours needed once it is in.
And those skills and behaviours are your business partnering skills.
Get the robots doing as much as you can, I agree with that. But they won’t ever be able to take all of the reporting, analysis, commentary, etc into your organisation and get change actioned and executed.
That’s what humans are needed for.
And unfortunately if you don’t acquire and develop those partnering skills and behaviours, well, then you aren’t much value to anyone.
And you will be left with a career where the bots will do what you can do way quicker and way faster. And probably cheaper.
So you need both AI and BP. They don’t compete they complement each other and have a natural order
Focus on business partnering and you will never get everything done efficiently – you will not be leveraging that tech that exists – and just be busy busy busy on the data
Which will make you fairly useless.
Focus on the tech, and wow you will be quick, but you will lack the skills needed to execute anything you find or develop.
Which makes you fairly useless
FBP and AI is not a competition. It’s a polarity. And if you don’t manage both you will be left behind.