Director Accounting Ops – Merkle Science
Akriti Das
Director Accounting Ops – Merkle Science
FTUL
Welcome to our finance tech series. Let’s welcome Akriti Das from Merkle Science.
Akriti
I am the Director of Accounting Operations. I was the first person of finance and then I grew up. Right now I had even all the projects that my company work on.
FTUL
How do you think AI and automation will impact your company’s financial operations and reporting processes in next three to five years?
Akriti
AI and automation are going to revolutionize turnaround consulting. They allow us to handle data-intensive tasks—like financial analysis, forecasting, and real-time KPI tracking—with greater precision and speed. Over the next few years, I expect that automation will help reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, allowing CFOs to focus more on strategic initiatives, value creation, and providing actionable insights. AI’s predictive capabilities will also be a huge advantage, particularly in financial restructuring, by improving decision-making through faster access to accurate data.
FTUL
What financial metrics or KPIs have seen the most improvement due to AI and automation implementations currently.
Akriti
But if it is implemented properly with Salesforce and the pipelines which we have, I think the ARR projection and the thought of it, how much conversion we have or cap we have based on actual data would be much easier and much better. I don’t think it is being implemented on a very large scale right now using an AI tool, but right now it’s still based on the, you know, the way we have been using it. But yes, in future, very soon future, sure that once we are able to integrate Salesforce or your sales pipeline and your accounting ecosystems together to an AI platform which can generate a report for you, I think it will help a lot. Rather than a manual labour. Okay, a manual work hours, it will automatically tell you what position would look like more or less.
FTUL
Can you share an example of a successful AI or automation project that significantly improved financial operations?
Akriti
We did implement ChatGPT for preparing reports for us. Okay. It is still not that effective, but I’m sure that as ChatGPT and AI engine improves, it will help a lot. As I said in my previous question, once it is able to integrate data from multiple platforms, the reporting analysis would be much, much better. It.
