Everywhere you turn online, people are talking about AI agents, and it’s easy to see why.
AI is evolving from simply responding to questions to actually taking over entire tasks on its own. Give an AI agent a goal, and it’ll get to work: triggering workflows, adapting to live updates, and making decisions along the way—all with minimal oversight.
We’re already seeing this in action.
OpenAI’s new Operator, for instance, can take a high-level goal like “order dinner for four under $50” and carry it out on its own, navigating the web, filling forms, and executing multi-step tasks. Microsoft is also advancing in this space with Copilot Studio, which enables users to build custom AI agents.
For FP&A teams, this shift is a game changer.
Instead of spending hours pulling data from multiple systems, cleaning spreadsheets, and double-checking numbers, AI agents can take care of those repetitive steps. That frees your team to focus on what really matters: interpreting results, advising leadership, and driving strategy.
What are AI agents?
AI agents are software programs powered by artificial intelligence that can autonomously perform tasks.
Unlike traditional AI tools that require detailed instructions for each step, AI agents are goal-oriented. They can carry out multi-step assignments across different tools with little to no human input.
At its core, agentic AI is built on top of large language models, like GPT.
The model understands the user’s request, while the agent acts as the executor. They collect context, decide what needs to happen, and coordinate actions across different tools. This pairing enables agents to reason through tasks, trigger workflows, and adapt as new information becomes available.
If your FP&A team is already using generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, you might be wondering: Is there really a difference between AI assistants and AI agents?
AI agents go beyond suggestion and text generation. They carry out entire workflows with minimal guidance and time investment. Once given a high-level goal, they can:
- Break down the task into smaller steps
- Decide what to do next based on data and context
- Interact with multiple systems (like ERPs, BI tools, HRIS systems, or spreadsheets)
- Deliver a completed output, like a forecast model, reconciled financials, or a dashboard for instance
Simply put, AI assistants support your work, and AI agents help do the work for you.
How can AI agents be used for FP&A?
AI agents can be especially useful in moments when you need insights on the go.
Say you’re in a meeting with executive leaders or the board and need to pull up current numbers, explain variances, or respond to follow-up questions in real time. Instead of scrambling to check multiple systems or provide answers after the fact, you can rely on an AI agent to retrieve the right data, run the analysis, and surface key insights right when you need them.
What do AI agents mean for the future of FP&A?
The prospect of AI agents may have some finance professionals sweating, thinking that they’re going to replace their jobs. But as Rishi Grover, Co-Founder and Chief Solutions Architect at Vena puts it, AI isn’t here to displace finance professionals, but to free them up.
“I have so much respect for the Office of Finance. These are incredibly intelligent individuals who joined their organizations to contribute to strategy, not to spend their days buried in manual tasks,” Rishi says. “AI is the co-pilot, not the pilot. With that support, finance can focus more on high-impact, strategic work.”
AI agents have the potential to redefine the experience of working in FP&A, allowing the function to move from reactive reporting to proactive, insight-driven business partnering.
This means:
- More time for strategy, less time in spreadsheets. Many FP&A teams still spend more time collecting and cleaning data than analyzing it. In fact, the 2022 FP&A Trends Survey found that only 33% of FP&A’s time is spent generating insights, while 45% goes to low-value tasks like manual data prep. AI agents flip that script, helping to automate some of that report building, so teams can focus on data interpretation, storytelling, and advising the business.
- Forecasting gets faster and more flexible. As markets shift more rapidly, static monthly forecasts are becoming less effective. AI agents can help FP&A teams update forecasts more frequently and efficiently by automating data pulls, applying predefined logic, and generating insights in less time. According to Deloitte’s 2023 CFO Signals Survey, 42% of CFOs are already investing in AI to improve forecasting accuracy and agility. And half of companies using AI for forecasting have seen a 20% decrease in their overall forecast errors.
- Business teams won’t always have to wait on Finance for answers to routine questions. AI agents can help finance professionals instantly retrieve responses to plain-language questions like “What’s our Q1 spend vs. budget?,” without digging through multiple reports. At the education technology company Kuali, for instance, the finance team uses Vena Copilot to quickly answer stakeholder questions by inputting them directly into the tool, saving time and eliminating the need to open multiple files. This speeds up their workflow and allows Finance to focus on more strategic priorities.
The FP&A teams that make moves towards implementing AI into their operations now won’t just improve efficiency; they’ll deliver faster insights, become more agile, and elevate their role as strategic partners.
Looking to learn more about how generative AI can help your finance team unlock productivity and unleash its strategic potential? Explore Vena Copilot.
