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Board Agents: Karndean spends less time finding consolidation issues and more time understanding them

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1:13 min

  1. Where the controller agent is very good actually is applying a level of logic to

  2. its answers. I found it was really useful because it would say things like, "Oh,

  3. your receivables provision looks low compared to other businesses," or, "One

  4. business seems to be out of line with the others." And that's actually quite useful

  5. analysis just to help guide us in the direction of where we then look as a team.

  6. But actually understanding where the problems are and finding them, getting good

  7. analysis and insight on the problems, that's where the time goes.

  8. So that's why I find it very helpful to have a tool that can point us in the right

  9. direction quickly. It was pretty easy to figure out how it worked because you've

  10. got a few command prompts. And if you've used ChatGPT or something similar, it

  11. functions very similarly. Where we spend most of our time is analyzing the data and

  12. trying to find where the problems are.

  13. So then having the agents that can investigate a lot of variances, quite deep

  14. levels of the data very quickly, that saves us a lot of time just guiding us to the

  15. areas that we need to look at. So instead of building a new report and then another

  16. new report to get a bit closer and a bit closer to the answer, it's much better to

  17. be able to just ask a question and then zero in on it.

Board Agents: Karndean spends less time finding consolidation issues and more time understanding them

Karndean’s Group Finance Director Chris Brown explains how the Board Agents for the Office of Finance help investigate consolidation issues, understand financial variances, and get to answers faster.

The challenge
Karndean consolidates financial results across a wide network of territories. For its finance team, the real work begins after consolidation: identifying which entity is driving a variance, understanding why a balance moved, and getting comfortable enough with the answer to defend it.

“Actually understanding where the problems are and finding them and getting good analysis and insight on the problems, that’s where the time goes.”

Guided, explainable analysis
Board Agents for the Office of Finance help move from reporting to investigation faster. Instead of simply returning data, they can highlight unusual balances, identify where one business differs from others, and explain why an issue may need attention.

Chris can also challenge the analysis and ask where conclusions came from, helping the finance team investigate assumptions rather than treating AI output as a black box.

The result
Finance teams can move from reporting to understanding faster, asking questions directly rather than creating additional reports to investigate an issue.

“Instead of building a new report and then another new report to get a bit closer to the answer, it’s much better to be able to just ask a question and then zero in on it.”

 

See what the Board Controller Agent can do for your close.

The Board Controller Agent enhances the integrity of your financial close by validating data, resolving intercompany mismatches, and optimizing general ledger mappings. It applies embedded accounting logic at every step of consolidation — reducing manual review, surfacing true exceptions, and helping controllers deliver accurate, compliant results with confidence.

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