Page 89 - CMA Journal (Nov-Dec 2025)

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A Practical Adoption Roadmap • Access and segregation: Who can trigger actions,
who can approve, who can override?
Many organizations delay transformation because they
think it requires a big budget. It does not. The key is tight • Auditability: Is every GenAI-generated output trace-
scoping, strong governance, and measurable impact. able, versioned, and retained?
• Policy boundaries: What must remain human
• Phase 1 – Discover and Baseline (30 days)
judgment, such as approvals above thresholds,
Select one critical process—close, purchase-to-pay, or write-offs, and control overrides?
order-to-cash. Extract event logs from ERP and The goal is not to remove humans; it is to reduce noise,
supporting systems, map the real process, identify the standardize routine decisions, and free human attention
top 10 variants, and quantify cycle time, rework rate, for judgment and strategy.
exception volume, and cost of delay.
Why This Matters for Pakistan’s Productivity
• Phase 2 – Fix Top Bottlenecks (90 days)
In emerging economies, competitive advantage comes
Target 2–3 highest-cost bottlenecks. Standardize from leapfrogging. Process Intelligence gives
exception handling with short playbooks. Implement organizations a practical path to increase efficiency
dashboards for SLA breaches and deviations. Pilot without expanding headcount, to improve controls
GenAI for drafting exception commentary and without adding paperwork, and to increase decision
evidence packs, only within approved templates. speed without losing auditability.
For regulated, export-oriented, and cost-sensitive
• Phase 3 – Scale and Govern (12 months)
sectors, Process Intelligence can become a quiet but
Expand to connected processes across finance and powerful differentiator, especially when paired with
operations. Establish a control framework with segre- strong management accounting discipline.
gation of duties, approval rules, and audit trails. Intro- Conclusion
duce monitored automation for low-risk actions such
as reminders, routing, and report generation. Build The next wave of workplace efficiency is not about
internal capability, a small Process Intelligence cell in doing the same work faster. It is about making work
finance, partnered with IT. visible, measurable, and self-improving. Process
Intelligence helps finance and operations leaders move
Key Governance Questions for Leaders from reporting the past to shaping performance in the
present, with governance built in.
Efficiency without governance becomes risk. Before
scaling GenAI or agents, leadership should define clear About the Author: Dr. Salman Ahmed Khatani, PhD, is an
Associate Professor in Management Sciences at IQRA University,
controls:
Karachi, a futurist and AI literacy practitioner, and the founder of
• Data integrity: Are event logs accurate and complete, Fiker Futures Academy. He works on applied AI literacy and Futures
and are master data standards enforced? Literacy for professionals and educators, focusing on practical
adoption of AI for productivity, governance, and strategic
• Explainability: Can exceptions and recommenda- decision-making.
tions be explained to auditors and management?

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