While programmers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists race to uncover the latest and most promising AI applications, chief financial officers are already finding the biggest and fastest AI returns in seemingly mundane corporate back-office operations.

According to several recent studies, AI has streamlined processes and cut costs across a wide range of back-office tasks: shortening monthly closing times, speeding up resolution of customer inquiries, and boosting efficiency in data entry, invoice processing, and employee onboarding.

"The real efficiency gains are all in back-office transactions," said Boe Hartman, co-founder and chief technology officer of Nomi Health, at the Money20/20 fintech conference held recently in Las Vegas.

"You can make processes faster, more transparent, or more automated," Hartman said during a panel discussion, adding, "I don't see a lot of people pushing a lot of AI work to the front office."

In accounting, for example, researchers noted that accountants deploying generative AI can increase the level of detail in financial reports by 12%, shift 8.5% of their work time from routine back-office processing to higher-value tasks, and reduce the time needed for monthly closing by 7.5 days.

By using generative AI, accountants can devote more time to analytical work, quality assurance, and client communication, said researchers from MIT Sloan School of Management and Stanford Graduate School of Business in a study released in August.

The benefits of AI are quantifiable, which validates spending in an AI field full of grand and unproven high-value promises, and also provides CTOs and CFOs with data that helps build consensus in the C-suite for new expenditures.

"Back-office AI applications are exactly where easily documented cost savings and tangible results come from," said Shawnna DelHierro, chief information officer of SoundHound AI, during the panel discussion.

"They are metric-driven, repeatable, and scalable," she said.

"When you're having internal discussions and really trying to demonstrate the value of technology, automation, and transformation, organizations that create scorecards and articulate the value of back-office automation are achieving easy wins," she added.

"When you start getting into more ambiguous use cases, it becomes a soft sell," DelHierro said.

Nevertheless, companies are still selling AI software into a promising market. DelHierro mentioned that a recent SoundHound survey showed that in the financial services industry, 71% of executives believe AI investment is crucial to staying competitive.

Signals of AI enthusiasm contrast with an MIT survey that found that even with $30 billion to $40 billion invested, 95% of organizations have not yet realized any returns from the technology.

"Only 5% of integrated AI pilot projects have extracted millions of dollars in value, while the vast majority remain stuck without measurable profit-and-loss impact," the MIT research stated.

According to DelHierro, the MIT survey is an unavoidable topic of discussion.

"In the past five weeks, I haven't had a single day without someone saying, 'What do you think about that MIT report?'" DelHierro said, noting that SoundHound's survey and her own industry observations indicate higher AI success rates.

Hartman is also frequently asked about the same MIT research findings.

"Every time I turn around, someone is shoving that report in front of me," Hartman said.

"I say, 'Interesting perspective, right?'" he added.