Board Introduces AI Agents for Finance Teams to Reduce Manual Work
Board, an enterprise planning platform, announced two new AI agents designed to handle routine finance tasks. The FP&A Agent handles three-statement modeling, variance analysis, and revenue planning. The Controller Agent manages financial close, consolidation, and reporting.
The agents are built to reduce manual effort so finance teams can focus on analysis and strategy rather than data entry and reconciliation.
What the Agents Do
The FP&A Agent streamlines forecasting and identifies root causes of financial variance. It can flag unusual patterns and suggest where to investigate further.
The Controller Agent accelerates the close process by automating consolidation and report generation while maintaining audit trails and data integrity.
Chris Xu, Chief Accounting Officer APAC at Ammega, said the FP&A Agent "delivers genuinely out-of-the-box insights that challenge my experience."
Excel Integration Keeps Familiar Workflows
Board deepened its integration with Microsoft 365, allowing finance staff to work in Excel while staying connected to the platform's governed data and models.
This approach avoids pushing work into unmanaged spreadsheets. Users maintain access to enterprise data without leaving Excel.
Will Deer, Manager of FP&A at EBSCO Industries, said the integration allows business users to "quickly pull trusted data into Excel and perform their own analysis, which significantly speeds up reporting and reduces dependency on centralized report development."
Unified Forecasting to Address Demand Volatility
Board combined financial and operational forecasting on a single platform. The system incorporates econometric modeling-acquired through Board's 2024 purchase of Prevedere-alongside internal operational data.
The econometric approach analyzes more than 5 million external economic signals alongside internal metrics. Board says this can improve forecast accuracy by up to 50%.
Currently, 65 to 70 percent of enterprises operate with multiple conflicting demand signals. Only a quarter successfully reconcile top-down and bottom-up forecasts. This fragmentation creates internal misalignment and increases executive risk.
A single, unified forecast directly informs financial plans, operational decisions, and executive reporting.
More Agents Coming
Board plans to release additional domain-specific agents:
- Merchandiser Agent - connects demand, inventory, cost, and financial goals for margin-aware decisions across products and channels
- Supply Chain Agent - anticipates disruptions and runs scenario analysis for cost-effective outcomes
These agents expand Board's integrated planning capabilities across finance and operations.
For finance professionals looking to understand how AI agents fit into financial planning workflows, resources on AI for Finance and the AI Learning Path for CFOs provide practical context on implementation and strategy.
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