The Road To Self-Driving Finance: Navigating Trust, Safety

However, the reality of achieving this goal by 2026 is more complex. Sameer Gulati, CEO and Co-Founder of Ordway, a veteran ERP and billing innovator, and angel investor, offers a nuanced perspective on this topic. Gulati draws an analogy between self-driving finance and self-driving cars, highlighting the importance of trust and safety in automation.

Just as one would approach a self-driving car with a mix of excitement and trepidation, organizations must also build trust and guardrails before fully embracing autonomous financial processes. The journey to self-driving finance is not a single leap, but rather a spectrum of maturity across key processes. Currently, many organizations are attempting to skip the intermediate stages, aiming to jump from manual processes to full autopilot without establishing the necessary trust and safety protocols.

This approach is misguided, as it neglects the importance of incremental progress and rigorous testing. A more practical approach involves implementing systems that surface checklists for month-end close or propose matches for payments and invoices, while still requiring human execution at each step.