New research quantifies gains in productivity (56%-64%), cash conversion (85% fewer days delinquent) and customer engagement (83% more time with customers)

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT), an ROI-led AI transformation firm, today announced AI World Class Finance benchmarks – new research that quantifies how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping finance performance and reveals a growing gap between organizations pursuing process-led transformation enabled by AI and those that simply automate existing processes.

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Order-to-cash provides one of the clearest examples of how AI creates enterprise value because improvements in productivity, working capital and customer experience reinforce one another across the order-to-cash process. While many organizations focus on automating individual tasks, AI World Class reveals a larger opportunity: redesigning the entire end-to-end, order-to-cash process around AI. Across credit, order capture, billing, dispute management, cash application and collections, improvements reinforce one another. Better decisions upstream reduce work downstream, creating value throughout the process. The results are significant. AI World Class modeling shows order-to-cash process costs can fall by 52% to 59%, while staffing requirements per $1 billion in revenue decline by 56% to 64%. These gains are not driven by a single automation, but by reimagining how work flows across the entire order-to-cash process.

These new benchmarks build on The Hackett Group’s AI World Class research introduced in May, which identified performance advantages of up to 75% for organizations pursuing process-led AI transformation. The new finance benchmarks show how those advantages will emerge across critical finance and finance-adjacent processes and where organizations can create measurable improvements in productivity, working capital, operating leverage and business performance now.

The research points to the next phase of enterprise AI adoption being defined less by technology deployment and more by operating performance, marking a shift in how organizations compete. As selling, general and administrative (SG&A) costs continue to outpace revenue growth, efficiency is becoming a more visible measure of management effectiveness – putting pressure on finance leaders to determine where AI can create sustainable business value.

"AI isn’t creating a technology gap. It’s creating a performance gap," said Kyle McNabb, principal and program leader for AI Applied Intelligence, The Hackett Group^®. "Organizations that treat AI as another software deployment will see only incremental benefits. The leaders are redesigning end-to-end processes around AI, and that’s where the biggest gains in productivity, working capital and operating performance are emerging."

The new benchmarks span critical end-to-end finance and finance-adjacent processes, including order-to-cash (O2C), account-to-report (R2R), treasury and risk management, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A)

Together, these processes shape cash flow, working capital, financial visibility and business performance. AI World Class Finance benchmarks quantify where process-led AI transformation can create the greatest value and establish future-state performance standards for organizations pursuing AI-enabled transformation.

Order-to-cash provides one of the clearest examples of how AI creates compounding value. Improvements made upstream reduce effort, exceptions and delays throughout the revenue cycle, creating measurable gains in productivity, working capital, customer experience, and cost performance.

The results are significant. AI World Class modeling shows order-to-cash process costs can decline by 52% to 59%, while staffing requirements can decrease by 56% to 64%, allowing finance teams to redirect capacity to higher-value activities that strengthen business performance.

Automated credit decisions increase by 138%, helping organizations make faster, more consistent risk decisions before orders are processed. Digital order intake rises by 134%, improving order quality and reducing downstream rework. As data quality improves, invoice corrections are reduced by approximately one-half, dispute resolution accelerates by 43%, and cash application becomes increasingly autonomous, with 89% more payments automatically matched and applied.

The impact becomes even more visible in collections. AI World Class organizations spend 83% more time engaging customers and significantly less time gathering information, reconciling data and preparing for calls. As collectors focus on higher-value activities, average delinquent days decline by 85%, improving both working capital performance and customer outcomes.

"When organizations improve decisions at the front end of the process, the benefits extend across billing, cash application, collections and dispute resolution," said Jason Logman, principal and Finance Transformation practice leader at The Hackett Group^®. "That's how AI creates measurable improvements in cost, cash flow and customer outcomes."

While order-to-cash provides a clear illustration of the opportunity, similar patterns emerge across the broader AI World Class benchmark portfolio. The benchmarks span 16 end-to-end enterprise processes and identify where process reinvention can unlock the greatest gains in cost, productivity, speed, and business performance. The most significant value is created when organizations redesign how work flows across an entire process enabled by AI rather than focusing on isolated automation opportunities.

The AI World Class benchmarks are grounded in more than 30 years of benchmark data, process intelligence and transformation experience drawn from leading global organizations, including 98% of the Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100.

The AI World Class Finance benchmarks are available exclusively through The Hackett Group^®. Download the AI World Class Finance report to learn how process-led AI transformation is creating a growing performance gap in finance and where organizations can capture the greatest value.

About The Hackett Group^®

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT) is an ROI-led, AI enterprise transformation firm that helps clients enable AI world-class performance. Its experts and engineers leverage proprietary AI delivery platforms – Hackett AI XPLR™, ZBrain™, XT™, AIXelerator™ and AskHackett™ – to accelerate and enhance the delivery of the company’s solutions and services.

The AI platforms are powered by the company’s domain-specific Hackett Solution Language Model informed by Hackett Process and Performance Intelligence – including Digital World Class^® benchmark metrics, best-practice process flows and service delivery model solution frameworks, which accelerate and enhance the delivery of its services. The Hackett Group’s proprietary insights are based on benchmarking results from leading global organizations, including 98% of Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100. Visit www.thehackettgroup.com

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The Hackett Group^®, quadrant logo, and Digital World Class^® are the registered marks of The Hackett Group^®.

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