Building Your Own AI Reporting? Weigh These Risks First.
Steve Buck3 min read
Yes! With AI, your company can build dashboards and analytical capabilities that link your accounting and operational data sources. But don't ignore the risks that come with the shiny new object. You now face a critical build vs. buy decision on a mission-critical part of your business.
Building internally concentrates reporting risk inside your company
When you build it yourself, you must:
- Keep the technical employees who built it
- Maintain every connection at 99% availability
- Detect incorrect data before the CEO sees it
- Secure the application and database, which is especially critical when incorporating AI
- Repair it as your business changes, since adding or updating data sources can break the implementation
Subscribing to Corelytics shifts platform development and maintenance to a provider with an ongoing obligation to deliver the service, and an 8-year history of delivering mission-critical applications in the financial market, managing over $20 billion in assets.
What we have learned
There are some risks we are seeing in the market as SMBs start to explore AI as a mission-critical application in their company.
The most consistent risk is continuity of reliable reporting, and the increase in operational cost that comes with building and managing software platforms. But there are additional risks you should evaluate. Clearly, we are biased: we have been working with these new AI technologies for over two years. Here is a succinct list of what we think you should be aware of if you decide to build vs. buy.
| Risk | Build internally | Outsource to Corelytics |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong management decisions | The company must design and maintain reconciliations, metric definitions, testing, and review. A plausible dashboard can still contain incorrect margin, cash, or customer figures. | The company still must approve definitions and check results, while the provider supports the reporting software and agreed data processes. |
| Employee departure | Knowledge of code, mappings, exceptions, and repairs may sit with one or two people. Replacing them can interrupt reporting. | The internal report owner can still leave, but the company does not also have to replace the Corelytics support. |
| Broken integrations | Internal staff diagnose and repair changes in accounting, ERP, payroll, or CRM systems. | Corelytics handles the connections. |
| Security and access | The company operates application security, credentials, permissions, updates, backups, and recovery. | Corelytics operates the secure platform controls. |
| Competing priorities | Reporting fixes and enhancements compete with every other IT project. | Support is provided 24/7/365 by Corelytics. |
| Growth and acquisitions | Every new entity or source can require more development and support capacity. | Corelytics works with you to manage changes to your application environment. |
| New features | You will need internal software developers and cross-functional teams to design and implement changes. | Corelytics supports changes with both hands-on support and embedded user customizations. |
AI makes development faster; it does not accept responsibility for the result
As with large Excel reporting templates, you own the consequences when a number is wrong, a connection fails, or the employee who built the system leaves.
The risk that matters most: an error nobody notices
A reporting system can fail visibly, when a dashboard does not load, or it can fail quietly. Quiet failures are more dangerous: a location is omitted from revenue, an account is mapped to the wrong margin category, payroll costs are counted twice, or yesterday's data appears current.
If management uses that report to set prices, manage cash, or evaluate a customer, the potential loss can exceed the cost of the software.
To be fair: what risk does outsourcing introduce?
Outsourcing is not risk-free. It replaces much of the company's internal development and staffing exposure with vendor exposure:
- Vendor availability: What happens if the platform or an integration is down?
- Service quality: Who responds to incorrect figures, and how quickly?
- Data security: Who can access the company's financial and operating data?
- Fit: Can the platform support the company's specific reporting definitions?
- Exit: Can the company retrieve its data and definitions if it changes providers?
- Price and scope: Which integrations, reports, support services, and future changes are included?
These are the risks we manage for our clients every day. They are also risks a buyer can evaluate before committing, through a working demonstration, a defined scope, a security review, support terms, and data export provisions. Our existing accounts, 100% of them, are happy to tell you how we have mitigated their risk while providing the daily reporting and analytics they need to efficiently manage their financial and operational data.