In my first blog post about AI in EPM , I took a critical look at what AI is already capable of today and what is still mostly just hype. In my second blog, I discussed the most important prerequisite for successfully implementing AI: reliable data.
But there is a third question we need to answer:
What does AI mean for the people who work with EPM every day?
My prediction: the role of the EPM consultant is going to change fundamentally. And that will happen faster than many consultants probably realize.
AI is set to take over a large portion of traditional consulting work
A significant portion of traditional consulting work consists of tasks that AI is now quite good at. These include: writing documentation, creating training materials, building standard reports, answering support questions, preparing configurations, and setting up consolidation rules or scripts.
And no, it doesn't always go smoothly—certainly not. As I wrote in my first blog post: always take AI output with a grain of salt. But what used to take a consultant hours or days will soon take only a fraction of that time.
That's good news for customers. Implementations will be more efficient, and support will be faster.
For junior and mid-level EPM consultants, the consequences may be less favorable. And the impact is also noticeable for more technical EPM consultants.
Junior Work Is Disappearing
Most EPM consultants don't start with complex consolidation issues or an IFRS-to-US GAAP conversion. They start with support, documentation, reporting, testing, minor changes, and figuring out why something wasn't working.
For years, that was how people learned the trade. But it is precisely that work that is becoming increasingly automated. As a result, the traditional career path from junior to mid-level to senior EPM consultant is in danger of disappearing.
Technical knowledge is becoming less of a differentiator
For years, technical expertise made all the difference at EPM. Anyone who knew how to set up metadata, build business rules, develop reports, or configure an application had a clear advantage.
That lead is shrinking. AI is already helping with writing code, analyzing documentation, generating reports, and preparing configurations. As a result, much technical work is becoming increasingly accessible.
That doesn’t mean technology will disappear. Data integration, in particular, remains a technical specialty. Interfaces, APIs, and increasingly complex data flows require specialized knowledge.
But much of the standard technical implementation work is becoming simpler. And with that, the questions customers should ask their EPM partner are changing as well. It’s not just: “Who has the best technical knowledge of Oracle or OneStream?” But above all: “Who truly understands (our) financial processes?”
While technology is becoming simpler, finance is actually becoming more complex
On the finance side, in fact, the exact opposite is happening: new IFRS and local GAAP standards, ESG reporting, tax provisioning, Pillar Two, country-by-country reporting, increased compliance requirements, and more external reporting obligations.
You can't solve that just by knowing which buttons to press. To do that, you need people who understand both new regulations and financial processes—people who know how a new accounting standard impacts consolidation, historical data, and reporting, and who can then translate that into a well-designed EPM solution.
That's where the real added value will lie. Not in creating a report, but in understanding the financial reality behind that report.
The EPM consultant of tomorrow is finance-first
As a result, the role of the EPM consultant is changing fundamentally. Today, the best EPM consultants are often people who combine functional finance knowledge with technical expertise. In the future, I expect finance knowledge to become an increasingly decisive factor.
The best consultants are, therefore, strong functional finance professionals who know how to use technology effectively. They understand consolidation and financial planning. They can interpret new regulations. They understand what data quality and data management entail. They serve as a point of contact for both the CFO and IT.
I can already see today that strong finance professionals who learn technology often become better EPM consultants than technologists who try to understand finance. AI will only accelerate that trend.
The choice of an EPM partner is also changing
For CFOs and Financial Systems Directors, this development has another implication. You need to take a different look at the expertise of your EPM partner.
The most important question is no longer who knows the software best, but who understands your financial processes best.
AI can speed up a lot of routine work. But AI doesn’t automatically understand what a new IFRS standard means for your consolidation process. It doesn’t resolve complex data restatements. And as I wrote in my previous blog post, it doesn’t fix messy data either. You need functional expertise for that.
About the author
Bart van Velzen is a co-founder of Bart & Partners and is known as an EPM expert with in-depth knowledge and expertise. At Bart & Partners, Bart is the go-to person for consulting, maintenance, and support for EPM systems and solutions.
