What Is SmartResearch

Written by Uday Kumar Updated

Who this is for. Anyone with SmartResearch access: analysts, managers and finance leads. Access. Included for everyone at an organization whose subscription covers SmartResearch, whatever their role. No permission needs to be assigned. See the Roles and Access Reference.

SmartResearch is a question-and-answer workspace for your finance data. You ask in plain language and it answers from the systems connected to your tenant, showing the figure, the rows behind it, and the sources it drew on.

It exists because most finance questions are one-off. Someone asks what the current DPO is, or which vendors take the largest share of spend, and answering means exporting to a spreadsheet or queueing behind an analyst. SmartResearch removes that step for questions the data can already answer.

Differences from reports and dashboards

Table 1. Three ways to get a number

Approach

You get

You wait for

Best when

A published report

A fixed set of figures on a fixed schedule.

The next run.

The same question every period.

A dashboard

A curated view someone designed in advance.

Whoever maintains it to add your cut.

The question was anticipated.

SmartResearch

An answer to the question you actually asked, with its rows and sources.

Under a minute.

The question is new, or one-off.

SmartResearch does not replace governed reporting. Where a number is contractual or goes to a board pack, the governed report remains the record. SmartResearch is for the questions that arise between those.

Where answers come from

Answers are drawn against a SmartFlow instance: a configured agent and the connections behind it. The instance decides which system of record and which mailbox are in scope. Two instances can hold the same question and return different figures, and both can be correct, because they are reading different data.

The instance selector reads none until you choose one. With none selected there is nothing in scope, and an answer cannot be produced from your data.

Example

Asking Current DPO against an instance connected to Workday produces:

  • a reasoning trace naming each step and how long it took;

  • the figure in prose, with any caveat SmartResearch wants to raise about it;

  • the reporting window (for a DPO, a trailing 90-day billing denominator against a point-in-time payables balance);

  • a chart plotting the value against a typical range;

  • the rows behind it, exportable as CSV;

  • the sources, named in full, for example Workday — AP Vendor Bills and Metrics Studio — Days Payable Outstanding (DPO, Billed Basis).

Read an Answer for what each part is for.

Intended audience

SmartResearch comes with the subscription rather than with a role, so anyone at an organization that has it can use it alongside their normal work. Analysts use it to answer questions that arise while working the queue; managers use it to understand what the desk is producing; finance leads use it for questions that would otherwise become a request to someone else.

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