By Ari Widlansky, Managing Director & U.S. COO at Esker. Esker were finalists in the ‘Best SaaS Product for Business Accounting or Finance‘ and ‘Best SaaS product for Management Accounting and Budgeting‘ and ‘Best SaaS product for CSR, Sustainability, and ESG‘ categories at The 2024 SaaS Awards.

Today’s CFO role is barely recognizable to many experienced business leaders.

Tasked with far more than financial management, CFOs are front and center in helping design and lead organizational strategy.

Within this expanded role, CFOs have a responsibility to ensure technology is relevant and drives efficiency across the organization. And with the continued rise of AI, CFOs must determine how automation solutions can best support and enhance business processes.

Embracing AI is essential for CFOs to future-proof their businesses and drive long-term growth. However, for CFOs to effectively lead the charge toward digital transformation, intentional collaboration must be central to the decision-making process, ensuring new technologies align with broader company goals.

The ever-evolving role of CFO

While the role of CFO expanded gradually in recent decades, the past 3-5 years have brought an accelerated pace of change and new demands to the position.

This rapid evolution can be explained, in part, by an unpredictable and shifting landscape. The pandemic — which underscored the need for businesses to adapt quickly to unexpected changes — also left challenges in its wake. After navigating supply chain disruptions, many companies must now grapple with the question of how to foster working environments that attract and retain top talent.

In response to these changes, CFOs have moved into an integrated role. More than ever, they’re expected to look beyond the numbers and collaborate with other members of the C-suite to holistically evaluate the business.

And with the continued growth of AI, digital transformation has emerged as a critical area in which CFOs must act as strategic architects.

AI brings new challenges and opportunities for CFOs

CFOs appear cautiously optimistic about AI’s ability to enhance and optimize business functions. In fact, more than 8 in 10 CFOs believe AI and generative AI have the potential to enhance employees’ overall productivity. However, many CFOs also report that only one-quarter or less of their processes have been digitized or automated.

This disconnect aligns with Gartner’s findings that even as CFOs cited digital transformation as a top priority in 2024, they still predict challenges with implementing new technology. Specifically, they are concerned that digital transformation is often complex and time-consuming. Knowing this, CFOs must go beyond just collaborating with IT departments and take an active role in identifying and delivering technology solutions.

By adopting an approach that prioritizes concrete use cases, CFOs can both optimize their current business functionalities and navigate future challenges with agility.

It’s not one-size-fits-all: Best practices for making AI a strategic partner

In 2024, 80% of CFOs expect their companies to embed more automation and digital technologies into their operations. The question is, how?

Here’s what CFOs should keep in mind when identifying the best use cases for AI and automation:

1) Lead with curiosity and collaboration

Determining optimal automation integrations requires cross-team collaboration. Even the most engaged CFO can’t single-handedly define use cases across different departments. Rather, CFOs should proactively communicate with their C-suite counterparts about specific gaps and pain points in their teams’ operations.

For instance, the customer service team might report challenges with managing high volumes of customer inquiries. With this insight, CFOs can assess the potential for automation to boost efficiency and improve response times.

Aligning on specific needs at the outset helps reduce guesswork around why and how AI is being implemented in an organization, enabling more intentional integration.

2) Hone in on specific use cases

Introducing AI with a defined purpose is crucial for businesses to address their unique needs and challenges. After identifying specific pain points, CFOs can explore targeted AI solutions to directly address those issues.

If sales leaders notice team members struggling to handle customer inquiries, a CFO might propose automating sales order processing. This eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing unnecessary errors and freeing up more time for agents to prioritize high-quality customer interactions.

An AI solution could also support customer service leaders in tracking Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance and other key performance metrics, allowing for more data-driven decisions going forward. Leading with a clearly defined problem ensures AI solutions are an asset for leaders and employees across departments.

3) Prioritize flexibility

With the myriad of AI solutions available, how can businesses determine which solution best suits their needs? Ultimately, CFOs need a 360-degree view of the business, which requires AI solutions that can be leveraged across departments.

For instance, an AI solution might have the capability to seamlessly aggregate data from source-to-pay and order-to-cash processes, without accessing multiple vendors. While assembling a stack of platforms might seem viable, navigating potential incompatibilities can often pose challenges.

Furthermore, a multi-purpose solution can support CFOs from a cost-management perspective. Leveraging a solution for various functions — like improving supplier relationships or onboarding new vendors —  is ultimately a money-saving endeavor that drives value for the organization as a whole.

Three key benefits for CFOs who embrace the AI era

AI has incredible potential to revolutionize and streamline business operations. For CFOs in particular, committing to AI is not only a technological investment — it’s an investment in the company’s long-term future.

There are some outcomes CFOs can expect from embracing AI:

1) Greater efficiency

One of AI’s core capabilities is the ability to automate routine tasks. Often, businesses can start by optimizing the basics. In finance, that could mean automating the accounts payable (AP) process so invoices can be captured, processed, and routed without manual data entry.

From an employee perspective, this automation can boost productivity and morale. When employees are freed up from repetitive tasks, they can spend more energy on rewarding, higher level tasks, helping to reduce stress and promote greater autonomy.

On the business end, an AI solution can provide real-time, end-to-end visibility into the status of invoices, payments, and approvals. For CFOs, this enables greater insight into cashflow to seamlessly monitor the organization’s financial health.

2) Improved error reduction

Manual data entry is not only tedious and time-consuming — it’s also prone to mistakes and errors. AI solutions can mitigate these risks by automating data entry and validation.

In an AP process, for instance, AI can quickly identify discrepancies like duplicate invoices and incorrect payment amounts. For CFOs, this provides accurate and consistent data, while also ensuring compliance with financial regulations and internal controls.

3) Enhanced data management

A major benefit of AI is the ability to integrate and analyze data from multiple sources within an organization. This can eliminate silos between departments so data is leveraged seamlessly across the business.

Through robust analytics and reporting, CFOs can gain detailed insight into critical areas like financial performance and operational efficiency. In turn, this supports predictive forecasting so CFOs can better anticipate future trends and make proactive decisions.

For CFOs, change is the only constant

Modern CFOs are expected to be visionaries, which is no small task. Tackling these new demands requires an openness to change, especially the potential of technology to innovate and enhance existing business structures.

As the role of CFO and the business landscape continue to evolve, integrating AI can provide an essential holistic view of the organization. However, it requires effective collaboration with relevant stakeholders to distill key goals.

By identifying high-impact opportunities for automation, CFOs can prepare their businesses for sustained growth and success — not just today or tomorrow, but for years to come.