In the latest piece for Talent4, I revisit a recurring theme in my AI for CFOs interviews. AI is making finance roles more enjoyable. I spoke to Glenn Hayward, an experienced CFO on the strategic benefits of AI.
If you’re someone who’d typically be labelled a creative, you’ll have seen no shortage of fearmongering about AI taking our jobs. Meanwhile, in the interviews I’ve held with CFOs placed by Talent4, I’ve seen AI having a very different impact. The drudgery is being automated and the role of finance is becoming a lot more strategic. Dare I say it: finance is becoming more fun.
Perhaps that’s why I ask this week’s interviewee, fractional CEO and CFO Glenn Hayward, if there’s any part of the CFO role that he’ll miss once AI takes it over.
“It’s not so much being taken away,” he says, “but I think it’s crucial that we don’t see a shifting of responsibility from finance teams, especially in compliance. Ultimately we’re responsible, so the projections we use, the way we inform stakeholders, the decisions we promote; this shouldn’t be AI generated. Even the Silicon Valley organisations, while investing trillions, are telling us to be a little careful. AI is a guide. It doesn’t give you definitive answers.”
Glenn is essentially saying AI shifts the role of finance teams from executing tasks, to steering them and reviewing the outcomes. Recent research backs this up. DataSnipper’s AI Report, for instance, shows that the most common use cases for AI in audit and finance are:
- Data extraction
- Automating repetitive tasks
- Support for audit work
- Email drafting & communication
- Document review and comparison
I do not work in a finance team. Nevertheless, I feel confident saying that most people would be delighted to see the back of this work. Instead, as Glenn suggests, finance is becoming ‘a more forward-looking strategic role and function.’
LLMs are the new Excel
This impacts the everyday life of finance professionals, sometimes in really fundamental ways that speak to a paradigm shift.
“The first thing I used to open in the morning was Excel, now it’s a co-pilot or LLM,” says Glenn. “It’s just so informative. It makes the role much more forward-looking and it’s constantly a learning opportunity. It’s something that I, and a lot of other people, are passionate about.”
Glenn goes further. Given the newfound strategic powers being discovered by CFOs, and Glenn’s role as a fractional CFO, he points out the assistance AI provides in the discovery phase.
“If I’m meeting with a new opportunity, I want to understand more about their [the client’s] business and their market, and the market dynamics they’re exposed to. AI just makes life so much more straightforward and lets you access key information in a digestible form. It’s a big saver of time.”
It’s not just a case of drafting up some good prompts. AI is particularly useful for bringing together multiple data sources and structured data, and crunching numbers at speed. This doesn’t, however, mean using AI for everything.
Instead, having worked with a range of firms, Glenn suggests introducing AI in a measured and managed way, integrating it into specific processes and observing the outcomes. Changing everything at once can be risky and confusing, and there’s also a trust gap to be cleared. If you want to convince an organisation of the value of AI, it makes sense to do it gradually and to present genuine progress in terms of efficiencies, cost savings and, where possible, profits.
A Fractional Future?
Glenn’s thoughts make me wonder if AI can be a great unlock for smaller businesses to access experienced CFOs. After all, if five days of work can be completed in one or two days, the value-add is much more likely to justify the outlay, especially where budgets are tight.
However, I’m advised that it’s not necessarily that simple. There are many factors that could impact the efficiency gain from bringing in an AI-powered fractional CFO. Glenn admits it’s hard to put an exact number on this sort of time and cost saving.
“It really comes back to the preparedness of the business to explore and learn, both from the fractional CFO and the business itself,” he says. “The business needs to be ready to deploy the tools available and make them as efficient as can be, and AI plays a big part in that.”
To conclude
I think we can all see the direction of travel here. AI is empowering fractional CFOs and helping businesses leverage multiple datasets for strategic insight at speed. Human intervention and experience remains important, so we can hold some optimism for the future of finance professionals. That said, are we having fun? The Datasnipper report that I noted earlier offers some positive signals.
- 67% of auditors believe that AI helps them achieve an improved work-life balance
- 80% believe that AI will empower them rather than decrease jobs
- 86% say they would stay at a firm with a strong AI strategy in place
The report places emphasis on auditors, rather than finance teams as a whole, but it gives us reasons to be positive. If we all embrace AI a little more, we might just enjoy it.
