Growth in the CFO Office:
AI & the Importance of Data

I was fortunate to have two days in Phoenix last week attending the Prophix Live conference.  It was one of the only times I have been to a conference without any colleagues from Net at Work and it was a very worthwhile experience.  Being on my own pushed me out of my comfort zone to network and speak with a lot more new people than usual without the home-base comfort of hosting a Net at Work booth or event.

The morning sessions at the conference delivered Prophix-specific messages but also two keynotes on AI and the shift of the finance and accounting department from a tactical to strategic role within the organization. Some of my take-aways:

• To achieve growth in GDP, the US will need to focus on more productivity; without adding significantly more people, the only way to achieve consistent growth is the same number of people producing more output.
• The finance office will need to know much more about the business. To provide more value, it should know how the business runs and broadly what are the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  In a room of hundreds of accounting professionals, I was surprised to see relatively few hands up when asked who would consider themselves comfortable with the operations of their companies.
• Prophix urged the room to have a more creative mindset.  They challenged the attendees to get the monthly close to under 5 days (most admitted to needing 10 days) to free up more time for providing the business strategy and more long-term value.
• One of the keynote speakers warned the crowd that too many finance and accounting professionals spend too much time in their comfort zones.  She said that controlling expenses is not enough—everyone at the company needs to be actively contributing to how they grow the business.  The finance teams should be engaging in more brainstorming before rushing to solve issues.  Focus on the business’s competitive advantage to justify higher margins.  Think about business value and what problem are you really trying to solve.
• Change in every business will be required to grow in the new GenAI economy.  You will need the trust of your people to get them to step out and change with you:
  • Give them visibility and opportunities,
  • Acknowledge employees’ contributions
  • Have their back and don’t point at them
  • They need to feel you have their best interest in mind all the time
• Most companies, including software publishers, don’t yet have clear strategies for and policies on GenAI.  The biggest barrier is not the AI technologies but the security and privacy of data.
• Because data quality is key to any automation, machine learning, and AI, data specialists are now much more common in the finance department.  Only a small number of attendees have implemented or are planning to add a Chief Data Officer (CDO), most of these resources currently report in to the CFO.
  • Data quality is driven from the top down – if the top executives don’t enforce good policy and prioritize data, it won’t be seen as important.
  • Inspiration and effort come from the bottom up – the acumen of the people entering, scanning, and interacting with data need to ensure quality.
• The big move from reports to dashboards has been underwhelming for many.  Companies are realizing that some dashboards are simply more colorful reports providing little improvement to intelligence or decision-making value. The next AI-enabled generation will focus on pushes and alerts based on your requirements and associated risk tolerances.

At lunches, I met with a variety of people over some great food.  The general vibe of the attendees was cautious optimism.  They love the Prophix product and would like to see more verticalized content and contextual assistance.  They understand the push to providing more value with AI coming soon but they don’t see it happening at the speed that the analysts and media are preaching.  Only about 50% of the people I met would allow a self-driving car to take them anywhere.  I learned that Phoenix is one of the only cities in the US to have a fully autonomous car service, Waymo; very cool for about 50% of us.

I’m very interested to hear from you about how you have seen AI changing your department or business over the last 12 months.  Have you moved beyond some of the traditional AI-tools like AP automation or order entry OCR?

Thanks for being a client of Net at Work!  I hope you find this post helpful.  As always, please reach out with any comments, questions, or feedback.