But even as we find ourselves in the midst of the AI hype cycle, we’re also beginning to see organisations focus more on AI accountability. As a result, business leaders are now tasked with proving the tangible value of their AI initiatives, demonstrating clear outcomes, ROI, and sustainable applications to justify ongoing investment.

In the current landscape, CFOs act as the voice of reason around AI to ensure that implementations succeed financially. With their deep business and finance insights, CFOs are uniquely positioned to lead their companies in leveraging AI's potential to transform operations and drive improved outcomes. But to do so, they need to ensure they’ve built a solid infrastructure.

Businesses are still not AI-ready

The reality is that today, many organisations are still not AI-ready. This is due to siloed and disconnected internal structures, preventing seamless collaboration between departments. In fact, data is often scattered across different teams, systems, and formats, making it difficult to aggregate and analyse in a meaningful way.

Without centralised, integrated access to data, AI initiatives are hampered from the start, as they lack the consistent and comprehensive information required to train models effectively. These silos limit the ability to scale AI efforts across the organisation, resulting in fragmented projects that don’t deliver maximum value.

Additionally, teams within siloed organisations often operate independently with little cross-functional collaboration. But AI requires an interdisciplinary approach, one that combines data science, IT infrastructure, and business domain expertise. However, in many companies, these groups work with misaligned goals and processes. And it’s this disconnection that stifles innovation, making it harder to build cohesive AI strategies that align with overall business objectives. 

This is where CFOs come in, tasked with working with IT and business leaders to break down these silos by implementing streamlined, cross-functional processes that promote collaboration and data sharing.

Automation is the solution 

To efficiently adopt AI technologies, the collaboration between CFOs and IT leaders becomes crucial for ensuring a solid infrastructure is in place. Let’s look at financial processes as an example. 

The CFO-IT collaboration begins with identifying key financial processes ripe for automation, such as accounts payable. By working together, repetitive tasks and processes like invoice processing, that consume significant time and resources, are easily pinpointed. Once these processes are identified, CFOs can help secure the necessary budget for automation tools.

Another reason for the CFO and IT partnership, is the need for a robust data infrastructure. AI systems rely heavily on high-quality data to function effectively. CFOs can secure the budgets for necessary technology upgrades and investments in data management systems. But there’s more - when CFOs and IT leaders work together, they can develop a roadmap for automation that aligns with the company’s overall financial strategy. This roadmap can outline priorities, timelines, and expected ROI for automation initiatives.

Over the last few years, the role of the CFO has rapidly evolved with the emergence of AI. And those who adapt to this shift, becoming not just financial leaders but also experts in processes and AI strategy, will play a pivotal role in steering their organisations toward success.

By focusing on the automation of processes, CFOs can harness the full potential of AI to transform the organisation and deliver sustained competitive advantage.

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