Change is upon us and the modern CFO is at the centre of navigating the business through uncertain times. The CFO used to be responsible for reporting what has happened and reviewing past results. The modern CFO takes responsibility for looking to the future and advising the business on what’s next in this ever-changing, uncertain world of change. Technical, geo-political and local landscapes are changing rapidly. Small to medium, mid-market and even enterprise businesses are under pressure to adapt to change at a rapid pace to keep ahead of the competition, to offer amazing customer service and to thrive – to hyperscale, to be ready for change, to keep ahead of the next evolution.
Technology that was previously only available for large enterprises with large IT teams and budgets is now available to companies of all sizes, even small to medium-sized businesses, can leverage technology to hyperscale. Cloud solutions can scale quickly and put immense power in the hands of the business across all aspects of the IT and technical landscape – ERP solutions, analytics, AI, CRM and more. Given the pace of technological change, businesses cannot afford to wait. Think of how quickly AI is advancing across all aspects of a business – sales, marketing, finance and supply chain. Waiting creates more risk than ever before. Now is the time to act.
For today’s CFOs and finance leaders, the mandate has shifted – moving from back-office number crunching to strategic advisor on;
- capital allocation,
- M&A and expansion (organic growth vs acquisition),
- scenario planning,
- strategic risk radar,
- profitability drivers,
- digital transformation
- sustainability
Technology is the great enabler of our time. AI is a catalyst (with human oversight and input) that provides the tools to close the gap between financial numbers and enterprise-wide strategic decision-making by shifting the focus for CFOs from doing to enabling and reviewing. The questions CFOs should be asking is, “Can I free up my time and the time that my team spends on manual tasks so that we can focus on business value add? Can we use technology (AI) to reclaim hundreds of hours through automation? Can AI provide information in an instance for better decision-making? Can AI guide the business to better outcomes through access to information and up to date data based on real-time analysis of multiple data sources – ERP data, CRM data, payroll data, news updates, shipping updates and more?”
Why AI is changing the landscape for modern, forward thinking CFOs:
- Strategy, not firefighting: Using AI, the office of the CFO is moving from reactionary operational activity to strategic insights. How? Automation is freeing up time to focus on strategy and high-value output. AI is proving real time insights to business activities, challenges and data across all landscapes – ERP, CRM, news, and economics to provide a complete picture.
- From hindsight to foresight: predictive analytics and interactive analysis Use AI-powered tools, reporting, analytics and co-pilot interactions to set early indicators of performance across the business. For example, what impact will a 10% increase in input costs have on margins and cash flow over the next three months? If we can increase customer prices by 5%, what impact will this have on margin and net profit?
- Real-Time Insights: Get instant, accurate access to live data with natural language reporting – ask questions in natural language and the ERP solution will use AI queries to give instant, interactive answers – for example, “Show me sales for this month vs the same month last year” and “compare margin analysis on product group A for this month vs last month”.
- Stronger team engagement: use AI to automate tasks so that team members can focus on high value, strategic tasks.
Sage Intacct AI for CFOs:
Sage Intacct understands that finance teams need confidence, transparency, and control before embracing AI in core financial systems. At Leverage Technologies, we ensure AI works as a trusted assistant—not a decision maker—by embedding a human‑in‑the‑loop approach where automation informs decisions, but people always stay in control. Sage Intacct AI provides the tools that CFO’s need to hyperscale growth:
- Finance Intelligence Agent allows finance teams to ask questions in natural language running analysis in real time by combining data, reporting, recommendations and analysis to help users make the right decisions.
- Close Agent take the complexity out of month end close across multiple divisions and entities. Improve control and compliance whilst automating month end tasks.
- Cash Intelligence provides cash flow insights using AI predictions.
- AP Agent automates the AP process, including approvals workflow.
- Outlier Detection provides anomaly detection. Identifies unusual transactions and flags variances so that finance teams can focus on the investigation of anomalies.
- Sage Intacct Co-Pilot is your Ai powered finance assistant. Work quicker and smarter, get quick answers and insights from your Sage Intacct data.
- AI Powered Import Agent – use flexible mapping and AI tools to simply data import.
FAQs from CFOs around AI and using AI within Sage
What is the one thing CFOs are most afraid of when it comes to AI, and how does Sage Intacct specifically solve that fear?
CFOS are asking three key questions – is my data secure? What the appropriate use case and investment in AI? How do I know that the AI results will be accurate? How do I manage the people disruption?
Is my data secure – yes, Sage meets specific, audited security standards and Sage AI does not use customer data to train public or third-party AI models. The Sage Intacct AI gateway secures and audits data flows about AI access to data. What is the appropriate use case and investment in AI – a lot of customers have not articulated AI specific use cases – what problem am I solving? what outcomes is the business working towards? what value will be gained from the AI use case? and what change management is required internally? Businesses should assess business-based outcomes and specific use cases so that there is better adoption and quicker time to value from AI. The good news is that because Sage Intacct is built for the office of the CFO, the standard use cases are easy to adopt and are typically built with the finance team in mind ensuring quick time to value from your AI investment.
Can you describe a time when ‘Outlier Detection’ caught something that a human eye would have missed for months?
Outlier detection is used to identify transactions that look out of place, unusual or incorrect. Think of larger or smaller transaction values or transactions that are different to historical trends. The team at Leverage Technologies uses outlier detection to analyse profit centres and identify incorrect postings. For example, outlier detection was recently used to identify an incorrect journal entry of contractual revenue release into a profit centre. The profit centre was overstating revenue by 15%. Sage Intacct AI outlier detection notified the Finance Manager that the journal looked at odds with previous revenue releases. The Finance Manager was able to fix the revenue release for that month and future months avoiding the incorrect numbers going to the General Manager of the relevant division.
Does this mean the finance team will have less work, or just different work? What does their new day-to-day look like?
Change is here and finance teams are being presented with a substantial opportunity to change the way they work – less time on mundane, manual tasks and more time on value add – analytics, advice, and engagement within the business – real value add. This means that finance teams will work differently. The initial focus will be on implementing, testing and reconciling AI models and use cases. The next phase of AI development will be constant improvement. Remembering that there will always be a human in the loop to oversee the AI process and outcomes. Short answer – yes, roles will change – for the better as team members embrace change and focus on automation, value add, analytics and proactive advice to the business.
How does this help a CFO give better advice to the CEO when they are deciding whether to expand or cut costs?
The modern CFO is enabling the business with value-add advice based on access to real time analytics from multiple sources enabled through AI and automation allowing the CFO and their team more time for value-add discussions – data is available, time is freeing up – decisions are well informed.
Brett has more than 20 years of business software sales and company management experience. Brett has been involved in more than 300 ERP projects. His passion is customer satisfaction, making sure every client is more than just satisfied. Brett wants our customers to be driven to refer their friends and peers because we offer the best services and technology available and because we exceeded their expectations.