By now, CFOs have heard that artificial intelligence (AI) promises to shake up the work finance professionals do every day by automating many tasks and providing new insights.
Embracing AI will require finance teams to choose from myriad offerings to find the tools that best suit their needs. Just as important for CFOs is how AI will change the talent required to build a world-class finance team. CFOs have an opportunity to use their efforts to embrace AI in finance to also strengthen their talent bench.
Finding the right talent has ranked as one of CFOs’ top concerns for years, and the numbers show why. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 300,000 U.S. accountants left the field from 2019 to 2021, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) reported the number of people who took the CPA exam in 2022 marked a 16-year low. The lack of fresh talent also leaves CFOs with fewer people ready to climb up to senior roles. Deloitte recently found 28% of large companies don’t have a formal CFO succession plan in place.
Finance leaders need to reevaluate their talent strategy while realizing that AI could change the skills your team needs to be successful. Here, we’ll identify six actions that can help finance leaders not just fill vacancies in an ultracompetitive environment, but also attract the all-stars who will thrive in this new era of finance.
1. Create an Intentional Plan to Experiment With AI
First, CFOs and their peers need to develop an initial understanding of how AI could change the work people do in different finance roles. This is where experimentation can be extremely valuable and given the potentially groundbreaking impact of AI, it’s worthy of healthy research and development (R&D) investment. Per the financial technology company “Ramp,” businesses tripled their credit-based purchases with AI vendors in the first eight months of 2024 — a sign that many are already trying out the technology.
There are numerous approaches that could work here, but the key is to start with a real problem or a process with clear room for improvement. Then, you might pull together a small group of standout team members with a particular interest in technology, ask them to compile a list of AI capabilities that have the potential to help with a few pressing issues and decide as a team what to try first.
You could ask those team members to spend 10% of their time experimenting with different AI tools for a few months and report back on what made a real difference and what wasn’t useful. For example, the team could test AI-powered invoice scanning, track the staff time needed for training, and measure any improvement in accuracy and staff time savings. They could also test generative AI tools that can summarize reports and charts into narrative reports or draft product descriptions, purchase orders and emails to customers, and document how well the models performed for different use cases.
Be sure to explore AI capabilities that may be available through your existing tech vendors. These could come as enhancements to a system you already use for no additional cost or could be add-on applications that cost more. They will also give your team a greater understanding of AI and how it could change roles and responsibilities now and in the future.
2. Seek Out Ideas and Advice From Departments Outside Finance
With the rapid emergence of AI and a still-evolving understanding of the best business applications, there’s plenty to learn from those around you. CFOs should engage with other department heads and leaders to learn about their AI wins, and the impact it’s had on their business and workforce.
For example, HR might be using generative AI (GenAI) to produce first drafts of job descriptions. While the subject matter may be much different for finance, there could still be much for them to learn about how to structure prompts that generate the best results. The operations team may have created an impressive model to predict customer demand that could inform financial models or be easily adapted to finance use cases.
Change management is another big area to learn from peers in other departments. Where did they start bringing in AI? How quickly did they expand its use? Did bringing AI into that function’s processes meaningfully change the jobs of just a few workers or affect most employees across their division? What strategies did these leaders find effective in getting their teams’ buy-in?
In these early days, your company may even want to set up an AI innovation committee that pulls in senior leaders across the business to share ideas and the results of their experiments that others can learn from.
3. Identify Must-Have AI Skills and Double Down On Professional Development
Early learnings from trials of AI can help CFOs tailor the plans to various roles based on skill gaps and what would make a real impact now or in the immediate future. For example, an accounts payable clerk may need to be trained on how to gather data from new bill scanning and payment automation software, and how they can then put together financial forecasts and plans using that payment data. A controller or a more junior employee on the managerial track might participate in an upskilling program focused on communication, collaboration and leadership.
Then there’s AI-specific training. This kind of general education on how the rapidly evolving technology works, its capabilities and known issues is valuable on its own. It can help turn trepidation around AI eliminating jobs into curiosity and spark ideas about its application to help more employees.
One of the most underestimated benefits of upskilling and reskilling initiatives is that they can improve staff retention. In a University of Phoenix study, 68% of employees said they would stay in jobs with ample opportunity for upskilling. At a minimum, you should start some kind of AI training and explore what AI capabilities your software providers are embedding in your finance systems.
4. Ditch Unfulfilling Work With AI-Fueled Automation
Back-office automation is a trend that started long before the recent emphasis on AI. For many finance roles, AI will feel like the continuation of a trend. However, AI marks a major leap forward because it’s a more intelligent form of automation. It can get increasingly better at identifying anomalies and predicting outcomes as it ingests more data over time. GenAI expands on that with the ability to provide detailed, contextual explanations and suggested actions based on the data.
CFOs will see this additional automation as a way to meaningfully cut costs and increase productivity. But there is another benefit that is perhaps just as valuable: automating mundane tasks related to bookkeeping, account reconciliations, payroll and AP, and AR processing can make your workplace more appealing and help you retain current employees.
Jessica Wijesekera is the senior vice president of global accounting at the healthcare company Vytalize Health. Wijesekera described how one of her senior accountants essentially automated himself out of an accounting role focused on reconciling 47 different bank accounts — to his benefit.
“He was able to go over to our FP&A side, and now he works in budgeting and analytics,” said Wijesekera, “It’s not that he wasn’t a value-add doing bank reconciliation, but now he really helps us control our costs. And I think he’s a lot more fulfilled in his job now that he works in FP&A instead.”
Employees may need training and coaching to shift to more strategic work such as financial planning and analysis (FP&A), but strengthening the team’s critical thinking and analysis skills will only become more valuable in the years to come.
5. Recognize — and Reward — Those Who Lead the Charge In AI Adoption
As CFOs gain a sense of how AI will impact their team’s work in the long term, they can better determine which individuals bring outsized value. Who has the skills that remain valuable or are more important with this technology embedded across finance operations? Who has found innovative ways to increase productivity and provide better insights with AI?
Seek regular feedback from colleagues to know who’s standing out, where they excel and what gaps you have in your talent. However, everything about AI has been moving faster than typical technology breakthroughs, so AI’s impact on your talent needs is also likely to happen quickly.
People who prove they can apply AI to finance operations will be sought-after talent. Given their ability to turn the promise of AI into real business results, you may want to give these top performers the chance to work in various roles across accounting and finance. This will broaden their skillsets, show how quickly they become comfortable with new domains and team dynamics, and help you assess their fit for financial leadership roles.
6. Rethink Your Ideal Candidate Profile as AI Changes the Work
Despite widespread recognition that today’s finance professionals are strategic contributors, many companies have not adjusted what they look for in a candidate to reflect this shift — especially with AI poised to assume more of the routine work.
As you look for talent that can make an immediate impact on your team and thrive using AI, it’s critical to prioritize strategic thinking skills in addition to finance and accounting bona fides. Only 23% of CFOs see understanding of financial principles and accounting practices as one of the most critical skills for finance staffers in the future, according to a McKinsey survey. They cited change management, extracting insights from advanced analytics and making decisions alongside business partners as the skills that will be most important to finance functions in the future.
But there’s a glaring gap in today’s finance talent bench: CFOs say change management is the most critical skill they’ll need in the future, yet that ranked lowest among the skills they believe their finance staff currently possesses.
As much as your finance team needs to be comfortable with data analysis and have an understanding of where and how AI can be applied, the future may place greater emphasis on communication and problem-solving skills. AI may be able to gather and categorize the data, and GenAI could summarize key trends, but it’s up to CFOs and their teams to determine where to invest and where to pull back based on that information.
CFOs should be quick to ask for help navigating these changing hiring needs. Some candidates with strong data science or analytics experience may not have a business degree, CPA license or experience in financial planning. But they could still have the ability to pick up the required financial acumen on the job while increasing diversity of thought.
With shifting expectations among finance employees and candidates, and technological breakthroughs that will change the skills these professionals need, CFOs should take a long look at their talent strategy. Executives should thoroughly assess the expected effects of AI on their industry, business model and specific processes as part of their efforts to determine how they can better retain and attract the skilled professionals they need. Based on what they learn, they can invest in the right strategies and technology to support those efforts.
Tools to Support a New Talent Strategy
As CFOs look to build a workforce for an AI-powered future, they’ll need to give that powerhouse team the right technology to succeed. Best-in-class finance systems can handle much of the routine work your staff dreads. For example, NetSuite’s ERP can automate many tasks related to accounting, such as invoicing, bill payment and financial reporting. Add-on NetSuite modules can automate invoice payments and use data from your ERP to create budgets, forecasts and financial models.
NetSuite is embedding AI throughout the suite, acting as an assistant. These features help your finance team spend more time on strategic work while still delivering timely and accurate filings, reports and dashboards that are indispensable to your business.
Need Help?
Our Technology Solutions Group includes a team of experienced solution experts who will work with you to understand and address the specific needs of your business. If you’d like to prepare your finance team for the transition to AI, contact us online or give us a call at 410.685.5512.
.png?width=400&height=400&name=Podcast%20CTA%20400x400%20(2).png)