Finance
3 ERP experts on AI’s impact on the finance department
Finance departments have traditionally been risk-averse, which has often led them to lag in adopting new technologies. This writer recalls finance leaders insisting that their company’s financial data was too proprietary to ever move into the cloud. Yet, this caution hasn’t always been the norm. Finance was among the earliest adopters of personal computers. PC-based spreadsheets revolutionized how financial work was done, transforming processes once handled on paper with a Texas Instruments or HP calculator. Those manual methods were slow and error-prone, so it was a godsend when spreadsheets made financial analysis faster, easier and far more accurate.
In fact, PCs became a status symbol in accounting — public accounting firms proudly showed off that everyone had the latest PC. Geoffrey A. Moore, in “Crossing the Chasm,” writes about the role of Lotus 1-2-3 in enabling its delighted early adopters “to do something they had never been able to do before — what later became popularized as ‘what if’ analysis.”
The question now is whether generative and agentic AI will fundamentally reconfigure how finance is done. Bruce Harris, director of financial systems and intelligence at Torchy’s Tacos, put it well in a recent interview with me.
“Every taco we sell is in our cloud data warehouse, and this data tells a story. By embracing agentic AI, we’re transforming finance from transactional to strategic,” he said. “Our agentic workflows automate the routine work, freeing our people to focus on insight, strategy, and growth. This isn’t about replacing talent — it’s about amplifying it.”
To explore this shift further, I spoke with experts at three ERP companies that are enabling agents for their finance customers:
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Andrew Kershaw, group general manager for the office of the CFO, Workday
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Joe Preston, vice president of product and design, Intuit
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Victor Alvarez, product marketing manager for Joule, SAP
Their perspectives are surprising and deserving of wider attention — especially for CIOs, I would wager. For many organizations, CFOs have been the executives to whom IT reported — or, at minimum, one of IT’s most demanding and consequential internal customers. Countless CIOs have seen their lives upended by ERP implementations that dragged on for years, consuming budgets, attention and every available set of hands. These “all-hands” moments have repeatedly locked CIOs into long cycles of implementation and reimplementation.
What will be interesting to watch now is whether the shifts underway — particularly, finance’s push to apply AI to become leaner, more automated and more strategic — trigger another implementation cycle. Interestingly, if finance can reimagine its operating model, CIOs may find themselves at the center of a very different partnership with the CFO.
From number crunchers to strategic advisors
Each of the ERP experts I spoke with made it clear that AI agents will automate transactional and compliance work, freeing finance professionals from manual tasks, including data entry, financial reconciliation and expense validation. With agentic AI, the boring, repetitive financial work is officially over — a welcome development for someone who had done financial analysis right after my first MBA. It was not my calling, but people who were STs in a Myers-Briggs assessment thrived in traditional accounting-type roles. What will this mean for those types?
AI agents will refine accounting and finance roles from transaction-heavy to insight-driven, shifting focus toward strategic analysis, decision support and business partnership. The hope, clearly, is that with the support of AI, finance teams can tackle previously “undone” work, unlock new productivity and enable faster, smarter business decisions.
Andrew Kershaw, group general manager for the office of the CFO, Workday
The AI opportunity for the CFO role
Here are excerpts from my discussions with Kershaw, Preston and Alavarez (lightly edited for clarity and brevity) on the importance and implications of applying AI to finance, starting with how AI will redefine the role of the CFO.
Andrew Kershaw, Workday: “Agents will accelerate the evolution of the CFO’s role, enabling [them to spend] the vast majority of their time on strategic opportunities across the business vs. managing transactional efficiency within their group. The core goal has always been the same: less time on transactions, more time on insights that drive the business forward. The value of agents lies in automating finance processes to help the CFOs and their teams both protect and grow value in the business.
“On the protection side, it’s about automating for greater accuracy, compliance and risk mitigation. On the growth side, it’s about unlocking insights to drive the business forward. By taking on tedious work that doesn’t require human judgment, agents free up teams to focus on strategy and high-value decisions. … This is how CFOs gain the credibility and capacity to stop spending time looking back and start spending it looking forward.
“It’s exciting because agents are moving beyond just surfacing insights to actually taking autonomous action, delving deeper into the data to understand variance or root cause of issues, then resolving an error or notifying the right people — effectively automating the workflow from insight to resolution.”
Joe Preston, Intuit: “While most financial tools give CFOs access to data … it’s challenging to cut through the noise and determine what’s valuable. Agentic AI identifies trends, connects and finds insights that are overlooked or hidden, helping CFOs understand not only where their business stands today but where it’s headed. Agents can provide a comprehensive approach to the financial management of growing, midmarket businesses with robust reporting, KPI analysis, and scenario planning and forecasting based on performance and peer benchmarking, helping CFOs and their finance teams make smart decisions to achieve their goals.”
Victor Alvarez, product marketing manager for Joule, SAP
A new division of labor in finance
AI agents are expanding automation by handling complex, multi-step and cross-functional workflows like invoice matching, cash collection and dispute resolution — while improving speed, accuracy and cash flow. With this said, our ERP experts noted that human expertise remains central.
Kershaw: “What sets AI agents apart is their ability to automate parts of finance that couldn’t be automated before. Past solutions struggled with ‘gray areas’ — tasks requiring judgment or cross-functional input. Now, agents handle these complex, insight-driven tasks, making finance workflows smoother and smarter. For example, in accounts payable, if an invoice doesn’t match a closed purchase order, agents can handle this autonomously, coordinating with other agents to resolve the issue, while still respecting the control environment.
“However, while agents are great at surfacing data and routing decisions, human judgment remains critical, especially for complex financial decisions. Agents will make it easier for decision-makers to act with confidence, but decisions that impact financial results require human oversight because someone needs to own the outcome. For example, AI can surface data for bonus accruals, but leadership must make the final call because executive alignment is required.”
Victor Alvarez, SAP: “Agents will handle common, multi-step workflows that require reasoning over data and business process context (e.g., invoice processing, dispute resolution, trade classification). They’ll also perform cross-functional workflows, such as cash collection involving finance, customer service and operations. Real-time decision support through recommending actions based on trusted, high-quality financial data is another significant benefit. For example, an accounts receivable agent doesn’t just automate receivables. It reasons through open items, balances, disputes, and dunning history to assess risk and prioritize follow-ups. It analyzes this context to flag high-risk receivables, recommends the next best actions and guides users with proactive, timely insights. Then it acts — initiating follow-ups, prompting responses and supporting resolution. This can result in less time spent managing overdue receivables, fewer write-offs through early risk detection and improvement in DSO to strengthen cash flow.”
Joe Preston, vice president of product and design, Intuit
Can finance learn to trust AI with its data?
AI complements — does not replace — human expertise, with people providing essential context, oversight, and ethical judgment in decision-making. Security, data integrity and privacy are paramount but will require finance leaders to understand how AI reaches conclusions to ensure accountability and compliance.
Kershaw: “Beyond the need for AI to act in an auditable, correct and repeatable manner, currently, the biggest hurdle for finance organizations isn’t understanding the value of AI — it’s reimagining what’s possible and adopting new ways of working. On reimagining possibilities, finance leaders aren’t used to AI agents providing instant, strategic recommendations instead of their having to manually track down information. Regarding new ways of working, finance teams must adapt to new workflows, including closer collaboration with IT.”
Preston: “Organizations need to keep in mind that AI complements human intelligence. While AI automates certain tasks and surfaces valuable information, human expertise is critical to ensure the right context and decision-making is applied. It’s also important for firms to remember that public AI tools may lack the secure environment needed when analyzing client data.”
Most exciting tasks to automate with AI agents?
The biggest challenge for finance leaders is not about recognizing AI’s value but reimagining what’s possible with AI. Here’s Kershaw’s take.
Kershaw: “Two areas: contracts and cost/profitability analysis. They are exciting because they represent the removal of very time-consuming and cumbersome activities that unlock incredible value.
“First, consider contracts. With a revenue contract agent, for example, AI automatically reads incoming contracts, sorts them by type and extracts all the critical data points like customer name, payment terms and total contract value. Crucially, the AI is continuously monitoring your entire portfolio and surfacing key insights through interactive dashboards, giving finance professionals insight into things like built-in rate increases tied to inflation that could automatically expand your revenue.
“Second, profitability isn’t just about one big number; it requires analyzing the true cost of operations for both direct and indirect costs and providing clear transparency into how shared resources are consumed. Agentic AI allows accountants and finance professionals to allocate indirect costs daily — such as management fees, utilities, IT and marketing — down to the individual outlet.”
Parting words
As each of the ERP experts made clear, finance organizations are on the precipice of significant change. For a profession developed as Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the change and disruption that it is about to experience is earth-shattering. In “Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped our Modern World,” Scott D. Anthony writes that “disruption is an engine of progress. By making the complicated simple and the expensive affordable, it transforms how we work, play, live and communicate.” Nowhere will this transformation be clearer than in accounting and finance as agentic AI takes hold.
In a world where the books of the company largely run themselves, it will be the more cerebral accounting and finance people who are in demand. These survivors will not only understand the books but also be able to make concrete suggestions on achieving business transformation.
Demonstrating this line of sight into business transformation will be a challenge similar to what happened to the CIO and their teams since the COVID-19 pandemic: the ones who survived underwent personal transformation, in many cases adopting a new mindset and skill set.
This time, the personal transformation is required by the CFO and their key reports in order to lead the next wave of change. And just like with CIOs and their teams in the wake of the pandemic, not everyone will be capable of making the change.
The seven-week military conflict in the Middle East will redefine Hong Kong’s role as a global financial centre, positioning the city as a safe harbour for capital and investments.
Anecdotal evidence suggested that more banks had turned to Hong Kong to protect their businesses and committed themselves to expanding their presence in the city. At the same time, inquiries about adding allocations of mainland Chinese assets among global investors had recently increased, potentially enlarging the customer base for the city’s asset-management industry and family offices and driving demand for offshore yuan-linked financial products.
For years, Hong Kong’s status as a financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region has been challenged by Dubai, which has risen to prominence as a gateway linking Asia and Europe in capital flows, transport and logistics. With the war destabilising the Middle East – at one point forcing the closure of the Dubai International Airport and sending stocks in the Gulf region plunging – Hong Kong has re-emerged due to its geographical location, a pegged exchange rate, free capital flows and support from China’s economic strength.
“In that context, China and Hong Kong are attracting renewed attention,” said Gary Dugan, CEO of The Global CIO Office in Dubai, which advises family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals globally. “There is growing interest among some clients in increasing exposure to China and Hong Kong. It is less a simple flight to safety and more a reassessment of where investors see relative value, policy consistency and long-term strategic opportunity.”
Dubai now relies on trade, tourism and finance as the pillars of its economy, reflecting the success of its four-decade diversification away from oil for sustained growth. The United Arab Emirates city is home to Jebel Ali Free Zone, the biggest free-trade zone in the Middle East, and the second-largest stock market in the region, with combined market values of US$1.01 trillion. The city, also a global hub for gold trading, has a population of 4 million, about 80 per cent of which are foreign expatriates. Dubai’s economy grew by 4.7 per cent in the January-to-September period last year.
Before seeking a new referendum MPS needs to rebuild trust in the community through completing state audits, putting in place controls to prevent overspending and routine reports to the public.
For MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, who just wrapped up her first year leading Milwaukee’s public school system, her tenure has been punctuated by some very big numbers.
The first is $252 million. That is the amount of new spending voters narrowly approved in an April 2024 referendum to support operations in Wisconsin’s largest school district. Just months later, MPS was rocked by revelations the district was months behind in filing key financial reports to the state, which led to former Superintendent Keith Posley’s resignation.
The second is $1 billion. MPS faces a deferred maintenance backlog exceeding $1 billion. The district’s enrollment has declined 30% over the last 30 years, leaving many schools at less than 50% full. That, in part, is driving a plan to close some schools and to improve others to help lower costs.
The final is $46 million, the deficit MPS was running for the 2024-25 school year, an unexpected shortfall which has led to hundreds of staff layoffs.
Getting the district’s accounting, budgeting and financial reporting back on track has dominated Cassellius’s first year at MPS. In an April 15 interview with the Journal Sentinel’s editorial board, she talked in detail about the challenges putting that into order and progress she sees in restoring transparency into its operations.
State funding and aging buildings create budget nightmares
Cassellius says state needs to keep up its share of school funding
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel editorial board, MPS leader Brenda Cassellius says budgets and buildings are her two top worries.
Cassellius said the on-going budget crisis is her top concern. She said the state’s failure to live up to its share of funding is exacerbating MPS’ budget woes. A group of school districts, teachers and parents filed suit against the state Legislature and its Joint Finance Committee claiming the current state funding system is unconstitutional and prevents schools from meeting students’ educational needs.
Funding for special education is especially critical. About 20% of MPS students have disabilities, almost twice the share of the city’s charter schools, and the average of 14% across Wisconsin.
“What’s keeping me up now, you know, is really just the budget crisis we’re in, with not only this year but multiple years going out without additional state aid, we’ve been not getting funding for what our needs are for our students, and particularly our students with special needs,” she said.
Although the state budget increased special education funding to a 42% reimbursement rate, the actual rate has been about 35%. Another component to the budget headache is the age of MPS buildings. The average age is 85 years-old compared to 45 across the nation.
“We have just kicked this can down the curb or kicked it down the street or whatever you call it for too long. And it’s time that we really take on a serious conversation about the conditions of the learning environments in which we send our children,” she said. “Particularly in Milwaukee Public Schools, we serve the most vulnerable children. Children who have language barriers, children who have disabilities, children in high-concentrated poverty.”
What needs to happen before MPS seeks another referendum
Voters need to be comfortable MPS has made tough budget decisions
In an interview with Journal Sentinel editorial board, Brenda Cassellius said voters will need to see budget improvements before seeking more spending
Cassellius said MPS will definitely need to go back to voters for a new referendum in the future. In addition to the 2024 measure, voters approved an $87 million plan in 2020.
Before doing that, she said the district first needs to rebuild trust in the community through completing required state audits, putting into place controls to prevent overspending and routine reports to the school board and public about finances.
“I don’t think that the voters are going to want us to bring something forward until they feel comfortable that we have done the cleanup that is necessary,” she said. “And we’ve built the trust that we have the sufficient controls in place.”
In the interim, she’s hoping the state will meet its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public schools.
“What the public expects is you know where the money is, you’re spending it as close as you can to children, you’re getting good on the promise around art, music, and PE, and the things the public said they wanted to fund,” Cassellius said. “And they want their kids to have so that they have a quality education and an excellent education in Milwaukee Public Schools, and that they had the right amount of staff that they actually need. In the school to be safe and to run a good operation.”
Rebuilding finance staff in wake of $46 million in overspending
MPS is rebuilding school finance staff in wake of reporting lapses
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel editorial board April 15, MPS superintendent discusses accountability for district’s financial problems.
The $46 million budget shortfall from the 2024-25 school year started coming into view last fall and was confirmed in mid-January. Cassellius noted that in addition to hiring a new superintendent, MPS also parted ways with its comptroller and CFO.
“We are really rebuilding the personnel and staff of the finance department. That is what’s critical, is having the right people in the right seats doing the work,” she said. “Also critical is making sure that you have the right controls in place. The audit findings found that we did not have proper controls in place and now we have those proper controls in place and when we find things we put new SOPs in place and that is what any business does.”
Identifying that shortfall, though painful, was the result of better accounting.
“Being three years behind in auditing means that you don’t have full sight on your actual revenues and expenditures. And so we have now full sight of our revenues and our expenditures and that’s why we were able to see this new deficit of $46 million,” she said. “And we still continue to work with DPI on those processes to make sure that every month we’re doing monthly to actuals and doing those accounting, reporting that to the board. In a way that is consumable to the public that they can understand.”
Jim Fitzhenry is the Ideas Lab Editor/Director of Community Engagement for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Reach him at jfitzhen@gannett.com or 920-993-7154.
Property markets move in cycles, and with interest rates rising and other pressures like high fuel costs, some markets are clearly slowing down. Many first-home buyers who have only ever seen markets going up are conditioned to think that when purchasing, competition is always intense and decisions need to be made quickly.
In those times, buyers often feel they need to act fast, stretch their budget and secure a property at almost any cost. But things have definitely changed.
In a softer market, the dynamic shifts. Properties take longer to sell, competition thins, and it’s the vendors who begin to feel pressure.
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For buyers who understand how to navigate that change, the balance of power quickly moves in their favour. The opportunity is not simply to buy at a lower price. It is to negotiate from a position of strength.
If that’s you right now, these are the key skills first-home buyers need to take advantage of in softer market conditions.
The most important shift in a soft market is psychological. In a rising market, buyers often feel like they are competing for limited opportunities. In a softer market, the opposite is true. There are more properties available, fewer active buyers and less urgency overall. This gives buyers options.
When buyers understand that they are not competing with multiple parties on every property, their decision-making improves. They are more willing to walk away, compare opportunities and avoid overpaying. Negotiation strength comes from not needing to transact immediately. When that pressure is removed, buyers are able to engage more strategically.
One of the most common mistakes first-home buyers make is continuing to apply strategies that only work in rising markets. Auction urgency is a clear example. In strong markets, auctions often attract multiple bidders and create competitive tension. In softer conditions, properties are more likely to pass in, shifting the process away from a public bidding environment into a private negotiation.
This is where leverage increases.
Private negotiations allow buyers to introduce conditions that protect their position. These may include finance clauses, longer settlement periods or price adjustments based on due diligence. Opportunities that are rarely available in competitive markets become standard in softer ones.
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