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.
Banks have had a stellar first quarter. The major U.S. banks raked in nearly $50 billion in profits in the first three months of the year, The Guardian reported.
That was largely due to Wall Street bank traders, who profited from a volatile stock exchange, Reuters showed.
But even without the extra bump from stock trading, banks are doing well when it comes to interest, the same Reuters article found. And some banks could stand to benefit even more from this one potential rule change.
Morgan Stanley thinks it could have a major impact on Citi in particular.
Upcoming changes for banks
To understand why Morgan Stanley thinks things are going to change at Citi, you need to understand some recent bank rule changes.
Banks make money by lending out money, which usually comes from depositors. But people need access to their money and the right to withdraw whenever they want.
So, banks keep a percentage of all money deposited to make sure they can cover what the average person needs.
But what happens if there is a major demand for withdrawals, as we saw during the financial crisis of 2008?
That’s where capital requirements come in. After the financial crisis, major banks like Citi were required by law to hold a higher percentage of money in order to avoid major bank failures.
For years, banks had to put aside billions of dollars. Money that couldn’t be lent out or even returned to shareholders.
Now, that’s all about to change.
Capital change requirements for major banks
Banks that are considered globally systemically important banking organizations (G-SIBs) have a higher capital buffer than community banks as they usually engage in banking activity that is far more complicated than your average market loan.
The list depends on the size of the bank and its underlying activity, according to the Federal Reserve.
Current global systemically important banks
A proposal from U.S. federal banking regulators could drastically reduce the amount that these large banks have to hold in reserve.
Changes would result in the largest U.S. banks holding an average 4.8% less. While that might seem like a small percentage number, for banks of this size, it equates to billions of dollars, according to a Federal Reserve memo.
The proposed changes were a long time coming, Robert Sarama, a financial services leader at PwC, told TheStreet.
“It’s a bit of a recognition that perhaps the pendulum swung a little too far in the higher capital requirement following the financial crisis, making it harder for banks to participate in some markets,” he said.
Natasha Luscri and Luke Miller consider themselves among the lucky ones. The couple recently bought their first home in the northwest suburbs of Melbourne.
It wasn’t something they necessarily expected to be able to do, but some good fortune with an investment in silver bullion and making use of government schemes meant “the stars aligned” to get into the market. Luke used the federal government’s super saver scheme to help build a deposit, and the couple then jumped on the 5 per cent deposit scheme, which they say made all the difference.
“We only started looking because of the government deposit scheme. Basically, we didn’t really think it was possible that we could buy something,” Natasha told Yahoo Finance.
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Last month they settled on their two bedroom unit, which the pair were able to purchase in an off-market sale – something that is becoming increasingly common in the market at the moment.
Rather perfectly, they got it for about $20-30,000 below market rate, Natasha estimated, which meant they were under the $600,000 limit to avoid paying stamp duty under Victoria’s suite of support measures for first home buyers.
“They wanted to sell it quickly. They had no other offers. So we got it for less than what it would have gone for if it had been on market,” Natasha said.
“We didn’t have a lot of cash sitting in an account … I think we just got lucky and made some smart investment decisions which helped.”
It’s a far cry from when the couple couldn’t find a home due to the rental crisis when they were previously living in Adelaide and had to turn to sub-standard options.
“We’ve managed to go from living in a caravan because we were living in Adelaide and we couldn’t find a rental with our dogs … So we’ve gone from living in a caravan, being kind of tertiary homeless essentially because we couldn’t get a rental, to now having been able to purchase our first home,” Natasha explained.
Rate rises beginning to bite for new homeowners
Natasha, 34, and Luke, 45, are among more than 300,000 Australians who have used the 5 per cent deposit scheme to get into the housing market with a much smaller than usual deposit, according to data from Housing Australia at the end of March. However that’s dating back to 2020 when the program first launched, before it was rebranded and significantly expanded in October last year to scrap income or placement caps, along with allowing for higher property price caps.
A year after the US exit from the global health body, WHO officials say finances are secure, for now. But amid donor cuts, rising inflation, and future economic uncertainties, will funding be sufficient to meet its needs?
Earlier this month, senior officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) told journalists in a newly refurbished pressroom at the agency’s headquarters that its finances were “stable”. Following a year that saw its biggest donor withdraw as a member, forcing it to cut 25 per cent of its staff, its financial chief said that 85 per cent of its 2026 and 2027 budget had been financed.
“While we are looking at resource mobilisation, we’re also looking at tightening our belts,” Raul Thomas, assistant director general for business operations and compliance, explained, admitting that the WHO “will have great difficulty mobilising the last 15 per cent”.
Sitting at the centre of the press podium, surrounded by his deputies, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, backed up Thomas’s outlook. “We are stable now and moving forward”, since the retreat of the United States from the health body, he said. The Ethiopian noted that the WHO’s financial reform, allowing for incremental increases in state member fees, has been a big plus.
Mandatory contributions have historically accounted for only a quarter of the organisation’s total funding. States have agreed to raise their contributions by 20 per cent twice, in 2023 and in 2025. Further increments are scheduled to be negotiated in 2027, 2029 and 2031 to bring mandatory funding up to par with voluntary donations that the agency relies on. The WHO also reduced its biennial budget for 2026 and 2027 from $5.3 billion to $4.2bn.
“Our financing actually is better,” Tedros emphasised. “Without the reform, it would have been a problem.”
Read more: Nations agree to raise their WHO fees in wake of US retreat
Nonetheless, the director general, now in his final year at the UN agency, warned that member states should not assume that the financial road ahead will be clear. “The future of WHO will also be defined by how successful we are in terms of the assessed contribution increases or the financial reform in general.”
As west retreats, others step in
Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, explains that every year at the WHO, there’s “a non-stop effort” to ensure funding. She says a continued reliance on non-flexible, voluntary funding earmarked for specific projects, as well as donors withholding contributions – sometimes for political leverage – complicates the organisation’s financial plans. Meanwhile, ongoing cuts and predictions of a global economic downturn stemming from the war in the Middle East may further aggravate the situation, as costs rise and member states focus on national spending needs.
Soaring prices driven by the conflict and supply chain disruptions have already affected the WHO’s procurement of emergency health kits for crises, officials at the global health body said. “We are continuing to negotiate at least from a procurement standpoint on how we can bring down a little bit the prices or reduce the increases, but we are seeing it across the board,” said Thomas.
Altaf Musani, WHO director of health emergencies, meanwhile, said aid cuts have already deprived roughly 53 million people in crisis situations of access to healthcare.
Last month, Thomas told the Association of Accredited Correspondents at the UN at the end of April that the agency is looking at non-traditional, or non-western, donors for funding to close the biennial 15 per cent funding gap. “It’s not that we won’t go to the traditional donors, but we’re expanding that donor base.”
Since the dramatic drop in funding from the US, formerly the WHO’s biggest contributor, Moon highlights that there hadn’t been a “sudden jump by non-traditional states to compensate for the US”. Last May, at the World Health Assembly, China pledged $500 million in voluntary funding until 2030, a sharp rise from the $2.5m it contributed over 2024 and 2025.
The WHO did not respond to questions from Geneva Solutions about how much of the pledged amount had been disbursed. China’s mission in Geneva did not respond to questions raised about the funding.
Other countries, particularly Gulf states, have meanwhile been increasing their voluntary contributions to the organisation in recent years. Similarly to “western liberal democracies have in the past”, Moon explains that they may be seeking “to raise their profile and prioritise health as one of the issues that they would like to be known for”. She noted that the shift in the UN agency’s list of top donors may affect how it manages the money.
‘Sustainable’ spending
Amid these financial uncertainties, WHO executives say the organisation is also reviewing its expenditure through “sustainability plans”. This includes working more closely with collaborating centres, including universities and research institutes that support WHO programmes and are independently funded. On influenza, for example, the WHO works with dozens of national centres around the world, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US,
When asked about any plans for further job cuts, Thomas denied that these were part of the WHO’s current strategies, but could not rule them out entirely as a future possibility. Instead, he said, the organisation was “looking at ways to use funding that may have been for activities to cover salaries in the most important areas”.
Meanwhile, WHO data shows that the number of consultants employed by the agency by the end of 2025 decreased by 23 per cent, slightly less than the staff reductions. Global heath reporter Elaine Fletcher explained to Geneva Solutions that consultants continue to represent a significant proportion of the agency’s workforce, at 5,844 – including an overwhelming number hired in Africa and Southeast Asia – compared with regular staff numbering 8,569 in December.
Upcoming donor politics
The upcoming change in leadership will also be a strategic moment for the organisation to boost its coffers. Moon says the race for the top job at the organisation may attract funding from candidates’ home countries, which could be seen as a strategic opportunity.
Given the relatively small size of the WHO budget, compared to some government or agency accounts, “you don’t have to be the richest country in the world to dangle a few 100 million dollars, which could go a long way in their budget,” the expert notes.
The biggest ongoing challenge, however, will be whether major donors will announce further aid cuts. In the medium and longer term, “countries will have to agree on the step up every two years, and there’s always drama around that.”
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