How is AI changing finance team structure?

Tom Steer

Chief Financial Officer · Sokin

Making them builders

Tom Steer says AI is changing finance teams by making them builders: they set up infrastructure that is easy to replicate and get insights back almost real time, speeding helpful information to the business.

The answer starts at 34:01.

Erica Dorfman

Chief Financial Officer · Brex

Automating transaction audits

Erica Dorfman says AI automates transaction audits, making it possible to audit every transaction cheaply instead of staffing BPO teams to sample them.

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Todd McElhatton

Chief Operating and Financial Officer · Zuora

Smaller, more agile teams

Todd McElhatton says AI is leading to smaller, more agile teams that deliver exponentially higher output than larger teams, based on what he is seeing in his engineering organization.

Jessica Somers

Chief Financial Officer · Aledade, Inc.

Creates strategic partnership capacity

Jessica Somers says AI can create capacity that finance redeploys to strategic partnership with the business, so finance acts as a partner rather than just doing reporting or forecasting. She says this starts by simplifying and reimagining the work.

Patrick Villanova

Chief Financial Officer · Blackline

CFO‑CIO partnership

Patrick Villanova says the CFO and CIO are now "literally linked at the hip, talking every day," because the CFO's office has become responsible for the accuracy and speed of the data the business uses to make decisions.

The answer starts at 4:46.

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Cal Brouilette

Chief Financial Officer · Flatiron Health

Automating analyst work

Cal Brouilette says AI is automating analyst work, noting he can ask it questions he'd ask an analyst and get about 90% of an entry-level analyst's verbal answer in minutes.

Claire Bramley

Chief Financial Officer · Xero

Reallocating tasks

Claire Bramley says her team is reallocating tasks, mapping workflows across functions to determine where humans need to stay in the loop for compliance and oversight and where rules-based tasks can be handled by AI.

Matthew Ostrower

Chief Financial Officer · Link Logistics

Provides 40 AI analysts per person

Matthew Ostrower says AI lets companies give one person 40 AI analysts named Claude, expanding what they can do; he says this is about empowering people, not lower headcount.

Jeff Cobourn

Finance, Business Operations & Strategy · Gusto

Reducing middle-layer coordination roles

Jeff Cobourn says AI reduces the middle layer—roles doing scaffolding and coordination—because you don't need as many people connecting the dots.