. “The top questions CFO should be educating the CEOs and the board of directors on as the business cycle begin to turn more positive include: How should we sequence funding for organic and inorganic growth bets? How best do we secure capital? What does it look like when we model out the impact on margin and ROIC?”CEO and CFO Interest in AI Increasing
When asked which new technology will most significantly impact their industry over the next three years, both CFOs and CEOs named AI as their top pick. For CFOs, this is especially notable because they likely do not have much direct experience with AI yet, given that 80% of finance functions using AI just started in the past two years.
“Five forces are driving CFOs and CEOs to prioritize conversations about AI in the third quarter. First, boards and CEOs expect C-suite leaders to protect the organization while driving broad use case adoption. Second, customers continue to leverage generative AI in their daily life, moving their expectations for user experience. Third, employees are concerned about job loss yet may eventually leave organizations where they can’t fully leverage generative AI.
“Rising rates are forcing more customer price sensitivity, and CFOs are less able to pass pricing on to their customers,” said Bant. “We see CFOs asking teams the tough questions about how they will use resources and headcount even more efficiently in the remainder of 2023 and into 2024. With budgeting right around the corner, CFOs will attempt to force higher levels of productivity by clawing back resources while asking their teams to achieve more.