Making use of artificial intelligence has quickly become not an option, but an expectation for both CFOs and the finance function, Trintech CFO Omar Choucair said.

This means finance chiefs need to be moving as quickly as possible to incorporate AI effectively into their businesses — but it’s also important to keep in mind the “immovable points” or critical responsibilities inside the Office of the CFO, Choucair said.

“I keep going back to, the CFO cannot be ‘almost right,’” Choucair told CFO Dive in an interview. “I tell everybody that the CFO cannot almost be right, and we are responsible for mission critical processes that have zero- to near- zero tolerance.”

Shepherding safe and auditable AI

A provider of AI-enabled software to help finance teams automate the financial close process, Trintech has focused on incorporating AI both into its products and inside its teams. For both CFOs and Dallas, Texas-based Trintech, the need to ensure financial information is 100% correct and accurate at all times is a top focus, Choucair said.

AI has remained the “number one and number two topic” during CFO conferences or discussions between finance chiefs, Choucair said. Finance chiefs are bearing the dual responsibility of ensuring the business’s financial information is accurate, secure and compliant — while also being responsible for effectively utilizing the company’s resources and driving growth.

When it comes to AI, “there's budget to be spent, but I think the real issue is that, is it reliable? Is it part of the controls when the auditors come in?” he said. “Whatever function or process that's being done, is it really pristine? And can it be audited?”

Choucair has served as CFO for the financial close software provider since 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before Trintech, he served as CFO for B2B marketing platform Multiview, a Warburg Pincus portfolio company, and began his career at Big Four firm KPMG.

Trintech has embedded AI throughout its product suite — introducing an AI assistant, Beacon, as well as adding agentic AI into its financial close processes, according to an April 9 press release. The technology can provide benefits such as AI-powered transaction matching, journal entry preparation and reconciliation narratives and documentation, according to the release.

With transaction matching or exception reporting, for example, the tool aims to help solve the challenge of the small percentage of data or information that automation historically fails to match, he said.

“They get kicked out, and they need a person to go track them down. What we're doing is creating an agentic agent to come in and actually solve those problems and then have a human in the loop,” Choucair said.

A marathon, not a sprint

Choucair has also used the technology within his own day-to-day tasks, he said; for example, tapping it to aid with a tax restructuring the company was mulling. The generative AI tool was helping in answering complicated tax questions, he said — with the business also having its tax advisors review its conclusions.

For finance leaders that may still be reticent to use AI, “I would just tell CFOs that the more you can use it, the better off you can be,” Choucair said. “But the other thing I would say is that, I've got all my lieutenants.”

Getting buy-in from team members regarding AI is critical to its effective use. Trintech has made “huge strides” with the use of AI by its own employees, Choucair said. Trinech initially started with ChatGPT and rolled out enterprise licenses across its teams early last year. After introducing the tools, Trintech’s employees quickly split into three groups, Choucair said.

The first were “very, very energetic and focused, and they were our number one cheerleaders” for the technology, he said. Meanwhile, the second group was “very concerned, because they maybe didn't have the skill sets to really benefit from it, and then you had a group in the middle that that needed a lot of training,” he said.

It’s important for finance chiefs to find the right balance between decisive action and moving too fast. The AI journey, especially for those first starting, “seems like it is a sprint, but it's really not a sprint,” Choucair said.

For those CFOs just starting their AI transformation journey, “I tell them, talk to your partners, talk to people that you trust and find folks in your core [group] that are really leaning into the AI,” he said.