As companies move from investments in generative artificial intelligence to building out and offering the solutions that will be powered by it, it’s crucial for leadership to have a clear-eyed understanding of what AI can actually do in the present, Brian Zander, vice president of marketing for knowledge management platform Bloomfire told CFO Dive.

When it comes to implementing AI, “I think where the missteps happen is if you have over-inflated expectations of what AI is going to do for you, or if you are not clear about how you’re going to measure that impact and translate that into a cash value right from the get go,” he said in an interview.

To avoid those hurdles, leaders like the CFO and the chief information officer need to be sure they’re covering each other’s blind spots in those areas. CIOs, for example, may often “jump to level four or five” when it comes to AI’s maturity curve, and “they miss the fact that you have to lay the foundation first,” Zander said. “And CFOs don’t really love the idea of laying the foundation because that means longer time to value.”

Cracking the AI value nut  

Attention on AI’s potential has only sharpened in the three years since OpenAI launched its ChatGPT tool, especially as a murky economic environment has led more businesses to look to technology to address cost and labor challenges.

Those same challenges, however, are also causing many leaders to ask deeper questions as they seek to look beyond the AI hype. CFOs, for instance, are still keeping their eye on the tool’s return on investment.

For anyone selling AI as part of their software currently — including Bloomfire, which provides an AI-powered knowledge-management platform — “I think there’s an element of hype in almost everything, because we talk about the future of what your company can be, and CFOs really care more about like, ‘Okay, well, show me the money,’” Zander said. “‘What is that going to be today or in the next six months, or when I have to give my next quarterly report?’”

Bloomfire is the latest avenue in a career path that has often led Zander to be “the person who's involved in big transformational initiatives at companies,” he said of his past experiences. Zander joined the Austin, Texas-based Bloomfire in April 2023 as VP of marketing, according to his LinkedIn profile. His past roles include serving as president for Resurrection Gaming Company and a seven-year span at the Librizol Corporation in roles such as director of strategic intelligence.

To execute on a successful AI implementation strategy, CFOs and CIOs each need to have a transparent understanding not only of the company’s objective in implementing the technology, but of how the business is going to measure the success of that objective, Zander said. An easy source of frustration, for example, is when “things get stuck in pilot hell,” or when technologies get implemented, “but you don’t get the adoption by the teams that you’re trying to implement it with,” he said.

“That's a hard nut to crack if you're in a CIO’s position, because you're saying, ‘well, look at all of the things that we are doing with AI, and the CFO is saying, ‘Yeah, but that’s not translating into dollars,’” he said.

Putting the end user first

Finding a middle ground between the risk and reward of AI means CFOs need to get a little more comfortable with risk, while CIOs may need to keep a tighter eye on how the technology is actually being put to use. Both leaders need to watch out for possible misunderstandings about AI’s uses and potential, he said.

 “I think CFOs have a tendency to overestimate AI's capabilities when it comes to messy data,” both structured and unstructured, Zander said. The mistake CIOs often make, meanwhile, is “they develop the tool for the tool’s sake,” without considering the end user, he said.

“CIOs get frustrated because they're like, ‘but look at all the great things that you can do with this tool,’” he said, but “they didn't think about who the user was going to be and how the user is going to get their job done better with that tool.”

As AI seeps further into businesses’ processes and products, having tech and finance be in lockstep is only going to get more critical.

“I absolutely think that technology investments do have a direct input on the value that a company can produce,” Zander said. “I think that technology 100% impacts the human performance side of things, and the CFO should be measuring that in a very real way.”