Dive Brief:

• Salesforce Chief Operating and Financial Officer Robin Washington has been leaning on artificial intelligence to speed her preparation for earnings calls as she settles into her new role, the executive said at a virtual roundtable on AI.
• Among other purposes, Washington said she leverages AI tools to analyze data and summarize information that can help to focus her messaging.
• “I use AI a lot in preparation for understanding not only questions asked of my predecessors in our company but what's competitively happening,” Washington said during the Aug. 7 press event. With AI, the time it takes to prepare for earnings calls has “been reduced to hours instead of days,” she told reporters.

Dive Insight:

Salesforce announced in February that it appointed Washington, a member of its board of directors since 2013, to serve in the newly created role of “COFO." 

The company said at the time that its then-COO, Brian Millham, was planning to retire. Then-CFO Amy Weaver was also poised to exit her post after previously announcing plans to step down.

The decision to combine the two roles is allowing the tech giant to “break down silos” and move with greater speed, according to Washington.

“I think it makes the COFO organization a much more effective business partner to be in front of operations, to be supporting and fueling the business forward in a lot of different ways,” she said at the AI roundtable, which also included PayPal CFO Jamie Miller.

Miller said her team is using AI agents to create internal content around data analysis as well as first drafts of “executive level materials where it’s really summarization of a strategy.” Both she and Washington said their teams haven’t yet used AI to generate documents such as public 10-K forms required by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Salesforce convened the event to highlight research showing that CFOs are becoming more bullish when it comes AI adoption.

Of 261 CFOs surveyed globally, only 4% reported having a conservative AI strategy, down from 70% in 2020.

“This rapid transformation highlights a widespread recognition among financial leaders that AI is no longer just an emerging technology but a crucial tool for enhancing efficiency, optimizing operations, and, critically, driving long-term growth,” according to a summary of the findings.

Respondents said they expect AI agents in particular to increase company revenue by almost 20%. On average, CFOs reported allocating 25% of their current total AI budgets for agents.

Salesforce is among big tech companies that have been betting heavily on the future of agentic AI technology. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has indicated plans for deploying one billion agents by the end of 2025.