Dive Brief:
- More than six out of 10 CFOs say their responsibilities have expanded into enterprise technology and artificial intelligence strategy, IBM found in a recent study, indicating that these priorities are moving up the corporate agenda.
- As AI becomes more important to businesses, CEOs are increasingly leaning on their finance chiefs to help decide where and how to invest, according to Neil Dhar, senior vice president of IBM Consulting.
- “AI is expensive, and it’s a capital allocation issue: where and how do you allocate, when do you turn it off, and when do you add more money?” Dhar said in an interview. “As you get into capital allocation and return on investment, the CFO is obviously going to play a critical role.”
Dive Insight:
The study comes on the heels of a separate report from Deloitte with similar findings on the expanding role of finance leaders in AI and technology strategy.
Deloitte found that 54% of finance leaders take charge of cross-enterprise AI and technology capital allocation, while 48% oversee AI and technology spending and cost controls. Among respondents who have taken on these responsibilities, more than two-thirds said they had done so within the past three years.
When asked how they most often approve large AI and technology investments, 66% of Deloitte respondents said they use an internally driven process that puts measurement at the forefront.
Despite growing adoption of AI, relatively few finance organizations have fully redesigned their operations around it, according to IBM.
The company’s survey of 1,500 CFOs found that finance is developing AI capabilities faster than it is redesigning workflows. Only 6% of finance organizations surveyed said they are transformation-ready, with AI consistently embedded into workflows and decision-making at enterprise scale.
IBM said “AI-first CFOs” go beyond technology upgrades to redesign how finance operates, so intelligence can scale across workflows and decision processes.
Organizations with such finance leaders achieved revenue growth rates 23% higher than peer organizations from 2022 to 2024, according to IBM. In AI-first organizations, capital allocation follows value signals continuously, rather than being tied to planning cycles, annual budgets or periodic approvals, the report said.
“The best companies drive AI in a way that they see meaningful results in three-to six-month intervals — either revenue expansion or margin improvement — and then reinvest back into the business,” Dhar said.
