Good morning. AI is top of mind for finance chiefs and, during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday, CFOs from four top companies shared how they’re approaching the fast-changing technology.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in the last six months thinking about the impact AI will have on our business,” Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast, a cloud-based restaurant management software company, told the audience in Dana Point, California.
Gomez recounted how, at a recent CFO dinner, an exec said in the next three years, although their businesses will grow, they’ll most likely only have 80% of the headcount they have today. “I have reflected on that at least 10 times since that dinner,” Gomez said.
That is something that not only affects CFOs in terms of how they think about capital allocation, but it is something that will impact all C-suite roles. “The fabric of companies may change,” she said.
At Toast, Gomez said execs are approaching AI with an eye to enhancing customers' experience and determining the best use cases internally. “We will invest across both those dimensions to be balanced,” Gomez said.
Maria Ferraro, the CFO and chief inclusion and diversity officer at Siemens Energy, also explained how finance chiefs are at the center of technology investments.
“The transformation journey of the role of the CFO, digitalization and using AI is going at a pace where some of us are wondering if we're behind, or whether we need to do something different, maybe pivot,” Ferraro said.
She brought up a recent McKinsey report that found 98% of CFOs surveyed said their finance functions have invested in digitization and automation, and believe that generative AI has the potential to create value. However, just one-quarter or less of their processes were digitized or automated in the past 12 months.
As a CFO, you have to determine where you are going to allocate the spending because it could be significant, Ferraro said.
“It's more than just saying, ‘Here's the money, go do it,” she said. “It's a culture shift and a learning journey.”
At Siemens, Ferraro said she has embarked on a digital and finance initiative, which involves looking at the areas where all the businesses and functions in the organization intersect. Then, she says, the goal is to get everyone aligned on a North Star when it comes to AI and automation—a task that will also involve upskilling and addressing areas where some are still working with legacy tools.
Emily Reuter, CFO of the grocery-delivery business Instacart, said that at the end of the day, Instacart is a technology company. “So if we're going to invest anywhere, that's where it's going to be,” Reuter said. AI is incorporated into Instacart’s product and set to meet future e-commerce trends, she said.
Regarding the finance function, generative AI can unlock areas of growth and efficiency, she said. “We're going to take a lower risk approach and really try to understand what's going on out there, and where we feel comfortable,” Reuter said.
At the cosmetics and skincare company e.l.f. Beauty, a generative-AI-powered social media bot is churning out content with 90% accuracy. The CFO, Mandy Fields, described AI as a collaborative effort, and added that the C-suite reflects upon a question of “how do we become more efficient and make sure that it's human-led?”
Collaboration for Fields also means getting executives up to speed on finance. She’s taken the chief marketing officer, head of operations, and even general counsel, to an investor meeting. And she wants everyone to have some finance savvy.
“I hosted a session called, ‘What the e.l.f. is EBITDA?’ for the entire company,” Fields said.
Read here to find out what the finance chiefs said is the role of a modern CFO.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
