With the finance function under pressure from technological advancements, today’s CFOs and tax leaders are asked “to bring value to the business itself,” said Daren Campbell, Americas tax and technology transformation leader for Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young.

CFOs are juggling a spate of new responsibilities outside of pure finance, taking point on digital transformation and software decisions. Such leaders are still responsible for the same financial reporting and data aggregation processes as always — but the elimination of outdated processes in this area can reduce the time or resources they need to make the strategic decisions they are now charged with making.

Building on the technologies shaping the role, now the potential benefits of generative AI could enable CFOs to fully complete their ongoing transformation into strategic leaders for the business — turning them into “chief value officers” who are focused on strategic or value-added activities for the company rather than data aggregation or compliance activities, Campbell told CFO Dive in an interview.

Accelerating the strategy, value push

Drilling down into the basic, core activities of tax or accounting functions, “it is looking at a transaction, and determining what category or classification that goes into,” Campbell said. “Once you know the classification, then the rules behind the calculation are often relatively automatic.”

The emergence of generative AI, notably, has swiftly shifted how EY — as well as professionals in the industry — need to think about their tax and accounting strategies and processes. The scope of previous AI tools was limited, applied to a specific subset of problems. Now, with the introduction of large language models, AI is both more accessible and, crucially, easier to use for non-technologists, Campbell said.

A 26-year veteran of the Big Four firm, Campbell has served in his current role for just over a year, leading a team that focuses on helping its clients transform their in-house functions “from a process technology and data perspective,” he said.

Many organizations — including EY and other Big Four firms — are moving quickly to ensure they can utilize generative AI’s potential. Last month, the accounting firm announced the launch of its EY.ai platform, integrating the technology into key offerings such as its Fabric platform, CFO Dive previously reported.

The platform’s launch followed EY’s previous announcement that it would be investing $1.4 billion into generative AI during the next three years as part of a broader push in technology investment.

As generative AI seeps further into the finance function, the technology will likely accelerate the ongoing melding of the finance and technology functions.

Cracking open data silos

Notably, before the CFO can complete their transformation to a “CVO,” they need to navigate several key challenges, with how to more effectively utilize their data chief among them.  CFOs are still spending a comparatively small amount of time on value-added activities such as forecasting and analysis, Campbell said. Generative AI can play a key part in changing this.

“The shift that I think GenAI is going to help enable is we will see a shift where the focus of the profession is going to be much more on the strategic side of the business, and less on compliance,” Campbell said.

However, before companies can put such technologies to use, they need to meet a certain threshold of data readiness — while firms typically have tremendous values of data at their hands, much of it is tied up in Excel spreadsheets, across the myriad number of different applications companies utilize to keep track of it.

A key part of how EY is working with its clients surrounding their use of the technology, establishing that data readiness is “the first step of helping companies on the journey that we're all going on around how to actually make more formational use of AI,” Campbell said.

Furthermore, while knowing how to communicate with generative AI is going to be a critical part of the skill set for future financial leaders, it’s also important not to overlook traditional finance skills — having domain knowledge of finance and tax is essential to being able to utilize the insights created by generative AI successfully.

“I think the CFO with AI is going to replace the CFO without AI,” Campbell said.