For finance leaders, Generative AI isn’t merely a tool—it’s a strategic partner. It promises efficiency and innovation, enabling CFOs and their teams to unlock opportunities, improve resilience, and drive growth. But how can it be applied?

Nine use cases for GenAI across the finance organization:

1. The finance insights engine for financial planning and analysis: Platforms powered by GenAI can review, identify gaps, suggest fixes, and provide leaders with on-demand insights.
2. Autonomous close for controllership: GenAI could create a true “lights out” close process by improving leader visibility, minimizing rote work, and managing and completing tasks.
3. Dynamic risk assessment for internal audit: GenAI can elevate risk assessments, driving a streamlined and value-added integrated risk management approach that could transform periodic assessments into continuous monitoring.
4. Cash flow forecasting for treasury: GenAI can improve the accuracy of cash flow forecasting, reduce manual processes, and provide greater insights to business leaders.
5. Autonomous order-to-cash for transactional finance: A mix of AI, GenAI, and machine learning can revolutionize order-to-cash processes by automating tasks and workflows across the order-to-cash cycle.
6. Autonomous procure-to-pay for transactional finance: GenAI can boost efficiencies and unlock value across the procure-to-pay processes.
7. Working capital optimization for strategic finance: GenAI can help companies monitor asset efficiency, identify opportunities to free up trapped capital, and create shareholder value.
8. Engage with data for tax: GenAI can enable tax professionals to access, analyze, and gain insights from their tax data by automating the process of data extraction, transformation, and loading.
9. Communications for investor relations: GenAI can be used to create consistent, standardized investor communications in multiple formats with minimal manual effort.

Zooming in: The finance insights engine

Let’s dig a little deeper on one of the most compelling use cases for GenAI in finance—the finance insights engine. Think of it as a digital analyst or agent, that independently gathers data from multiple sources, reconciles discrepancies, and prepares comprehensive analysis, all without human intervention. Finance professionals often face repetitive tasks like pulling reports and reconciling data, which are time-consuming and limit their ability to explore the “why” behind the numbers and reasons or experiment with “what-if” scenarios. This is where a GenAI-powered insights platform or agentic solution steps in.

A finance insights engine can analyze data at scale, reconcile information, identify gaps accurately, and provide custom reports. It explains variances and explores root causes in plain language.

Imagine holding a meeting to plan next year’s budget. Instead of spending hours preparing static reports, your team could ask the engine questions like, “What’s the impact of a 5% increase in labor costs?” and receive immediate, detailed answers in multiple formats, from charts to written summaries.

Finding AI’s sweet spot

GenAI’s potential is undeniable, but its adoption must be strategic. Finance leaders face a delicate balance: adopt too quickly and risk missteps, or wait too long and fall behind competitors. The key is finding your organization’s AI sweet spot by starting with quick-win use cases, ensuring data readiness, and equipping teams with skills like “prompt engineering.”

As AI expands, finance teams will evolve. Real-time insights will reduce the need for periodic reporting. Junior members will focus on higher-order tasks, and finance will become more integrated across the organization, working with AI to deliver continuous value.

Training is crucial in this evolution. Finance professionals must learn to validate AI outputs and understand human-machine collaboration to prepare for their evolving roles.

GenAI is reshaping finance, offering unprecedented efficiency, insight, and innovation. By embracing this technology thoughtfully and strategically, finance leaders can unlock its full potential. The time to act is now.

Read more about Finance uses cases for artificial intelligence in the FinanceAI™ Dossier.