From the murderous HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey to the menacing AUTO in Pixar’s masterpiece WALL-E, AI has been a bogeyman in popular culture for decades.

And while we don’t live in a fictional, AI-driven apocalypse like in Terminator (at least not yet), the anxiety that many workers have of the technology being a job-stealer is real.

Employment anxiety is just one of the many impediments organizations face with AI implementation, according to consultants and finance leaders. These experts, who either gave presentations or spoke directly with CFO Brew at Gartner’s CFO & Finance Executive Conference in May, said that buy-in from employees is as important as the technology itself for AI implementation to succeed.

“Ultimately, for any system implementation or new technology, it’s important that you bring people along,” Erik Zhou, chief accounting officer of Brex, told CFO Brew. “One of the biggest things is [when] you add in a system, it’s a shiny tool, you have to make sure that you do the change management right, and you have to make sure that these folks—that may have been using a different tool, or a different method, or a different process, for however long they’ve been in the function—that they have the capability to learn something new and do something potentially very differently.”

For more on creating AI buy-in from your team, click here.—AZ

If there’s one unspoken rule to CFO life, it’s never brick a ’fit. You can’t be making big-time decisions in clothes that aren’t well-made, comfortable, or flattering. So, how can you build a polished wardrobe for every occasion and setting, from the golf course to the office?

Look no further: The COZ series by Cuts has everything you need to elevate your closet, from high-quality shorts designed for maximum durability to super-sleek and breathable Pique polos.

To top it off, Cuts is offering 20% off your entire order with code CFOBREW. The ultimate collection of polos and shorts for the golf course, office, or Zoom calls, now at 20% off.

Take your style up a notch.

After two straight years of increasing audit deficiencies, did auditors and audit committees step up their work in 2023?

We’re still waiting on the annual audit deficiency report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which published its scathing review of 2022 audits last July, to find out. In the meantime, thankfully, we’ve been given something to tide us over: what the leaders of audit committees are talking about with their auditors.

This peek inside comes courtesy of the PCAOB’s conversations last year with 230 audit committee chairs, who told the regulator about their discussions on audit quality and how they’re protecting it from the happenings of our wild, wild world.

Know thy audience. The auditor watchdog reported that most audit committee chairs talk regularly with their auditors to keep tabs on their independence and systems for quality control. The chairs said they’ve talked about their inspection reports and how to fix deficiencies the PCAOB found. Let’s hear it for the bare minimum!

To keep reading about auditor and audit committee relations, click here.—GD

Early this year, experts predicted the market for M&A was prime for a turnaround after a slow 2023, but so far the results have been kind of…meh.

The so-so M&A results—deal volume was down, but deal values were up—has the folks at PwC in a US deals midyear outlook urging business leaders to “accept the new reality instead of wishing for a return of low interest rates,” as their “fixation on potential interest rate cuts” has’nt done the M&A market any favors.

PwC found that M&A deal volume has remained “roughly flat” since leveling off the latter part of last year. Overall deal value in the first five months of 2024, meanwhile, was up almost 30% year over year.

The time is right. According to PwC, indicators like “strong corporate profits, rising executive confidence and stabilizing inflation” mean the timing is right to execute a deal.

Click here for more on the state of M&A.—AZ

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