Typically, we don’t like to make predictions about hype cycles. Will Taylor Swift always dominate the pop charts? When will teenage boys stop doing their hair like that?

These are the questions we can’t answer.

But when it comes to the hype cycle of generative AI in finance, we have some expert insight, for once. On Tuesday, Gartner released its latest hype cycle report, a research series that measures the maturity, commercial viability, and opportunity presented by emerging technologies. This time around they looked at finance AI, or the deployment of generative AI and other related analytics in the finance function.

The takeaway: Don’t believe the hype. Or, rather, understand and listen to the hype.

Out of the AI-related technologies Gartner measured, including prompt engineering and cloud analytics, generative AI is “at the very peak of inflated expectations,” an early stage of a technology’s life cycle when initial publicity and hype are tempered by “scores of failures,” per Gartner.

“A range of publicly available generative AI tools have generated enormous publicity for the technology in the last two years, but as finance functions adopt this technology, they may not find it as transformative as expected,” Mark McDonald, senior director analyst in Gartner’s finance practice, said in a statement.

Is the AI bubble about to burst? Click here to find out.—NP

Running rev rec at a high-growth company? Yeah, you’re deep in the trenches. Just you and your spreadsheets manually grinding away on messy transaction data to create good-enough journal entries every month. It’s okay. You’re allowed to hate it.

Better yet, do something about it, and check out Leapfin. They’ll help you automatically combine and morph your raw data into clean journal entries.

Yep, prepare to leave that old, slowwww process stuck in the mud. Need convincing? Try their interactive demo—but CAREFUL, you might have your mind blown.

BTW, Leapfin has already helped accounting pros at big-timers like Canva, Reddit, and SeatGeek achieve:

• 90% reduction in time to close
• 80% reduction in manual reporting hours
• 50% reduction in audit times and costs

Short on time? Peep their two-min explainer video.

On paper, Elaine Paik’s resume might not look all that linear: After more than 20 years in various finance roles at Colgate-Palmolive, including global treasurer, she took over as CFO at Juul Labs Inc., the electronic cigarette company that faced regulatory challenges. Now, she’s been CFO of plant-based meat company Impossible Foods since December 2023.

Toothpaste to e-cigs to plant-based meat? Well, well, well. But in her own telling, there’s a through line that makes her current post feel all but inevitable.

Her time at Colgate-Palmolive gave her a master class on how to “look at consumer business from a global perspective,” Paik told CFO Brew. Juul, meanwhile, she saw as “a mission-driven business. For Juul, it’s about harm reduction for a billion adult smokers around the world.” Add those together, and, in Paik’s eyes, you’ve got Impossible Foods, a mission-oriented company with a global reach.

“There’s common themes, as you can see, with all the companies I’ve worked with,” she said. “Impossible is a really good fit, both from a mission perspective, but also from a business opportunity perspective.”

Her first day. That eagerness about company fit is a large part of what made Paik’s first day at the new gig seamless.

For more on Paik’s first day, click here.—NP

Deciding which risks to worry about most may feel a bit like picking your poison. But it doesn’t have to be that way with the right approach to monitoring on management dashboards and reviewing them with executives and boards, according to AICPA’s newest State of Risk Oversight Report.

CFO Brew previously detailed the report’s unearthing of the disconnect between strategy and risk management. Another major conclusion from the report, which summarizes an AICPA and North Carolina State University survey of 377 organizations, is that companies don’t always have the right tools at their disposal for overseeing risk management.

One way to track evolving risks is to include key risk indicators (KRIs) on management dashboards. Yet, according to the report, “few organizations have robust reporting of [KRIs] that management can use to monitor shifts in risk conditions over time.”

There’s a wealth of historical internal data available in the modern economy that allows companies to create key performance indicators (KPIs) for just about anything, Mark Beasley, a professor at the Poole College of Management at NC State University and director of its enterprise risk management initiative, told CFO Brew. But there’s a problem with applying that same data to risk-monitoring efforts, he added.

Click here to continue reading.—AZ