ChatGPT and GenAI have transformed finance in three short years

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Generative AI didn’t just happen overnight, but for many, it probably feels like it did.

OpenAI introduced its new GenAI chatbot, ChatGPT, on Nov. 30, 2022—a watershed moment in the global economy and society at large. The corporate finance and accounting profession is certainly not an exception to the subsequent widespread transformation, which may only be getting started.

“You knew at the time it was going to be transformational,” Josh Schauer, CFO of insightsoftware, told us. “You immediately knew; it’s almost like when the internet came out and you’re like, this is going to change everything forever.”

Since then, AI has become the buzziest of buzzwords in corporate parlance. There’s been a rapid rise in corporate finance AI tools. Seemingly every SaaS company is promoting a shiny new AI feature. JPMorgan Chase recently noted that the amount of debt tied to AI has hit $1.2 trillion, making it the biggest segment in the investment-grade market, Bloomberg reported. A June RGP survey of finance leaders found that 42% of organizations were spending 10% or more of their capital budgets on AI. Of the 200 respondents, “84% said they’re optimistic about AI’s potential,” CFO Brew previously reported.

In the spring of 2023, not long after ChatGPT’s big intro, finance experts at Gartner presciently said that AI would shake up organizations’ funding priorities, CFO Brew reported.

“The idea is to really understand how the technology is going to impact your strategy going forward, staying strategic, and making sure you have good tactical people underneath you to execute on that vision and not get bogged down on ‘This lets me do this piece better,’” Alexander Bant, chief of CFO research at Gartner, said at the time.

An all-hands-on-deck moment. Schauer recalled that his first experience with ChatGPT mainly involved messing around with it to get a sense of its capabilities. “It felt like the world was all learning together in terms of, how are we going to be able to utilize this?” he said.

The real legwork behind understanding the technology quickly followed.

Leaders at insightsoftware quickly went about identifying all the ways it would upend business as usual, and how the company needed to harness the technology to gain a competitive advantage in this new world.

Engineering and support teams had the most immediate use cases for implementing AI, Schauer said. Another dilemma for company leaders early on was whether to buy or build certain AI products.

One benefit that quickly made itself obvious was chatbots’ ability to work as “a thought partner,” according to Schauer. The chatbots could quickly analyze datasets and identify patterns and variances, performing similar work to an analyst or senior analyst.

“That was a lot of the value it had out of the gate, was that it could look to multiple sources at the same time and be able to do cross references and tell you, here’s how you’re performing compared to the rest of the industry, compared to the rest of the market, so on and so forth,” he said.

Transforming finance. Leaders early on predicted big changes for the finance and accounting profession.

In June 2023, seven months after the ChatGPT launch, DoorDash CFO Ravi Inukonda told us that AI would become “more and more important and part of our daily workflow.”

He said organizations would become more complicated, with tons more data for CFOs to analyze. “What I think is going to happen is, CFOs [will] need to stay at the cutting edge of using data, analytics, and AI to be able to help drive decision-making in the business as well as [in] business outcomes.”

The use cases seem to be endless. At a recent industry conference, CFO Brew heard accounts of AI being used to automate journal entries, create first drafts of new company policies, help internal auditors write data queries, sift through SEC reports to identify emerging risks, and tweak financial commentary for different audiences.

Workiva Chief Accounting Officer Junko Swain told us she had her team start with “baby steps” to incorporate AI into their day-to-day work. “Actual adoption of AI itself takes time because it requires such huge change management,” she said.

Measuring success. During the mad dash to figure out how to use AI and stay ahead of the competition, CFOs faced a difficult task: measuring ROI. AI technology may carry with it lofty promises, but it’s still the job of the CFO, as financial steward of an organization, to make sure an investment is paying off, Schauer explained.

At first, it wasn’t obvious how to measure ROI, he said. This meant that CFOs had to get used to being uncomfortable.

“Admittedly, that was like trying to shoot at a moving target that was all over the place,” he said. “It was very hard to have quantifiable ROI on this. And so, from a CFO perspective, I think it did require us to take chances.”

While companies are still working on how to measure AI ROI, many say the benefits are clear.

A recent Workiva survey found that 88% of respondents “reported increases in ROI from AI usage in the last year.” Steve Soter, VP and industry principal at Workiva, told us in September that “the answer to this, in terms of ROI, lies largely in opportunity cost and time savings.”

Schauer said the KPIs insight software uses to demonstrate ROI include, in its support department, how long tickets are outstanding, and how many more tickets an agent can respond to in a day. And in engineering, it measures “roadmap acceleration”; a project that might have taken weeks to complete may now be cut down to days.

“You can quite easily start to put time into the perspective of money,” he said. “Internally, it’s really about expediting and increasing task efficiency.”

The future is now. There’s no denying that AI is here to stay. Leaders told us that finance pros need to adapt to this new reality and also ensure they have the right skill sets.

Swain told us that everyone’s AI learning journey starts at the same point, regardless of whether they’re an EVP or just starting their finance career. Those who can master AI and use it regularly will “keep moving up [their careers] quickly. But someone who can’t master AI, they need to look for something else.”

Schauer said the most important skills for finance employees are curiosity about AI and, more broadly, “a desire to maximize their productivity.” He recognized that many are fearful that AI will replace their jobs, but he sees things a little differently.

“The reality is, the people that are going to be hireable…are those that are utilizing AI,” he said. “So you can’t be afraid of it. You need to be inquisitive. You need to be thinking about, ‘How can I become a better employee with the assistance of AI?’”

This is one of the stories of our Quarter Century Project, which highlights the various ways industry has changed over the last 25 years. Check back each month for new pieces in this series and explore our timeline featuring the ongoing series.

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