AI for Finance: Don’t Just Plug It In. Rethink the Workflow.
10 ways finance leaders can raise their executive team's AI mandate
Most finance teams are playing it safe with AI.
They’re plugging it in where it’s easy: automating a report here, summarizing a forecast there. But the teams that win with AI? They rethink the workflow itself.
Because the truth is, your team wasn’t built for this moment. Most finance orgs evolved around manual processes, legacy tools, and point solutions that assumed humans were the primary engine.
That’s no longer true…and the assumption is holding your team back.
If your executive team has issued an AI mandate (or even if they haven’t said it out loud yet), here’s your guide to answering it boldly. These 10 moves will help you future-proof your team’s approach and position finance as a strategic AI player, without compromising the integrity, security, or judgment your role demands.
1. Consolidate Your Data—Structured and Unstructured
If your systems don’t talk to each other, your AI tools are flying blind. Start bringing together ERP data, CRM notes, inbox conversations, and invoice records, even loosely. The payoff is exponential once models can access the full picture.
2. Rethink the Job to Be Done
Your goal is to optimize working capital. Step back and ask: What is the real business objective of this workflow? Design around that, not the legacy processes you inherited.
3. Assign a Stakeholder with Teeth
Without ownership, AI initiatives stall. Appoint an internal lead with both the context and clout to push transformation forward.
4. Steal from the Smartest
Find operators outside your org who’ve gone deep on AI for finance. Ask for a 15-minute teardown of what’s working. Learn from their scars.
5. Test-Drive the Future
Piloting new tools, even without a plan to implement, gives your team firsthand insight into how AI is reshaping finance roles. Exposure changes thinking and reveals gaps in your current model.
6. Audit Internal AI Wins
Your peers in Sales, Marketing, and Engineering are likely miles ahead. Are SDRs summarizing calls with AI? Is your dev team writing cleaner tickets, faster? Study these use cases: they're a playbook for speed.
7. Build an AI Operating Rhythm
Set a weekly cadence to evaluate what tools are in use, what's delivering ROI, and what to scale. At Tesorio, each department’s AI champion owns this process and reports on clear thresholds for transformation. It's not about hype—it's about progress tracking.
8. Redesign One High-Friction Workflow From Scratch
Pick your messiest process. Now, whiteboard it like it’s 2025 and you’ve never seen a QBO close. No legacy constraints. No “but we’ve always…” Just possibilities. You’ll be shocked how much process is muscle memory, not necessity.
9. Prioritize Use Cases with Fast Feedback Loops
Start where the signal is strong. Collections. Forecasting. Variance reporting. These workflows give you measurable outcomes quickly, perfect proving grounds for AI augmentation.
10. Use AI to Inform Decisions; Not Just Automate Tasks
Think about what AI actually does well. Use it to surface patterns, generate counterfactuals, and pressure-test assumptions. Let it elevate your judgment, not replace it.
Don’t just modernize what you’ve always done. Use AI as a forcing function to rethink how finance gets done. Full stop.
Finance leaders have a unique opportunity right now: not just to be early adopters, but to architect the new standard. Take the mandate seriously. Start building the future of your team before someone else does it for you.
Want to skip to tip #5 and demo Tesorio? Let’s hop on a call, and we can show you how our platform works for companies like yours—book time here.