When Strategy Meets Execution: The CFO’s Role in Driving Sustainable Transformation

The catalyst orientation is more proactive and forward thinking and they're looking to seek opportunities and adapt to evolving landscapes. The catalyst approach also looks at embracing calculated risk and encourages experimentation, promoting agility and response to those changing conditions. But with that, some of the drawbacks may require higher tolerance for risk than one was previously comfortable with and uncertainty and potentially leading to missteps and unforeseen challenges. So in essence, a guardian mindset prioritizes stability and protection of the status quo with a catalyst mindset prioritizing more of the growth and proactive change. And with that, I'll hand this over to Candace to talk to us a little bit about how that integrates with the business.

Candice Wilson:Perfect. Thanks, Julie. When we look at the role that the finance organization and the CFO actually are playing across the organization as a whole, what we've seen is a large shift away from just being focused solely on financials and providing financial reporting to really driving strategic transformation across the business. So providing insights and financial data that can help drive better decision making across the business and holistically drive better operating model transformation in the businesses that we're seeing this shift in mindset of that CFO. Some of the key areas that we've really seen that shift in is when we look at business strategy, we're seeing finance really provide insights that help think about the portfolio alignment or restructuring of portfolios to really drive a shift in the way that the business is operating. When companies are undertaking feasibility studies that's no longer looking at just the technical feasibility, it's really looking at what is the financial impact of that study across the business.

How does that study that we're studying, whether it's a new business or new product, how does that impact the end-to-end business for us? If we move down to the bottom end where we're looking at that operating transformation, a lot of the transformations that are the bigger transformations inside companies tend to be around ERP transformations or some of the larger finance transformations, but what we're seeing is finance taking an actor role at the table for any type of transformation across the company. And when we see that partnership between finance and IT, we're seeing stronger, more sustainable transformations happening. A lot of the businesses are learning from the way that these historical finance transformation projects have been done in the way that we're approaching holistic operating transformations. So we're seeing people thinking about the service delivery models, which is typically means something that we've always seen in the finance space.

So thinking about outsourcing versus doing things in - house and we're seeing that same model tend to expand into the other areas of the business. We're also seeing a lot of workforce planning, which is coming out of the financials actually impacting on different areas of the business. So finance data driving decisions that are being made in the HR space, driving decisions that are being made in the operational space. So what we're really are seeing is that CFO being the catalyst across the organization from the learnings that we've had in the finance organizations through those larger transformation projects we've seen and taking those learnings into other areas of the business to truly drive that sustainable transformation across the business. Catherine, I think you had a couple of points that you wanted to add to this slide

Katherine Nesser:Yeah, thanks Candice. Zach and I had a couple things we did want to add. So from the transformation perspective, what we really want to point out here is that the CFO is really serving as the connector between strategy and execution. So they're really ensuring that this organizational change, the process redesign, maybe there's new technology adoption or business outcomes are aligned to deliver measurable value. And Zach, did you want to add something?

Zachary Kenney:Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the threat connecting all of these is that none of these are financial and isolation. They're enterprise outcomes and the CFOs positioned at the center of each because finances touches each one of them. That's what architect of execution means, not designing the strategy alone, but making sure it can actually be built. I think I'm going to pass it back to you, Katherine, to talk through why transformations stall.

Katherine Nesser:All right. So why do transformation stall? So transformations stall a lot of times when ambition outpaces governance. So it's rarely because of the lack of the vision. It's that organizations underestimate the effort required to change how people work. So successful transformation really requires that equal attention to strategy, execution, governance, and adoption. And so we're going to look at this in five different ways. The first thing is the strategy and innovation. So organizations are often set these really ambitious goals, but maybe they didn't define what success looks like operationally. So without a clear future state operating model, employees might struggle to understand how the strategy translates into their actual day-to-day responsibilities. And so something that the CFO can really help to do is bridge that gap by creating alignment around the vision and connecting individual roles to those enterprise objectives. The next area is process excellence.

So siloed processes really create friction. Yo may get duplication, you maybe have inconsistent experiences across functions. Transformation efforts frequently expose process inefficiencies and it may be things that have developed over time. So we want to ensure here that stakeholders are engaged in the redesign efforts and are prepared to adopt new systems and new ways of working. We want to make sure that we don't revert back to old legacy behaviors. The next thing is digital finance. So technology alone does not create transformation. The value here is really realize when people leverage their technology to make better decisions. But again, many organizations might invest in a systems, but if they're not driving utilization or helping with behavioral change, they won't get to this end goal. So you want to have effective adoption strategies to help teams understand not just how to use new tools, but why they matter to the actual business outcomes.

And then the last is structure and governance. So governance provides the accountability structure need to sustain transformation. When decision making is unclear and change impacts aren't actively managed, adoption can really suffer. So you want to create stakeholder ownership, you want to reinforce accountability and support that long-term sustainability. So really the common thread with this here is that across all five areas, transformation is really about the people and organizations realize their value only when the employees actually understand, adopt, and sustain those new ways of working. So with that, I'll pass to Zach.

Zachary Kenney:Thanks, Catherine. So we've established that the CFO has the vantage point in the toolkit to drive transformation. The harder question is how? What does it actually take to move from a strategy on a page to results in the business? That's what this next section is about. The mechanics of driving transformation and the specific role of the CFO plays in making it stick. Because as Catherine just pointed out, transformations don't usually fail on vision, they fail on execution. Go to the next slide, Ken. We have a poll.

Katherine Nesser:Poll #2

Katherine Nesser:All right. Yeah, we're all on the same page. So ambition outpaces governance.

Zachary Kenney:All right. So jumping back in from strategy to execution, here's the core idea of this whole conversation. Sustainable transformation isn't just one thing, it's three forces working together. First, financial discipline, the strategic alignment that ties every initiative back to enterprise goals and the dollars behind them. Second, strategy delivery. The operational readiness and structure that turns ambition into a managed program with milestones and accountability. And third, people adoption, because none of it matters that the people who have to live with the change don't actually take it up. Where the CFO is unique is that they touch all three. They bring financial discipline by definition. They increasingly own delivery structure and performance visibility and they're now accountable for adoption because adoptions will converts investment into return. When all three converge, financially grounded, operationally structured and people driven, that's where sustainable transformation takes hold. When anyone is missing, you get the stalls we talked about earlier, strategy with no funding discipline, delivery with no adoption, or adoption with no measurable value.

The CFO is the one role that season connects all three at once, which is exactly why they're central to making transformations stick rather than fade. I think I'm passing it to Julie next.

Julie Munn-Sims:Thank you. When we talk a litle bit more about driving financial discipline, we think of financial discipline as the focus around truly understanding and identifying all of the various opportunities or needs required for the business to remain competitive and thinking through helping to translate the RV arching business strategy and providing the vision required to bring that strategy to life through transformation. Understanding the goals that are required to achieve each initiative or each project's vision and then defining the KPIs that are necessary to measure and monitor the success of each project. In other words, what is the value case for each initiative for each project that the organization is undertaking and how do we define that success so that we can realize the value driving transformation? And then finally, it's about helping, finally, pardon me, financial discipline's about helping to link each of the initiatives goals.

So transformation isn't always about one project or one initiative. It's about looking at the whole breadth of transformation of projects that are happening and defining what the ultimate goal is and helping to link those goals to the organization's overarching business strategy and helping to make sure that each of those goals are clear that why are we doing each initiative? Why is every engagement important and how does that help us to realize the overall business strategy, whether you're within the finance function or if you're the finance liaison working with the front office to help bring that to life. Zach?

Zachary Kenney:So a financial discipline sets the direction strategy delivery is where it gets executed. This is where strong project management principles do the heavy lifting. It starts with a clear transformation roadmap, the governance and reporting structures around it, and discipline management of timelines, risks, and dependencies. But here's the CFO's distinct contribution. Budget tracking isn't a separate exercise that happens in a quarterly review. It's embedded directly into delivery. That gives you real time financial visibility so you know the moment initiative starts drifting off its value case not three months later. And critically, every milestone is linked to value realization. You're not just tracking whether task get done, but tracking whether the value promise is actually showing up. When you bring those project management disciplines together, structure, governance, financial visibility, in a clear line from milestone to value, you drive successful outcomes, you build user satisfaction and you support the broader transformation.

This is the CFO moving from oversight to ownership, not asking did we stay on budget, but are we delivering the value we committed to? I'll ask you, Katherine, for people adoption.

Katherine Nesser:All right. Thanks, Zach. Okay. So driving people adoption, why adoption sustainability really matters to the CFO? So when we're talking about transformation, adoption is where value is either realized or lost. So a project can be delivered on time and on budget, but if employees don't embrace the change, the expected business outcomes are never going to materialize. So from a CFO perspective, that adoption is really tied to value realization. So every transformation investment is made with an expectation of improved efficiency, better decision making, maybe reduced cost or increased growth. So those benefits only occur when people are actually going to change their behaviors. So there's ways that this can be helped within an organization. So it could be building awareness of why a change is needed. It could be about creating buy-in among the leaders and the employees. It could be equipping teams with the skills and confidence needed for success and it could be reinforcing desired behaviors after go live so you really have those sustainable outcomes.

Ultimately, looking at this sustainable transformation triangle here that really occurs when a big piece of this is the people adoption becomes part of the strategy rather than an afterthought or something that's happening after the fact.

So let's dig in a little bit more to enabling adoption and sustainability. So CFOs really help organizations sustain change by aligning those financial objectives with operational execution, accountability, and again, those measurable performance outcomes. So this is going to translate into four different areas that we want to talk about. And the first is those financial goals into actionable targets. Employees need to understand how these enterprise objectives connect to their daily work. We want to make sure that strategic goals have really real role specific expectations and behaviors. We want to make sure that decisions are being made off of data so that measurement creates accountability and visibility. So you can look at things like adoption metrics, stakeholder feedback, performance indicators. All of these things are going to help leaders identify where additional support or intervention may be needed. Embedding financial metrics into those ongoing processes. So sustainable change is really going to occur when those new expectations that we have are embedded into the workflows, the reporting, the management routine.

So as we said, that day-to-day activities that your staff or team members do. So reinforcement mechanisms can really help that regression back to legacy behaviors. And lastly, evaluating whether value and ROI are actually being achieved. So this can extend beyond the implementation. You want that continuous monitoring and reinforcement. So organizations should regularly assess whether the benefits are being realized and they need to make adjustments as necessary across the process. So adoption should be measured just as rigorously as financial performance. So the most successful organizations treat change as an ongoing capability rather than a one-time project. We want to continuously reinforce behaviors that driving value and realization. So with that, I'm going to toss to Zach to talk about how we're going to integrate that into the business. 

Poll #3

Katherine Nesser:All right. Thanks everyone for your response. So yes, managing timelines, risk, and dependencies. All right, Zach, passing to you.

Zachary Kenney:Thank you. So next we're going to talk about integration with the business. So far, we've talked about the forces that make transformation sustainable, financial discipline, strategy delivery, and getting people to actually adopt the change. There's a practical question underneath all of it. How does transformation actually take hold inside a real organization with its existing systems, teams, and ways of working? That's what this next section is about. Transformation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It has to be woven into the business itself. And that comes down to two things integration, which is making the organization operate as a connected hole and enablement, making sure teams are actually equipped to execute. Both are areas where the CFO has a natural and increasingly central role to play and that's where we're headed next.

Let's talk about integration. This is where a lot of the transformation value is either captured or lost. Business integration simply means aligning your systems, your data, your processes, and your teams, so the organization operates as one cohesive whole, both during the change and after it. And it becomes absolutely critical in a few moments. In M&A and consolidation, when you're fusing two organizations, an ERP and financial system implementations, an operating model or process redesigns and in periods of rapid growth or restructuring. Notice that every one of those is a moment where finance is already deeply involved. That's why the CFO's role in integration is so natural. They sit at the intersection of the systems, the data, and the financial processes that everything else depends on. If integration is done well, the organization functions as one. The numbers reconcile, the processes connect, people know how to work together.

If it's done poorly, eat exactly the silos and duplication that stall transformation. The CFO is uniquely positioned to make sure integration actually happens as they can see across the whole organization in a way a few other leaders can. Catherine, I'll pass it to you.

Katherine Nesser:All right. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about business enablement, equipping our teams to execute. So what is business enablement? So in this, when we think about this concept, we want to talk about ensuring teams have the clarity, the capabilities, the processes, and the tools that they need to execute strategy effectively and consistently. And there could be some breakdowns in where enablement comes into play. So it could be around unclear roles and decision rights. It could be misalignment between finance and operations. It could be inefficient or undefined processes, underutilized or poorly adopted technology, or it could be change fatigue or lack of accountability. So the CFO has a major role in helping this enablement initiative and helping our teams to really execute. And we want to look at that in four different areas. So it's aligning financial targets, defining performance metrics, reinforcing desired behaviors and driving transparency and discipline.

So for each one of those, let's go in a little bit more detail. So aligning financial targets to execution. So we want to connect those strategy initiatives and the operational activities, actions that employees are taking to those measurable financial outcomes. So we want to ensure that those transformation efforts, again, are delivering that sustainable business value. We want to reinforce desired behaviors and performance metrics. So does defining success metrics from the very beginning and then throughout the process of any kind of transformation that's happening as the CFO is diving in more deep, consistently rewarding those behaviors that are happening within the organization that are supporting that adoption, the operational excellence, and then actually realizing the transformation objectives. And then look into it, driving transparency and discipline. So establishing clear governance. It's great when the team knows who to talk to, who to report to and how.

Giving some accountability and visibility. So teams really understand their expectations, their decision rights, and any progress that's happening throughout a process, a journey, a transformation that's happening within the organization. So the more open communication around that that is, the more that you're going to enable the business and get that sustained adoption. So as a transformation leader, the CFO is really aligning those financial targets with the strategic objectives. So then we want to create accountability. We want to make sure that transformation really is going to deliver into successful business value So business enablement here is really ensuring that the people, the processes and the technology are working together to turn transformation from just a planned initiative into this sustained organizational capacity. So now that we've looked at integrating with the business, we're going to talk a little bit about what that looks like as we transform into the future.

Candace, I will pass that to you.

Candice Wilson:I think we have a polling question first, if I'm not mistaken.

Katherine Nesser:Poll #4

Candice Wilson:Thank you. Perfect. We can move on from there. When Catherine was talking about all of those elements coming together, the most successful transformations that we've seen have really been the transformations where we've seen very strong change adoption and the way we're seeing that is when people are involved in the decision making process from the start all the way through those transformation journeys. So when we were talking about some of the things around embedding the correct and desired behaviors and actually driving transparency and discipline, having the end users that we're going to be using the products if we're doing a technology transformation or the people that are going to be responsible for the revised processes is really, really critical to have them involved all the way along this journey and really communicating with them, having them take ownership of what is being designed and what is being deployed.

When we think about the financial discipline of all those projects as well, it's Really critical that people understand the interconnection between the scope of what's being delivered, the cost of what's being delivered, and the time in which it's being delivered. Any one of those elements, a shift in any of those impacts obviously the cost, but also the time and the people that are needed to drive those transformations. Having that open and honest communication really does drive better performance in terms of the strategy but does drive that strong adoption. In terms of the strategy delivery, the biggest miss that we see in terms of unsuccessful transformations is where there has been a technology deployment or a change in process or an emerging acquisition where people don't understand the vision and the strategy for why the change is being made. It is absolutely critical that we think about that communication right through the journey.

The most successful integrations from an M&A perspective that I've seen is where the organization actually understands what is going to be the expectation once the integration has happened, understands what's being expected from them in terms of their day-to-day jobs and the processes which they're going to be executing, understanding what's happening in terms of technology and really where they feel part of that journey and part of that integration. The least successful integrations that I've seen are the ones where we come in and we say, "Oh, our company is being bought out and now suddenly on day one, everybody's expected to operate in a new way or they have no clear understanding of what the end goal or the end vision is. " So I think communication comes out again as a very strong factor in terms of that strategy delivery and making sure that everybody is bought into that strategy.

On the financial discipline side, we as consultants see this a lot of the time in terms of delivery of those projects where companies just continually add scope or want changes in terms of the strategy, it does have a cost impact and that financial discipline is sometimes lost. And the key comes back to what Julie said right at the beginning, understanding what the vision is, how we're going to deliver it, and then how the scope and strategy all tied together and having the financial discipline to maintain those elements is really critical in terms of driving that change adoption and driving successful delivery of these transformation projects. If we take any one of these three buckets, whether it's financial discipline, strategy delivery, or that change adoption and we miss it out on a delivery of an engagement, we find that the transformations don't stick. The change adoption in particular, Katherine talked about this is an absolutely critical one in terms of driving that successful adoption, but more importantly, designing successful transformation and something that is a sustainable transformation that you can build on from year to year as we go through the transformation journey.

I think a lot of the time we forget that a lot of these projects are not just one off projects where we're just implementing something, but there needs to be that continual cycle of change and continual cycle of sustainment in terms of bringing your people along those journeys is absolutely critical. I do want to ask if any of the other team members want to add anything in terms of any of these elements where I might not have captured it.

Katherine Nesser:I think you got it. I mean, I think definitely that change adoption is very important to make sure that team members are getting on board and accepting the change.

Candice Wilson:Absolutely.

Julie Munn-Sims:And I think Candace too, one of the important aspects as well is when you think about on the financial discipline, I think a clear understanding of the financial goals that are required when you think through each initiative, each project and what that is and a clear alignment on what those goals are so that as each transformation project is evolving, there's a real understanding of what success looks like and a real buy-in, the change adoption, Catherine, as you mentioned, a real buy-in as to how this fits in the overall strategy and how each employee's part of that project also fits along that strategy.

Candice Wilson:Yeah, I think that's absolutely critical. We often talk about these transformations at the project, but it's actually a program. So sometimes understanding all the elements of that and treating it as a true program becomes more successful because we understand what that little elements of that project is in the larger scheme of that transformation for an organization. Zach, anything from your side before we move on?

Zachary Kenney:Nothing additional for me. I think that covers.

Candice Wilson:Perfect.

Zachary Kenney:Thank you. All right. Where does this leave you and how do we help? We meet organizations wherever they are across three levels of engagement, light, medium, or heavy. At a light touch, it's advisory, readiness assessments, strategic financial guidance, and the change in project management plans that sets you up to execute on your own. At medium touch, we co-deliver. Standing up or optimizing your PMO, integrating financial tracking and delivery, building out change strategy and communications, and assessing and implementing process improvements alongside your team. At a heavy touch, we deliver end to end, full transformation execution, PMO leadership, change management practitioners on the ground, business integration for M&A and ERP and embedded CFOs advisory. The point isn't that everyone needs the heaviest touch. It's that the principles we've talked about today, financial discipline, strategy delivery, and people adoption apply at every level and you can engage us wherever you need the most support.

Wherever you start, the goal is the same. Transformation that's financially grounded, well executed and built to last.

Katherine Nesser:All right, y'all. We did want to pose some questions to Julie and Candace really about the CFO and this catalyst for change and what that really means. So first question that I have for you all is how can a CFO balance that short-term financial performance with their long-term strategic change initiatives?

Julie Munn-Sims:So I'll take that and then Candace, feel free to add in. I think the biggest deal is understanding each of the activities, the initiatives, the business transactions, if you will, that are going to align to what the overall goals are. There's obviously the day-to-day in needing to manage the day-to-day roles of the CFO, the controllership, the obligations around financial analysis and the fiduciary responsibilities of the organization. But at the end of the day, it's also around how much risk is the organization willing to open to, how much forward thinking in terms of helping to be more proactive and understanding what we're going into versus always reflecting back as to where we've come. I think are the components around really stepping out of that Guardian mentality and shifting to really being more... I don't want to say strategic thinking because CFOs are always strategic thinkers, but it's really about shifting from reporting about where we've been and thinking about where we're going to and helping to guide the business and understanding that failure will happen and that's okay, right?

It's around being able to take steps into risk and from an innovation perspective, thinking about different types of business models, different types of business transaction, business strategies that will help shift the organization a bit more rapidly through uncertainty, through uncertain times and then being able to react to that more nimbly, making quicker decision making. And I think with the technology that we have today, obviously AI plays an important role in that, but integrated ERP systems, mobility, et cetera, organizations can be more nimble. They can react faster than we could five, 10 years ago.

Candice Wilson:I think what I would add to that as well is we're seeing finance sometimes be at the forefront of some of these new technologies and new shifts that come in. So if I think about RPA from a few years ago, a lot of the finance process was the first processes in a business that went through that transformation of moving away from manual processing to be automated in the systems. We've also seen now with AI coming in, a lot of the process that we see from a business side, and I come from a business transformation lens, not just a finance lens, but a lot of the kind of innovation that we're seeing is a lot of those financial processes to make the month-end reporting quicker to help in terms of providing reporting packs to investors or management decks. A lot of that is being driven out of the finance organizations and then expands out into other areas of the business.

So I think that we're seeing that finance has the opportunity to continue to be that leader and if we can do it successfully in finance space, it definitely carries into others. But the other key place that I'm seeing finance become more of a catalyst in the organizations is really through the partnerships and the businesses.What we've seen is a shift from finance kind of staying alone as a service function in organizations to truly being what I would call a business partner and being integrated into the businesses and how they're making decisions. Whether you're looking at an oil and gas company that is making decisions around their drilling processes, or if you're looking at a manufacturing and distribution company that's looking at production schedules and demand forecasting, a lot of that is being driven by analytics that are coming from the finance teams and helping the business drive those better decisions.

So the finance team has really now become an integral part of the business, not just a service organization that tells you where you've been and where you're going, but really is providing those insights and that analytical viewpoint to help drive better business decision making holistically, not just from a finance lens.

We've seen that shift over the last few years and I'm sure Julie, you can agree with that as we've seen companies evolve through these journeys.

Julie Munn-Sims:No, you're spot on. And I think the data set, the data that businesses are looking at go beyond the four walls of the organization. That's something that's very different today than what we've seen over the last several years as well is we're no longer... Data is truly an asset because it's not just our data. It's not just the data within the organization, but it's really thinking about what third party pieces of information, what data indices, what analytics tools and capabilities can you pull in so that companies are not just looking at a single lens from their perspective, but able to think proactively around all the different components of the decision making and where we can bring that information in. And so we're really getting multidimensional information, multidimensional analytics and we're able to do a lot more when we think about forecasting, not just forecasting financials, forecasting business outcomes and really thinking about whether it's weather, depending on what type of industry or customer changes, geopolitical threats, all the different things that could impact the business outcomes and being able to pull that into our modeling, being able to think through the impacts to our business decisions, whether it's one business unit or the organization as a whole.

The data that organizations are consuming has substantially changed today than where we were several years ago.

Katherine Nesser:Thank y'all so much. You kind of hit on a couple of things and it leads into our next question. You talked a litle bit about technology and data analytics. What are some of the things that you guys are seeing is the biggest risks or challenges that CFOs consider when implementing AI? I know AI is such a hot topic right now, but if you're looking at AI across finance and operations, what are some things that CFOs should be aware of?

Julie Munn-Sims:There's a couple of things. With the introduction of any new technology, there's nervousness, there's lack of confidence. Even take out AI, just core ERP, right? We spend a lot of times with clients assessing their technology, helping to define and design new technology so that they have the confidence in what they're seeing and reporting and making decisions on. AI is so new and it's evolving every single day. And I think the biggest part is you have to jump in. You can't tiptoe in. You've got to jump in and you've got to start leveraging AI, looking at AI, using AI to get more comfortable with how it's being used. And AI is large. There's thousands of different tools that are out there, but there are components of AI. There are phases of AI adoption that organizations can do to build confidence, not just within themselves, but with how they use the data and the information.

You've got AI sources that are holistically within your enterprise, right? I'm leveraging AI tools, but I'm leveraging it against data that sits within the four walls of my organization. And then you've got the more open AI concepts that are actually going out into the ether, if you will, and pulling in lots of data sets. At the end of the day, there's two things about AI. AI will not replace humans. It augments the human workforce. And I think that's very important because it takes humans to validate, to reduce the hallucinations that you get with AI to help assess and validate the information coming from AI. But the other piece is AI is transformation in and of itself. You look at transactional AI usage and that type of AI usage helps to fund more programmatic AI usage and the programmatic AI usage helps fund transformative AI within organizations.

And that's because I think a lot of companies look at, how do I assess the ROI of AI, the return on investment for using AI? And they look at people. Am I replacing people or am I cutting out redundancy in people's day-to-day transactions? That's one way, but is it helping me to grow faster without having to add overhead? Is it helping me to transact better with my customer to be more forward thinking and proactive in what my customer's going to need? So I'm bringing innovation, I'm bringing decisions and products to my customer faster than waiting for my customer to come and ask. Those are the ways that you can start to provide value and put a dollar to AI usage that helps you to fund the next piece of capability, et cetera. But I think to answer your question in Shell, Catherine, it's really around you've got to jump in.

You've got to start looking at it, using it, interacting with it in order to build your own personal confidence. And then as leaders and organizations, whether you're at the controller level, as CFO, helping to embrace that within the finance function itself and then within the larger enterprise.

Candice Wilson:One thing I would just add on kind of looking at it from the risk management side in terms of AI use as Julie mentioned having your AI built into your own environment and making sure that the data that you're using is actually your data. I think that the old adage of garbage in, garbage out still applies in terms of AI. So if I asked as an organization on making sure that the data that's being used by those AI agents is actually the right data and we're pointing it in the right direction and asking it for the right outputs, you will get hallucinations or you'll get the wrong answer. It's the same as when if you had to do something in the old days in terms of RPA and you'd use the wrong data set, the whole process would be wrong. We have to think about some of those things before we jump in.

A lot of companies are rolling out what I would call citizen developer type programs, but without thinking about how do we control the data strategy, how do we make sure that we have got some governance around it? It's not something that it can be solved for overnight because as Julie said, things are changing so fast with AI and everything is evolving very quickly, but we do need to give some thoughts and some consideration to how do we make sure that what is actually being used by those agents by any of the solutions that we're deploying first of all starts with the correct dataset or is actually deployed in the correct manner. I think there will be learnings across companies. Julie mentioned, we don't always get it right. The trick is to learn, and I want to say fail fast, but fail in an area that's not business critical necessarily where we can test some of those things and get confidence in the solutions and then deploy them.

I think this is an area where a lot of companies, even like EisnerAmper and ourselves, we're really helping companies think through what is that AI strategy? How do we put that governance layer around it? How do we do it in a very fast manner so that we're not spending months or years coming up with our AI strategy and our AI governance model and then we're behind the curve because we haven't deployed anything. There are really things that can be done in a very rapid manner that allows you to get up that curve very quickly and start using it, start getting familiar, build that confidence across your organization that we can actually use these tools effectively.

Julie Munn-Sims:That's great. Hey, Katherine, we had a question in the chat that I wanted to raise as well.

Katherine Nesser: Go ahead, Julie.

Julie Munn-Sims:Perfect. One of our attendees said, for example, I'm an administrator for a 71 year old nonprofit. They've been struggling with promo and cashflow for the company for several back to back years, like many nonprofits do with virtually no budget for technology changes, what are some of the things they could do to help their organization sustain and hopefully survive another 70 years Without a true CFO role, how so much of the daily tasks these days for them are targeted around helping the company to improve and become self-sustaining again with very minimal to no cash resources. I'll take a stab and then Catherine, maybe you want to add to that. I think there's a couple of things and from an EisnerAmper perspective that we can help do, and it's really looking at what we call the organization. So it's taking a look taking today and how do those lend themselves to the overarching goals of the nonprofit organization?

What technology do you have today and how are you using that technology today? I have a lot of clients that not all technology transformation needs to result in re-implementing or replacing technology. Some of it is simply assessing what you have and assessing whether or not you're using it to the full capability today, or is there additional functionality that you've already purchased, you already have in - house that you can manipulate and expand use of that makes your day-to-day transaction and processing more efficient. And then I think a big part of it, if we talk to Catherine, you asked the question about AI. We don't have necessarily the budget to add headcount. We don't have the budget to necessarily add technology, but there's a lot of AI capability that you can do for low cost or no cost that can help you to create efficiency and effectiveness gains within the organization.

I would actually start with that looking and really doing an eyes wide open assessment of your organization and identifying all of those opportunities that you can do yourself in - house or where someone like EisnerAmper or another third party might be able to assist you in helping to transform. And at the end of that assessment, defining all of those initiatives that you as the nonprofit want to incorporate, let's say over the next 12 months, could be three months, six months, 12 months, that really put together a transformation journey for you. And many of those items, when we talk to our clients, many of those things can be done in - house. Some of those can be outsourced to other providers, but it gives you a journey map to say, "This is what we're trying to get to and here's the transformational change that we can enact to get us there." And everybody's bought into that journey.

Everybody understands what that roadmap entails. Katherine, I don't know if you would change or add to that.

Katherine Nesser:No, I think you're spot on. I think two other things that come to mind to me, and you kind of hit on that, but really optimizing the processes that you do have. So without necessarily funds to spend on technology, there's still things that you can do in - house. You can look at workflows, you can look at the policies and procedures and processes that you have in place. You can make any additional adjustments to things like that that might help with the day-to-day operations where you can still be growing and have a sustainable organization without having that large tech budget. And then the other thing I would say is really focusing on your people and is there any kind of trainings, cross trainings, things like that that you can do, ways that you can help your people grow and develop that's really going to have that sustainable and lasting change that might not take a lot from the budget and might not be necessarily technology focused, but you can get them reinvested back into your organization.

All right, we have one last question that we want to make sure we hit on. So Julie, at what stage of growth should a company start thinking about having some CFO advisory services or utilizing an advisory group to assist them with their changes or what's happening within the organization? That's a

Julie Munn-Sims:Great question. I mean, I think all stages, quite honestly, and the depth and breadth of that support is obviously dependent on where you're at. We do a lot of support with companies that are in the startup phase and really helping to define what their business strategy is, what their investment needs are, what their enterprise structure looks like. And then that goes all the way to then helping to define what their basic organizational needs are in terms of the support structure that they need, the people, the organizational support that they need all the way through to growing mid-market and to large corporate organizations. The level of need changes, obviously, with the more established and foundation that you are at, what phase of the business life cycle you're in. And then obviously I think of it as people, process and technology, right? Your organization grows based on the size and scale of your strategy.

Therefore, we can help you to define what the people needs are, what the skillset drivers are for that, what the process hierarchy looks like that you need and the sophistication of the technology needs to meet those needs. I'm a big proponent of what I would call fit for purpose technology. There's no need to go create the, to use an automobile analogy to go buy the Cadillac version of technology if the Hyundai version meets your needs because what you want is scalability. What you want is exactly what you need today with some room for growth so that you're not in a constant implementation mode, but CFO Advisory can help you at any of those stages. And obviously it's lighter touch on the early stage business and the startup phase. It could become a heavier touch, but we augment, right? We look at what your needs are and then we help identify where you can help yourself or where you might need our help.

Katherine Nesser:Thank you so much, Julie and Candace and Zach. All right, Bella, I'll pass to you to do our wrap up.

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