How Generative AI Is Reshaping Digital World Class® Finance

Podcast: Gen AI Breakthrough – The Hackett Group

Speakers: Martijn Geerling and Vince Griffin

This episode examines how generative AI is changing finance performance, what distinguishes Digital World Class® finance organizations, and how CFOs approach Gen AI as a value-creation lever.

Evolution of Finance Performance

Finance performance has progressed through clear stages: cost control and cash flow focus, followed by globalization and scalability, then cloud-driven digital disruption, pandemic-led continuity models, and today’s phase centered on large-scale AI and generative AI. The current phase enables deeper resilience and faster performance reimagination in uncertain markets.

What Defines Digital World Class® Finance

Digital World Class® finance organizations outperform peers on both operational excellence and business value. Finance performance closely tracks enterprise performance, especially in revenue growth, margin improvement, and working capital.

A major differentiator is complexity reduction. World-class teams simplify processes and data structures, leading to lower costs and higher value contribution.

Complexity, Productivity, and Decision Quality

Reducing complexity cuts time spent compiling data. Finance teams shift effort toward forward-looking analysis and proactive decision support. This enables stronger operational insight and superior working capital outcomes compared to peers.

How Generative AI Is Applied in Finance

Generative AI adoption focuses on productivity at scale. Combined with process redesign and cleaner data, Gen AI supports use cases such as forecasting and cost variance analysis. AI generates analytical narratives that guide where human expertise should focus, delivering substantial productivity gains when deployed broadly.

CFO View on Gen AI Adoption

Gen AI adoption shows positive returns for organizations that move beyond pilots. Digital World Class® finance teams emphasize strong business partnership and advanced analytics to support value creation. CFOs play a central role in aligning resources to the highest-impact opportunities and building teams that collaborate with agentic AI systems.

Shifts in the Finance Operating Model

Finance organizations continue to evolve toward highly digital global business services models. Transactional roles decline, while professional, analytical, and transformational roles expand. Finance professionals increasingly focus on exception handling, stakeholder engagement, and continuous transformation initiatives enabled by Gen AI.

Human Roles in an AI-Driven Finance Function

Gen AI changes roles rather than eliminating them. Automation creates demand for new skills, continuous learning, and stronger analytical and strategic capabilities. Finance professionals who invest in AI fluency strengthen their relevance and long-term impact.

Key Takeaways

→ Finance performance has entered an AI-driven phase

→ Digital World Class® finance excels through complexity reduction and analytics

→ Generative AI delivers scale productivity gains

→ CFO leadership determines enterprise-level value realization

→ Human capability development remains critical