AI for the Finance Leadership Team

The course

About this course

Two hours for the people who have been told to do something about AI and have to answer for it. What changes structurally and what is a bolt-on. What happens to the ERP, the planning tool, and the reporting stack over the next three years. Native vendor agents versus third-party platforms versus your own governed workflows, and when each is right. The control model: how you let this near the ledger and what you say when the auditor asks. A 90-day plan that starts with two processes the roadmap already chose. The last twenty minutes are the harder question: whether an AI-native version of the finance function should be built alongside the existing one, and what that would take.

Who it is for

CFO, controller, directors of finance and FP&A, the finance systems lead, and whoever owns the audit relationship

Format

Two-hour briefing for the leadership group. The decisions, the control model, and the 90-day plan.

What the team leaves with

Outcomes

• A shared position on bolt-on versus structural, and on what the finance systems stack looks like in three years.
• A buy, build, or both decision framework: vendor-native agents, third-party platforms, or governed workflows your own people run.
• The control model in one page: read-only boundaries, approval gates, logs, and the line for the audit committee.
• A 90-day plan with the first two processes, their owners, and what leadership has to protect for it to happen.

Outline · 2 hours

How the session runs.

Usually 9:30 to 12:00 or 2:00 to 4:30. Other times are fine.

1. 0120 min

   Bolt-on or structural

   • What the mandate from the board or the owner actually asks for.
   • Why literacy training produces nothing without time protected for the first two processes.
2. 0225 min

   What happens to the stack

   • The ERP stays. The spreadsheet layer shrinks. The planning and consolidation tools become filing cabinets with an API.
   • You build the reasoning layer; the platform stores, routes, matches, and certifies.
3. 0320 min

   Buy, build, or both

   • Vendor-native agents, third-party agent platforms, your own governed workflows. Where each is right and what each costs.
   • For a finance team of ten to forty with no enterprise platform: governed agent, shared drive, approval email is the end state, not a stepping stone.
4. 0425 min

   The control model

   • Input, transformation, output, human check. Deterministic where it counts, AI where it helps, a person before anything posts.
   • Worked example: the sub-ledger reconciliation, then the annual compliance report you automate last.
   • What the auditor asks and the one-page answer.
5. 0515 min

   The 90-day plan

   • Two processes, two owners, the protected hours, the first review date.
   • What the flagship and the agent course deliver into it.
6. 0615 min

   The harder question

   • Whether to build an AI-native finance function alongside the existing one, and what that would take over three to five years.

Bring

What to bring

• Nothing. If the team has taken the flagship course, bring the roadmap.