“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.”

Being a CFO right now feels less like managing corporate strategy and more like playing dodgeball with software vendors. According to the 2026 “Gartner Finance Technology Bullseye Report”, 79% of us are feeling the pressure to transform traditional workflows. Let’s cut through the buzzwords and look at the trenches.

The Great Excel Paradox

Cloud ERP is the backbone of our operations, with adoption steadily growing. But the most brutally honest stat is that spreadsheets are still the most widely adopted technology we have. We are spending millions on scalable architecture, but deep down, we know a master workbook named Q4_Forecast_Final_v8_DO_NOT_TOUCH.xlsx holds the company together. This reliance on familiar spreadsheets is slowing down the adoption of new financial planning software.

The AI Reality Check

If you look at the data, AI adoption has plateaued at around 59%. Finding actual, high-impact use cases without breaking anything is hard. We are all running Generative AI “pilots”—corporate speak for “we do not quite trust it with the general ledger yet”. That said, we are throwing future investment dollars at “AI agents,” hoping these bots figure out faster decision cycles and exception handling.

What is Actually Working

• Chatbots are saving our sanity: They are getting good at answering routine queries, reducing “how do I expense this?” messages.
• AR Automation is king: We are aggressively investing in AI tools to chase down invoices and optimize working capital.
• Blockchain is… back? Plot twist! Blockchain saw the biggest jump in future investment interest, jumping 30 places for secure audit trails.

The Pragmatic Playbook

• Finish your vegetables: Double down on your Cloud ERP and automate reporting.
• Govern the bots: Prioritize GenAI, but put strict governance in place before someone feeds unreleased financials into a public AI model.
• Integrate or die: Focus investments on things that actually talk to each other.

By 2029, strategic AI use will unlock an additional 10 points of margin growth. I will believe it when I see it on my P&L, but I am not going to bet against it. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a #REF! error to track down.

Where is your finance team placing its bets this year? Are you buying into the AI agent hype, or just trying to get your ERP to finally talk to your spreadsheets? 

#CFO #TheAccidentalCFO #inersec #ArtificialIntelligence #ExcelForever