Episode 379 | AI in finance: How AI Agents are Transforming Finance Workflows and Teams

That's awesome.

Great background.

Got a great career.

You know, it seems like every software vendor says they have AI agents now, you know, AI everywhere.

You know, what does AI transformation actually look like from your perspective? You know, inside one of these finance teams that's really doing it well.

You're exactly right.

I mean, the easiest tell to, you know, to really understand is like if the platform is truly AI native or not, it's very easy.

When did LLMs come out? Right.

In November of 2022.

Any company started prior to that is sort of tacking on LLMs into sort of a pre-AI system.

And anyone after that has been working with LLMs and building those systems from the ground up.

And so that's a very easy tell.

Obviously, it's not as black and white, but it's helpful to just kind of get that sort of date in mind.

And as you're evaluating ways and systems and platforms and tools that are claiming AI, understanding when they were built is super helpful to kind of be a very big tell of what is AI or not.

And then to your other point on the transformation, what we see, a lot of transformation teams at large companies, it's been very focused around implementation of new systems.

And that's been the transformation.

We're going to upgrade, you know, our SAP to 4HANA, or we're going to put in place a new, you know, planning tool.

And we're going to go and implement, you know, sort of this module.

And those have been sort of the transformations.

I think transformation teams are some of the best partners that we work with because there's this new medium of technology that they can now actually use to transform the sort of business units and the teams and the work that they're doing.

It's not just a new system or an operator or a new module.

It's really a different way of thinking and working.

And that big change is that agents and AI are able to actually do work in the way that software never was.

Software was always there, built once, sent everywhere, and then people are using that software.

Agents are actually just doing that work.

That's awesome.

Great background.

Got a great career.

You know, it seems like every software vendor says they have AI agents now, you know, AI everywhere.

You know, what does AI transformation actually look like from your perspective? You know, inside one of these finance teams that's really doing it well.

You're exactly right.

I mean, the easiest tell to, you know, to really understand is like if the platform is truly AI native or not, it's very easy.

When did LLMs come out? Right.

In November of 2022.

Any company started prior to that is sort of tacking on LLMs into sort of a pre-AI system.

And anyone after that has been working with LLMs and building those systems from the ground up.

And so that's a very easy tell.

Obviously, it's not as black and white, but it's helpful to just kind of get that sort of date in mind.

And as you're evaluating ways and systems and platforms and tools that are claiming AI, understanding when they were built is super helpful to kind of be a very big tell of what is AI or not.

And then to your other point on the transformation, what we see, a lot of transformation teams at large companies, it's been very focused around implementation of new systems.

And that's been the transformation.

We're going to upgrade, you know, our SAP to 4HANA, or we're going to put in place a new, you know, planning tool.

And we're going to go and implement, you know, sort of this module.

And those have been sort of the transformations.

I think transformation teams are some of the best partners that we work with because there's this new medium of technology that they can now actually use to transform the sort of business units and the teams and the work that they're doing.

It's not just a new system or an operator or a new module.

It's really a different way of thinking and working.

And that big change is that agents and AI are able to actually do work in the way that software never was.

Software was always there, built once, sent everywhere, and then people are using that software.

Agents are actually just doing that work.