AI is redefining the role of finance, transforming it from a back-office function into a strategic powerhouse at the heart of your business.

Finance is evolving from compliance-focused reporting to become the organization’s digital backbone: orchestrating real-time data, enabling autonomous operations, and safeguarding the data and insights that drive strategic decisions.

Leading organizations are building finance functions that serve as architects of digital truth: integrating automation, data stewardship, and self-serve tools to drive speed and accuracy, unlocking new sources of value at scale.

To realize AI’s potential, finance professionals must look beyond simply having access to great data. Harnessing AI isn’t just about technology. It empowers CFOs and their teams to amplify the human element of their roles: telling stories that build trust, drive decision-making, and advance the company’s vision and strategy.

This expanded role is already reshaping careers, with CFOs increasingly stepping into CEO roles and becoming not just financial stewards, but also strategic partners and communicators—essential skills for leading AI-powered organizations into the future.¹

Act now or risk falling behind

A 2024 global survey from Deloitte’s Center for Controllership™ and IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) revealed that 16% of respondents were either currently using or adopting Generative AI, while 44% planned to adopt Generative AI in the next five years.²  

While AI momentum is building, waiting five years to adopt AI may be too late. For finance leaders, failing to embrace these technologies quickly is not just a missed opportunity. It could become an existential threat to your business.

Autonomous operations unlock real-time insights for all

Imagine a world where a “digital twin” of the enterprise architecture forms a golden source of truth, empowering agentic AI platforms to orchestrate entire finance operations in real time, delivering instant, accurate data across the organization.

Finance personnel leverage this real-time data through a self-serve model, analyzing trends, correlations, and strategic progress alongside predictive analytics to run dynamic scenarios, enabling proactive agile decision-making in response to different market conditions.³ As trusted strategists, they transform raw information into compelling narratives, weaving in visionary wisdom for the business, investors, and all stakeholders.

Other stakeholders, from line managers to the C-suite, can query live financials through user-friendly portals or natural language AI assistants, gaining instant, granular insights through dashboards.

The democratization of data means decisions can be made faster and with greater confidence. But the real transformation lies in what this unlocks for finance professionals. Rather than spending time on data gathering and manual reporting, finance can now focus on curating high-quality data, enforcing robust access controls, and ensuring compliance with privacy regulations. By guiding the organization through complex decisions and identifying optimal paths forward, finance becomes a true enabler of organizational strategy

New skills for a new era

The shift to AI-driven operations demands new skills. Finance teams must master prompt engineering: the art of crafting precise, context-aware instructions to ensure reliable results. This will require deep understanding of how the AI models function, including their strengths in pattern recognition and reasoning, as well as handling ambiguity.

This shift also demands a fundamental overhaul of finance’s governance and control structures. Human employees shift from doers to orchestrators, managing “teams” of AI agents through intuitive dashboards. They interpret data and glean richer insights that inform business strategy and decision-making.

These abilities mean finance professionals no longer have to reconcile spreadsheets to tell a backwards-looking story. Their mastery of technical AI skills instead unlocks opportunities to use human skills to drive strategic outcomes.

Deloitte’s Zora AI offers a digital workforce solution that operates globally, 24/7. Zora AI emulates human decision-making and reasoning to execute a wide range of tasks with speed, accuracy, and a high degree of transparency.

Finance as data curators

The advent of AI has been described as the 5th industrial revolution, with data as the new fuel. Much like the oil that powered the 2nd industrial revolution, data must be carefully extracted, refined, managed, and handled with care to unlock its potential. To power AI systems effectively, you must focus not only on collecting data, but also on ensuring its quality and integrity.

Finance is uniquely positioned to lead enterprise-wide data stewardship, curating “golden datasets,” validating sources, and auditing for bias and inconsistencies. This extends to non-financial data, like customer interactions or operational metrics, blurring the lines between finance, data science, and business operations.

Importantly, this expanded role is grounded in essential human skills, not just technical AI expertise. It requires collaboration, critical thinking, and judgment to unlock the power of the data. Finance professionals leverage these skills to foster cross-functional partnerships, interpret complex data in context, and ensure that data-driven decisions align with organizational goals and drive value creation.

Finance needs a revolution, not an evolution

For decades, finance functions have been mired in manual processes, fragmented data, and sluggish closes that fail to keep pace with business demands. Incremental tweaks won't cut it anymore.

With AI and exponential technologies revolutionizing the landscape, clinging to outdated operating models courts obsolescence. It’s time for a bold leap—AI isn’t just a tool; it’s the beating heart of a new finance paradigm, empowering finance and the business to harness real-time insights, drive agile strategies, and shape a future where finance fuels enterprise success.

Take the next step

Finance is uniquely positioned to lead an AI-driven business world.

The opportunity is clear and so is the risk of standing still. While every organization’s journey is different, modernizing your finance processes deserves real attention in an evolving, AI-driven economy. Relying solely on legacy models will make it challenging to keep pace with industry changes and competition.

Meanwhile, your competitors will leverage advanced technologies to move faster, operate more efficiently, and adapt to a changing market.

Ready to see what an AI-driven finance revolution looks like?

Connect with us to schedule a demo of Deloitte’s Zora AI. Explore practical next steps, benchmark your current state, and start building a future-ready finance function.