CFOs banking on AI to prep for volatility, says Deloitte study

Executives in charge of Southeast Asian companies’ finances are beginning to turn their attention toward technology and artificial intelligence (AI) as a means to counter global difficulties that could potentially affect their businesses.

Global advisory firm Deloitte found in a report that while half of the surveyed chief financial officers (CFOs) across the region were optimistic about their respective companies’ financial prospects in the next year, they still worried about external risks, such as global and national economic slowdown and geopolitical issues.

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As a result, 74 percent of the 46 surveyed CFOs from the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have tapped technology automation to create more value for their companies and drive growth.

“Lessons from the pandemic have made CFOs become quite adept at capitalizing on the updates of volatility to uncover opportunities,” Melissa Delgado, Deloitte Philippines audit partner and CFO program leader, said in a statement.

Exploratory phase

Deloitte pointed out, however, that the most used technological services in the industry were “basic” tools, such as electronic invoicing.

Additionally, most of the companies in the region were still in the “exploratory phases” of AI and data.

AI tools such as GenAI are seen as useful devices in making business operations efficient. These use existing data to create new content.

In the finance realm, data-backed AI is used in budgeting, monitoring, and decision-making processes that help generate revenue and manage costs.

READ: PH firms keen on GenAI for operational efficiency

However, CFOs pointed out that there was a lack of “clean” and consistent data that could accelerate their companies’ uptake of advanced AI.

They also lamented that there were only a few AI tools that could “truly inform business decisions,” forcing some companies to adopt a “wait-and-see” approach and become late followers in the AI trend.

Deloitte said that for the CFOs, it was “not about going with the hype, but understanding the true value and benefit of the investments they are making and how that fits in with the business.”

Apart from the risk of gradually shifting to AI, CFOs are also faced with the challenge of securing and retaining key talents.

Nearly three-fourths of the respondents cited this as one of their top internal concerns, especially as these employees account for up to 80 percent of companies’ capabilities.