McKinsey Classics | August 2023

The CFO’s guide to digitizing the finance function

A company’s digital core is increasingly becoming the purview of the CFO, who must work in lockstep with the CEO to help lead the kind of digital- and AI-transformation efforts that many organizations today are pursuing. A flurry of enticing trending technologies—from Web3 to cloud computing to generative AI—carry with them great promise for improving process efficiencies and unlocking significant value, but for many of today’s finance leaders, achieving these results remains elusive.

Half a decade ago, as finance functions increasingly explored the promising benefits of automation and artificial intelligence, Ishaan Seth and the coauthors of this McKinsey classic article challenged CFOs to consider three key actions as they moved to a digital finance operating model: understand which activities should be automated to deliver the most value, rethink processes around the technology to unleash its full potential, and manage the disruption that will inevitably result from these changes.

Today’s finance leaders will help define how companies use tomorrow’s leading technologies. To help ensure success for you and your people, read our 2018 classic “Bots, algorithms, and the future of the finance function.”

— Drew Holzfeind, editor, Chicago