Why CIOs and CFOs are becoming “tied at the hip” as companies make significant investments in AI

Amid all this huge interest in generative AI and the pursuit of upside and downside gains from deploying these rapidly evolving tools, Workday wanted to think about how to budget for a business software company’s AI investments. A close partnership was created between IT and finance, led by CFO Zane Rowe, who joined Workday just three months after Johnson.

“We have created a governance framework to ensure that any material investments in AI are subject to a review process,” says Johnson.

This process involves a monthly IT finance meeting where teams discuss the different AI tools on the market, which have the highest feasibility of success, and which can make the greatest business impact. Each month, Workday evaluates each AI use case produced for six months or more to determine whether these investments are achieving key performance indicators, which may include productivity or revenue generation.

On a bi-monthly basis, the company’s broader executive leadership team meets to align on Workday’s overall AI strategy. In these sessions, Johnson shares updates on the future generative AI roadmap and what benefits are expected to be achieved when making these investments. This transparency ensures accountability for all AI bets.

Business leaders say it’s crucial for IT and finance to foster a close partnership as AI becomes more widespread across their operations, especially since some studies have shown that The vast majority of AI pilots fail. Most organizations using generative AI today are witnessing Limited return on their investmentAccording to research conducted by a management consulting firm Mackenzie.

Workday experiments with every new AI feature it might want to deploy, often with a very short contract.

“We think there will be some enterprise-level consolidation over time,” Johnson explains. When looking back and evaluating AI investments, a company may replace vendors when a new tool proves easier to deploy and at a lower cost. In one example, Workday was switched Sales force Agentforce to replace some third-party agents that the company has deployed from another unnamed vendor.

“I think the partnership between finance and IT is great at enabling us to continue to drive value, while recognizing that not only is there an opportunity, but the cost of not changing is also significantly high,” says Rowe.

in Akamai TechnologiesCIO Kate Prouty and CFO Ed McGowan joined the cybersecurity and cloud computing company within a year more than 25 years ago. After many years as colleagues, Prouty has reported to McGowan since she ascends to the top IT role in 2021.

“When you have the CFO behind you, it makes life a lot easier,” Prouty says.

The finance department’s IT department and procurement team are “fully committed,” and look closely at vendor contracts to make sure Akamai gets the best possible prices. Akamai’s IT team receives all incoming requests for new technology solutions across the organization, with a commitment to respond to requests within one day.

McGowan says leadership needs to strike a careful balance between encouraging the use of AI tools that can help engineers code faster or make it easier for lawyers to draft legal contracts. But the company doesn’t want to see costs skyrocket by saying “yes” to every AI request.

“We have to make sure we don’t get into a situation where we’re duplicating efforts, getting bad contracts, or getting expenses out of control,” McGowan says.

C-Wing Leaders at Animal Health Company Zoetis It has placed fewer and larger bets on AI focusing on only two core parts of the business, R&D and marketing. Six of the company’s seven AI use cases were deemed “successful,” including one AI tool that helps salespeople prepare more personalized business pitches for each individual livestock customer.

Zoetis admits it’s a bit late to implementing more general AI productivity tools, including those that can speed up the hiring process. But the company says it is shifting more financial resources in this direction. It can shop and explore off-the-shelf products sold by many AI vendors that aren’t as differentiated as the tools Zoetis has developed for core use cases.

“We were starting to be more disciplined and focused on where we were taking AGI and making our bets,” says Whitney Joseph, CFO at Zoetis.

Like his peers at Workday and Akamai, Keith Sarbaugh, chief digital officer at Zoetis, says the high costs associated with compute and licensing are an ongoing concern. “In 25 years of doing this kind of work, I’ve never seen another technology have post-implementation costs as high as AI,” Sarbu says.

He often sends offers from vendors like Salesforce and Sub about their latest AI offerings, but they firmly believe that the greatest value will come from non-siloed tools.

“We’re always looking for those opportunities where we can integrate data and processes across platforms and kind of unlock new value that way,” Sarbu says.

John Keel

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News packages

Amazon Web Services has been affected by a massive outage. Amazon’s cloud computing service has seen a Big outage This disrupted a range of online services affecting major corporate customers including Starbucks, Robinhood, United Airlines, McDonald’s and even Amazon’s own services like Ring and Alexa. Amazon blamed the outage on issues with the company’s domain name system, and said the outage originated in Northern Virginia, the largest and oldest cloud hub in the country, according to the Associated Press. The AWS outage began on Monday morning, with all services returning to normal operations by then 6pm EST. DownDetector, which tracks internet outages, said in a Facebook post that it had received more than 11 million user reports of problems at more than 2,500 companies.

OpenAI is hiring former bankers to develop AI tools that can do the work now done by entry-level employees. Bloomberg Reports OpenAI has recruited more than 100 former investment bankers from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other financial giants to help train financial models that can replace entry-level tasks performed by younger bankers. The project, called Mercury, pays participants to write claims and build financial models for transaction-related tasks, including initial public offerings and restructurings. Bloomberg reported that Mercury is an example of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s attempt to make AI technology more useful for certain industries, such as finance in this case, as well as legal and consulting.

Anthropy makes its Cloud Live Sciences debut, bringing Cloud Code to the web. OpenAI competitor Anthropic has officially announced new technology offerings including Claude Life Sciences debutwhich is built around Anthropic’s AI models but will also support new connections to external scientific tools used in research and development. Anthropic says it intends this AI integration to help researchers accelerate the drug discovery process, including research, data analysis, and clinical and regulatory compliance. Separately on Anthropic Monday Announce AI Coding Assistant will bring CloudCode to the web, allowing developers to create and manage AI coding agents from their browser. Competitors like Cursor have similarly moved in this direction in recent months, with Anthropic telling TechCrunch that it wants to put Claude Code everywhere to “meet developers where they are.”

Adoption curve

There is a huge rise in the use of artificial intelligence among business leaders and chatbots are their tool of choice. The vast majority of business leaders (82%) reported that they use generative AI tools “several times a day,” primarily for work-related tasks, but also for personal productivity and social media content creation, among other uses, according to a recent study. reconnaissance Of the 119 members of the Fortune AIQ Advisory Board.

Chatbots, including ChatGPT and Gemini, were the most widely used generative AI tools (99% reported regular use), followed by image generators like Midjourney (42%), GitHub Copilot and other AI coding assistants (26%), and video generators (only 8%). The most common work-related tasks were researching (88%), drafting reports or emails (74%), and brainstorming ideas (71%).

While nine out of ten business leaders reported that they were either “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with these generative AI tools, there were some concerns when asked if they had encountered any production issues. The main problem was inaccurate or misleading results (39%), followed by lack of understanding of context (23%), and biased or inappropriate output (8%). Two in ten reported no major problems with their use of AI.

Courtesy of Fortune AIQ Advisory Board

Jobs Radar

Recruitment:

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hired:

– Whataburger His name Rohit Kapoor as Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Transformation Officer, joins the fast food operator after serving as Executive Vice President and CIO at retailer Claire’s. Kapoor also previously held senior leadership positions at restaurant giants Starbucks and Yum Brands.

– shopping cart.com Announce hiring Arjun Sainath as CTO, where he will lead product and engineering strategy for the logistics-focused e-commerce software provider. Most recently, Sainath served as Vice President of Platform Engineering at supply chain management company Blue Yonder. He also previously served as a Senior Manager at Salesforce.

– Kikov Announce Philippe Clavell, as CTO, joins the fintech company to guide the progress of its AI strategy. Clavell previously served as CTO and CEO at luxury travel technology company Scenset and as senior director of engineering at online gaming platform Roblox.

– mongoose specific Scott Johnston is CTO, joining the software developer after most recently serving as Chief Product Officer at civic technology nonprofit Code for America. Before that, Johnston spent 16 years at Google, where he helped develop key products including Google Drive, Meet, Chat, and Voice. Johnston’s arrival at Mongoose coincides with the company’s planned deep investment in agentic AI.

– normal Announce hiring Venky Renganathan, as CTO, joins the startup that helps businesses turn photos and videos into structured data. Renganathan previously served as Vice President of Engineering at repair shop management software company Fullbay and held software development roles at Amazon and Amazon Web Services.

– He increases His name Aaron England as Chief Product and Technology Officer joins the software provider after most recently serving as CTO at speech technology software company Rev. England also has more than 20 years of experience leading products and programs at Dell, Vrbo and Expedia.

– Access specific Nikhil Bobde as CTO, and appointed Alex Hazboun to the newly created role of Chief Innovation Officer, reporting to Bobde. Bobde joins the sports and entertainment ticketing company from online marketplace Thumbtack and previously held positions at Microsoft and Meta. Hazboun served as CTO at AXS for nine years, and previously held positions at Ticketmaster and Live Nation.