How to get ahead of 99% of finance
What nobody tells you: It never starts with technology
READ TIME: 8 MINUTES
The periods when I’ve made the biggest leaps working in finance have never started with new tools but with a deep discomfort, a quiet dissatisfaction with the status quo of how things are run.
Back in 2007, with CXO Software, we introduced financial storytelling.
Long before the industry realized its value. Companies bought our platform because traditional finance systems (Close, FP&A, etc.) failed to turn financials into actionable insights.
Most vendors slap a few pie charts on a dashboard and call it a day.
We took a different approach. We focused on storytelling, turning complex financial data into clear, compelling narratives that drive decisions.
Now, FP&A tools are finally catching up. Financial storytelling is becoming a core feature, shifting FP&A from number crunchers to storytellers.
AI is pushing this further. With the right prompts, AI tools like finstory.ai, ChatGPT and Gemini can transform financial data into structured, insightful stories.
There’s a difference between chasing comfort and choosing transformation
Comfort is simple.
It’s watching the same dashboards.
It’s reading reports you already understand.
It’s believing that waiting for enterprise-grade is safer than building anything new.
In finance, this comfort is a trap.
Easy to justify, easy to sell, but ultimately a slow surrender of relevance.
Change is unsettling, even painful.
But so is being left behind.
We cling to the promise that someone else will solve the hard problems.
A better vendor.
A proven template.
A safe AI product.
Breakthrough rarely comes from outside; it emerges when you’re exhausted by old routines and finally choose to break the cycle.
Radical shifts in finance don’t happen because you bought new software.
They happen when you finally get tired of watching opportunities pass you by, when you can’t stand the slow decay of your curiosity.
Cycles of Finance, Cycles of Change
Everything in this field repeats: the pressure to close faster, the flood of new regulation, and the new tool that promises the world.
But look closer: each cycle contains the seeds of something else.
A technology that’s so “unfinished” it becomes powerful in the hands of those willing to experiment.
A junior analyst, tired of grunt work, who learns to build AI prompts and suddenly reframes the entire monthly close.
A finance leader, once skeptical, who pushes past the fear of risk and rediscovers what it means to lead.
What was once dismissed as hype becomes the new standard…
Just as PCs, the cloud, and the internet did.
What you see as the edge today will be table stakes in 3 years.
The biggest risk isn't the hype.
It's the paralysis that follows.
While 99% of finance professionals are caught between the hype and the fear, a quiet revolution is already happening.
And for those who move now, the advantage will be decisive.
The Fiction of Real Work
Finance teams are conditioned to believe that value is in perfection:
No errors, no risk, no untested ideas.
But the world moves differently now.
You can process a billion rows of data and still miss the only question that matters.
You can double-check every number and still lose relevance because you failed to see the story unfolding underneath.
What if your identity as a “protector of assets” is actually limiting your influence?
Each one of us operates with a set story:
“I’m not technical.”
“I’m here to safeguard, not build.”
“I’ll act once everyone else has proved it’s safe.”
But stories are not reality; they’re scripts you inherited or accepted.
The moment you’re tired enough of this script, you’re ready to step outside it.
That’s where transformation starts.
Satya Nadella says AI will create more jobs than it destroys
But only for those willing to change their definition of real work.
The real work isn’t pulling data.
It isn’t writing the same memo twenty different ways.
It’s insight.
It’s pattern recognition.
It’s finding meaning in uncertainty.
AI is the first tool in decades that lets you focus on this.
But it won’t do it for you. It’ll only hand you a blank canvas faster.
You will have to decide what picture to paint.
Polarity in Finance: Fear vs. Leverage
If you’re feeling anxiety about AI, good.
That anxiety is the signpost that you’re on the edge of something new.
Every major change in finance, ERP, spreadsheets, SaaS, and automation was met with fear, skepticism, and resistance.
But there’s a pattern here: the edge becomes the norm.
What was once a risk is now security.
What was once chaos becomes order.
You can’t reach the next level by only optimizing the current one.
True leverage comes when you channel discomfort into experiments.
You let your junior team automate the grind, not because you want to cut headcount, but because you want them working at their edge, where learning, risk, and growth happen together.
Your Playbook for Getting Ahead
It’s never about a big bang AI transformation.
It's about a series of smart, strategic decisions.
Stop chasing shiny objects. Start solving real pain. The most successful AI adoptions don't start with the question, "What can we do with AI?" They start with, "What is our most time-consuming, error-prone, soul-crushing process?" Is it the month-end close? Is it T&E reconciliation? Is it supplier invoice processing? Identify the single biggest point of friction in your finance operation. That is your pilot project. An early win here builds momentum for everything that follows.
Get your data house in order. This is the point from the last newsletter that cannot be overstated. AI runs on data like a car runs on fuel, and you wouldn't put sludge in a Ferrari. Getting "AI-ready" is boring but essential work. It means investing in data governance, standardizing definitions across systems, and establishing a single source of truth. A clean, well-structured data warehouse is the single most important prerequisite for unlocking the power of AI.
Let the builders build (and become an expert buyer). Your job isn't to build a proprietary AI-powered P2P system. Your job is to pick the best one on the market and implement it flawlessly. The vendor landscape is maturing rapidly. Companies like AppZen and Basware are transforming Accounts Payable. HighRadius is revolutionizing Accounts Receivable. BlackLine and FloQast are automating the financial close. Anaplan and Farseer are reimagining FP&A. Your new core competencies are technology evaluation, vendor management, and implementation leadership.
Cultivate the Human Skills. As AI automates the technical, the human becomes more valuable. The future of finance isn't about who can write the best Python script; it's about who can use the output of that script to tell the most persuasive story, build the strongest business case, and provide the clearest strategic advice. The skills that will define the top 1% of finance talent are:
Data literacy & critical thinking: The ability to question the output of a model, spot anomalies, and understand its limitations.
Business partnership: The ability to translate financial data into operational insights for non-finance leaders.
Strategic storytelling: The ability to craft a compelling narrative around the numbers for the board, investors, and employees.
The Bottom Line
Finance is not a science of perfection.
It is the art of progress, through cycles, discomfort, and story.
The future doesn’t arrive for those who wait.
It is built, every day, by those willing to turn their discomfort into creation.
So ask yourself, do you really want to get ahead or stay the same?
And when will you be done waiting?
That’s all for today.
See you on Thursday!
P.S. I'm the co-founder of CXO Software (exit 2018) and former head of M&A at insightsoftware. I have worked with FP&A companies for the past 25 years. As a consultant, salesperson, entrepreneur, M&A executive and investor. Now I’m a CFOTech investor, advisor and founder of finstory.ai
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I’m Wouter Born. A CFOTech investor, advisor, and founder of finstory.ai
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