Today, we're diving into the fascinating space of AI for finance teams with Marie Speakman. Marie is a trailblazer. She transitioned from a role where she was the European CFO. She worked her way right up the, up the ranks of finance and was a CFO for many years. And now she spends her days consulting with finance teams on how to embrace AI to automate and transform their ways of working.

She's got over 15 years in finance, in a number of different roles. She's founded her own accounting practice many years ago and currently spends her time working with lots of tech providers, like us, like me, and she's been really fantastic in that and working with her clients who are businesses. And also she's got a real big passion to help fractional CFOs. Those are CFOs who tend to work a day kind of as consultants, going around helping multiple businesses in a fractional, a part -time basis. So going around and helping multiple. And so that, and that's a, that's a tricky role and to do well as a fractional CFO, you really want to have great tech to automate a lot of the work so that you can just drop in, uh, see what's going on, add value.

So we talked about the journey to AI. So she gave her recommendations on how to transition, where to start. We talked about the right tools and software. She's really big on this. So we talked about her kind of ideal stack, what tools to look for. We dived into a few specific areas and she gave us some great recommendations.

The key takeaways, she really thinks, and I agree that the role of finance is evolving and we're more and more going to become strategic partners for the business. We need to embrace automation because there's a massive advantage. We automate the routine tasks. We don't need to do those anymore. We become more strategic and then we can just dive in and sort out the systems as needed. But the future of finance is more strategic. Marie teases us on a couple of great softwares that she is excited about that are coming that are still in sort of early phases. So that was fantastic. Don't miss out. This is a really fantastic episode that could redefine your career in finance. So tune in and enjoy. Thanks very much. 

Chapters

Introduction and Background

Transition to AI and Automation

Understanding Fractional CFO

Benefits of Fractional CFO

AI Tools and Gadgets

Transformative Potential of AI in Finance

AI's Impact on Finance Roles

Automation in Different Areas of Finance

Choosing AI Tools and Software#

Becoming a Finance Business Partner

Recommended AI Tools

Useful links

Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siritchie/

Sponsor: https://www.blox.so/

Sponsor Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blox-plan

Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariespeakman-ai/