The Dawn of Touchless Finance Operations: How Elite CFOs Will Automate Almost Everything

For decades, CFOs have pursued efficiency through automation. But now, with AI capabilities built into finance applications, augmented by an emerging category of software called AI agents, automating finance processes end to end is now within reach. It’s the dawn of an era of truly touchless finance operations.

The conventional finance model will become obsolete. Delegating repetitive tasks to AI will enable CFOs and their teams to move beyond just making incremental process improvements to focusing on driving business strategy and creating value, resulting in a more results-oriented and agile finance function.

Individuals will continue to play an important role, but they must adapt their approach, responsibilities, and mindset to those higher-level responsibilities.

AI-driven finance and touchless operations

AI-driven finance can replace historical processes with agentic flows that operate autonomously and require minimal human intervention. At no additional cost to customers, agentic flows leverage embedded AI agents in Oracle’s true SaaS ERP platform to achieve touchless operations. These AI agents can provide the foundation to replace traditional methods and introduce new capabilities, which constantly evolve. AI agents also adapt to changing data and business conditions and excel at cognitive reasoning tasks, including answering complex questions and offering personalized recommendations.

Touchless operations can apply to every end-to-end back-office process, with the underlying AI-powered automation helping to reduce complexity and increase accuracy and completeness. Finance departments should recognize that AI’s capabilities go beyond individual task automation. Instead, by continuously collecting, coordinating, and analyzing data from multiple sources, agentic AI can help finance teams derive more precise insights and make high quality predictions and recommendations, informing real-time decision-making and actions.

However, to achieve true AI-driven finance, organizations must adopt a true SaaS native platform, given the regular feature updates, robust security, and scalability that come with such applications. Embedded agentic flows with a true SaaS platform support cleaner data, higher-quality analysis, and increased productivity, allowing staff to focus on strategic tasks. Bolt-on, hyperscale, hosted, and home-grown applications can be more costly, complex, and not as readily scalable.

As these agents transform traditionally complex and time-consuming processes into touchless ones, they allow finance teams to focus on the work that truly matters: forecasting financial results, optimizing working capital, identifying growth and cost-cutting opportunities, accelerating the financial close, mitigating financial risks, and more. As many routine processes are continuously performed in the background, staff can focus on managing exceptions and helping ensure that issues don’t become problems.

For an introduction to AI-driven finance, AI agents, and true SaaS platforms, refer to my previous article: The Era of Iterative Finance Transformation Is Over.

Achieving touchless operations

The first step in achieving touchless operations is a mindset shift. CFOs should recognize that AI is no longer a future concept; it’s available now and capable of transforming finance functions. However, AI-driven finance isn’t about replacing existing processes. It’s about continuously improving them, aligning AI capabilities with finance, operational, and strategic business objectives to drive more timely and informed decisions.

To make AI-driven finance a reality, CFOs must prepare to adapt their data, people, and processes accordingly.

At the heart of AI-driven finance is high-quality, reliable data. Finance organizations must practice robust data governance and quality control. CFOs must take the lead, as they’re uniquely positioned to see the big picture and bring together relevant information to achieve strategic outcomes.

People also play a critical role in this transformation. AI is reshaping finance roles, requiring new and updated skills as well as new organization and leadership approaches. Roles such as data steward and AI specialist will emerge. Experienced and skilled staff able to interpret and act on AI-driven insights will be essential to deriving the highest value. Achieving the right balance between AI automation and human oversight will require careful management.

Transforming processes is equally important. CFOs must challenge legacy processes that haven’t kept up with business priorities, while embracing simplification, standardization, and automation. AI-driven finance presents an opportunity to eliminate redundancies and streamline workflows, while adopting new, high-value capabilities as they’re introduced. Done correctly, AI-driven processes can learn and adjust without requiring additional programming. As inputs change, touchless operations can adjust to and accommodate those changes with minimal intervention.

AI-driven finance can also allow for restructuring shared services and outsourcing models. Traditional finance operations have relied heavily on manual interventions; AI-driven finance enables the centralization and automation of many functions. AI agents operate continuously, removing constraints such as volume, time zones, and language barriers. Organizations that adapt to this new model will see opportunities for significant efficiency gains and cost reductions.

Additionally, CFOs should take an active role in AI governance and regulatory compliance. Developing guidelines for AI governance, monitoring performance, ensuring transparency, and continuously refining AI models will be essential.

For CFOs, the opportunity to transform the finance organization into a more efficient, higher-value team has never been greater. Establishing an AI-focused foundation—including people, processes, data, governance, and controls—will be critical to success. The pace of AI innovation is accelerating, and waiting to adopt AI-driven finance practices means leaving substantial value on the table. It’s time to take action. Those who embrace AI today will lead the finance function of tomorrow.