The CFO as Chief Change Agent: Navigating the Future of Finance with AI

Megan - 00:00:25: Today, my guest is Keith Causey. Keith is a strategic and highly accomplished senior executive leading the way to cloud with advanced automation, digital strategies, and a move-in mindset. Successful in delivering significant transformation, resulting in improved strategic delivery, organizational effectiveness, next-generational process efficiency, utilizing cloud-based technologies, and process innovation. Keith has vast expertise across multiple industries in accounting, finance, shared services, and technology. A results-oriented and innovative top performer with a proven approach focused on people, process, technology, and digital-slash-data capabilities, with substantial experience in leading organizational and cultural change management, strategy development and execution, and delivering cutting-edge-slash-industry-first capabilities and results. Keith, thank you very much for being my guest on today's episode of CFO Weekly.

Keith - 00:01:55: Thank you, Megan. And a pleasure for me to be here.

Megan - 00:01:58: I'm excited about the topic. Today, we're talking about AI and finance. And Keith, I'm excited about the opportunity to learn about you and your thoughts and experiences with this topic. So let's jump right in.

Keith - 00:02:10: All right.

Megan - 00:02:11: So first, let's start with you. And just so that we kind of have a general idea of, you know, who you are, what you've done, can you just kind of give us a brief overview of your career to date? And then kind of what drew you to the field of finance and technology?

Keith - 00:02:29: Sure. I hate talking about myself, but here we go. I've been doing finance and transformation for a very long time. Interestingly enough, from the accounting chair, CAO, controller type organizations. I started my career at KPMG way back when. Very passionate about numbers, business, technology, driving change. And I'm one of those silly people or sick people who love accounting. So I've been really fortunate in my career, where are the positions and the opportunity that have been given. It's really, I've been able to really flex my talents, if you will, around my passions and drive a lot of change. Worked at companies like Hughes Electronics, which we transitioned into DirecTV. So that was quite the journey from a defense company to an entertainment company. I've worked at companies like General Motors, helped lead them through their bankruptcy and led global finance transformation there. Just my last position was Caesars. I was the chief accounting officer. I was brought in to really transform finance and we'll get into it a little bit later, but that's where I implemented cloud ERP, first in the industry to do that. So now I work for Oracle. I work in the development organization and I really look at myself as the customer advocate inside the company and I work for development. And so I get a real insight into what we're doing in the direction that we're heading and what I do every day is imagine how I might change finance in order to take advantage of this technologies and keep that adding value from a finance perspective. So I'm very fortunate to be at Oracle and happy to be here today with you, Megan.

Megan - 00:04:11: Thank you for that. And with your extensive experience leading digital transformations and cloud initiatives, can you share with us maybe just a project or experience that stands out in your mind as particularly rewarding or maybe even challenging?

Keith - 00:04:28: Yeah, as I said in my opening, a lot of companies led a lot of transformation. I think they're all very challenging. And to me, the more challenging, the more rewarding, quite frankly. But I think for our purposes here, I'll draw back to my Caesars Entertainment time. When I arrived at Caesars, the finance team was really struggling. We couldn't close the books on time. CC firings were late. Controls could have been done better. They had old green screen technology. I just used the keys. My teams, they didn't know how to use their mouse. They only knew how to use F keys. There was a lot of opportunity there. The team was working way too hard, seven days a week, 10 plus hours a day. It kind of seemed to be treading water. So we got some of those things stabilized, but we really quickly learned we needed to change out the old system and really modernize from that perspective. So what I did is... I had a lot of experience with lots of different accounting systems. So we looked at them all, but something new was out there, cloud ERP systems. And so I looked at Oracle and it just made sense. And so looking at more of a platform strategy, the technology would always be up to date. So it just made sense for us to move into a platform like that, where we would always be current and the platform would continue to innovate and introduce new capabilities. So, we were the first in the industry to do it. We were able to win over our internal team, not only the finance organization, but cross-functionally people were helping us out. So the entire company really came on board as a team effort. Our board of directors was very supportive. Our CFO was very engaged. Our CEO was very engaged. So... And in 10 months with all that support, we were able to replace our old green screen technology all at once and moved all of our... 50 plus casinos into our Oracle environment while also consolidating most of the work into Las Vegas. So we really became the best in the industry at that time from a closed process perspective, from the worst to the best. I couldn't hire people if I wanted to before. It was very difficult. But now people wanted to come to Caesars and they wanted to work on the best systems with the best processes and the best outcomes. So it was just a much happier time. My staff gained work-life balance. We were able to work smarter. We were more collaborative, more focused on process improvement and adopting new capabilities. So it just became a very different environment, very positive oriented on a pretty short period of time. In fact, I might add that 80% or more of the Las Vegas shirt casinos are now on Oracle. So they followed us to the Oracle platform and they're all doing fantastic on it as well. So we really... Not only transformed Caesars, but we transformed an entire industry. And so I think that's a very proud moment for not only myself, but my team and Caesars as well.

Megan - 00:07:34: Yeah, that's amazing. And before we jump into AI, I mean, cloud itself has been transformative. I feel like, I don't know if we would have gotten through COVID without cloud.

Keith - 00:07:46: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if we would have got through the Caesars bankruptcy without cloud. And that's the thing. When we were going through a bankruptcy at Caesar, we actually implemented the tool. And that allowed us to also easily split out part of our company and create our read at that time. And so, yeah, for many reasons. And then the technology's changed so much from when we adopted it, which is why I wanted to go on a platform like Oracle. Anyway, it's just continuously getting better and adapting and creating these new capabilities. And AI has been in there for a long time as well. So we've had some AI, but as we'll discuss, there's a big leap in capability.

Megan - 00:08:24: So how is it that you see AI integrating with traditional finance functions and what are some specific areas where AI has already made a significant impact?

Keith - 00:08:34: I think AI will transform nearly every aspect of finance. In fact, it will. And it is. And where we've seen it already transforming finance is mostly in the process areas, automation, data ingestion. We are doing predictions and creating financial information and analysis and statements with it. But those are... We're still a little bit manual or require more human intervention than we'd like. And so now we're introducing AI agents. We just introduced those at Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas in September. Pretty exciting. So now we're combining that traditional AI with generative AI. And now these technologies partnering together, it's just significantly more intelligent, able to do more comprehensive tasks and enhances the traditional AI, with large language model capabilities. So we're seeing that we're able to replace large swaths of different processes, if you will, and create new capabilities. And it's reducing the amount of human intervention, which is what we would like to see. And so if I back up Oracle ERP, our vision is AI-driven finance. And so those three areas that we're really focusing on from an AI-driven finance. It's touchless operations, predictive insights, and collaborative actions, all from the Oracle ERP system. Finance becomes real time, it becomes continuous, and it becomes really data driven. And so with these AI agents performing this heavy lifting for finance, now we're able to have our people become more strategic, more operationally focused. Take that AI driven information. Take those insights. And make them actionable to really improve the strategic execution and delivery from that perspective. So really what we want is finances to become more value add. And as a result, this frees up the manual effort so that they can become more value added from that perspective. So it's pretty exciting times anywhere from automating finance processes to automating insights or analysis to driving actions. It's just going to become more real time and more action oriented and valuable.

Megan - 00:11:07: Do you foresee a day where we'll get to the continuous close?

Keith - 00:11:11: That's something I've always been skeptical of. And I don't even like the word continuous close, quite frankly. However, in this new environment, with the way that we can ingest data, I mean, with an agent. So if we think about our document IO agent, we can ingest data now in any form and any language and ingest that data into our platform. And then with these agents working together, now it's instantaneously processing. It can instantaneously update a cash flow prediction, if you will. It can instantaneously make decisions or recommendations. I'm going to say I don't want to say they make decisions. They make recommendations. Humans will always make the decisions, by the way. But it'll make a recommendation of the best payment form to improve working capital. So these things that were difficult before become easier. And so, yes, I mean, so now we're using the data to in a real time and continuous manner to update our financial information and make those decisions and continuously improve our operation. So is it a continuous close? I don't know if we want to say that because we're always going to have these accruals and those types of things that will happen. I will assist with that. But I think the actions that we take, we just become more proactive in how we run and operate our business, all driven by data that's ingested in a real time manner. And I think that's the big difference.

Megan - 00:12:45: And for someone listening, just starting out on their AI journey, what approach do you take to the implementation of AI in finance departments? And do you have any recommendations for overcoming maybe the resistance to change that, some people feel?

Keith - 00:13:03: Definitely AI will be changing. So we'll take the last one first, maybe that hangs around it. I mean, we don't really see it replacing people. It will make them more efficient and certainly may need to reskill people for different things. But there's going to be an emphasis on running the AI. People are going to have to do that. There's still going to be exception in the lane to a certain extent. Where the AI needs help. There's still going to be an element of improving AI, either with data or improving data for better outcomes or maybe ingesting different third party information to improve predictions and things like that. It's then taking the AI driven outcomes. I mean, AI doesn't have the experience of a human, so it doesn't have the knowledge. It doesn't attend meetings, for goodness sakes. So humans are always gonna have to review the output, let's say, of an analytic or a prediction or an insight and bring the human element into it to make sure that all things are considered, not just the one perspective of data that AI has and continue to make sure that the outcome is an appropriate outcome or a particular situation. And then there's that loop where you're continually improving the data model in order to improve the outcome. So I think people's jobs might change, but it's not just going to eliminate jobs holistically, if that makes sense.

Megan - 00:14:39: Yeah. I think jobs are changing for the better.

Keith - 00:14:42: Yeah, it should help people. I mean, back to work life balance. I mean, just continues that trend. I've done this for more than 35 years. And I think with every transformation I've ever done, there's that angst. But if it makes your life better, it helps improve your job. It makes you feel more value added. Maybe allows you to do different things that you weren't able to do before or learn different things. I mean, to me, those are all very positive things from a workforce perspective, quite frankly. I've seen people adapt that way.

Megan - 00:15:15: Where do you start?

Keith - 00:15:16: When I look at any transformation, it's people, process, technology. And then with AI, data is a very critical component. So I always look at those four pillars, if you will. And so if you look at. The AI that we have available now, I think it is easy to adopt. You just have to embrace it. You have to get over those fears. By the way, I encourage people to talk about those fears as well internally. You have to, when you think about the people part and the culture that you want to have from a company perspective, you got to get those things out and open and you have to have those people be part of the solution. So to get started, you have to start the conversation. I'd CFO's really need to be involved in this because of the substantial change it is making to their finance organizations. I've never seen transformation to this extent. And what I mean by that is now we're really able to align the data from finance to our strategies, to our KPIs, to our drive, business drivers. And so that's really critical for a CFO to understand. And really make sure that they're providing the vision that they want so that they're getting the information so that they can run their business better on this AI data driven world. And so that has implications to every level, right? How we ingest our data, what data we ingest, what data are we using for predictive models? How is that resulting in the insights? How are our teams then using that to help make recommendations for good business decisions and making priorities? And so finance is going to become more hands on, if you will. And they're going to be much more collaborative thinking cross-functionally than they ever have before. I think they're going to be incredibly important to business success of the future if we learn and if we find the right balance between AI and humans, quite frankly.

Megan - 00:17:26: And do you have any advice for it not becoming a black box? Like, how much do we need to understand the technology behind the output or the recommendations so that we're not just taking data at base value and regurgitating it, I guess?

Keith - 00:17:45: Yeah. Well, I mean, accounting, we can't. So we definitely have to have controls around, like I said, finding the right balance between AI, people, governance. Data controls. I mean, those things have to be thought through and they have to be done correctly. I mean, yes, you'll be able to understand how the process is being performed by these AI agents. There should be checks and balances technologically or otherwise that are put in place for accuracy and completeness like any other technology. So I'm not that worried about that. But yes, I think you're kind of getting into maybe AI hallucination. And you're absolutely right. I mean, the AI-driven insights or predictions or whatever are only as good as the data that we have. And that's where the human element is so critical. The human element needs to ensure that the AI is not producing the results that it wants. We need to make sure that it is producing the right results. And so that does require that high level critical thinking and experience and expertise that a machine just doesn't have. And that's going to be a really important aspect of our staff and making sure that we have the highest product that we're getting out of this, this next level of technology.

Megan - 00:19:02: And change is happening so quickly and it's coming so hard to predict the future. So how can CFOs leverage these types of tools for better financial forecasting and strategic planning?

Keith - 00:19:16: Oh, this is where we get into the world, according to me, I guess. But when I look at planning and strategic planning, I also want those to become continuous forecasting. I mean, the companies that I've been at forecasting even just updating our forecast, it is an event. So now with this continuous and real time data ingestion with real time predictions, with these agents working simultaneously and together and updating their individual areas as the data is ingested. Now I can have a real time live and updating forecast. And so what I think is very compelling, though, is now. I also get to review how the company's executing its plans. So back to my example of let's look at KPIs, let's look at the business drivers and let's have AI monitor those things. And now that I have generative AI, I have deep analysis and contextual insights that can be driven from that. So now I get to see how I'm performing. And then from that, I can get these insights of opportunities, whether they be good, bad. It doesn't really matter. I mean, there's an opportunity to improve revenue or reduce costs or eliminate activities that aren't producing the results that we want, doing more activities that are producing the results that we want. I mean, we've never had that level of capability before, and it's kind of exciting to think that we're going to be able to do that on a real time basis and do that at all times and then turn those insights into actions that drive business outcomes that then I can scenario plan very easily with the help of AI. Now I'm becoming more proactive. I'm really business oriented and I'm really driving positive outcomes. And I think that to me is how financial forecasting and planning is going to change. It's not just going to be a numbers oriented game. It's going to be an actions oriented game as well. And those two things are going to converge.

Megan - 00:21:22: And getting back to cloud for just a moment, do you still see any resistance to cloud? Are there people who are still concerned around data security? How is that going? How is the adoption of cloud?

Keith - 00:21:36: Well, I don't hear it as a data concern, not too often. And if so, I mean, we can get through that pretty quickly. But there's still just that resistance to change or even people that are maybe happy with what they have and they don't see what we see, I guess. So I think that we have more than 10,000 customers on Oracle Cloud ERP. And I think just the more examples and the more that we can show them the success and the efficiencies and the capabilities, I think the more they will come. But I mean, that's always the rub. It's just really more culturally that in turn, companies, I think, are dealing with whether or not they really want to go through a transformation like this. I think they know they need to, but it's just whether or not they have the appetite or if it's a priority at that particular time. That's kind of what I see, Megan. When it comes to data security, from my perspective, it's easy for us to demonstrate now. And I think it's very important, by the way, in this new world of cloud and AI that people understand how their data is secure. But at Oracle, our customers' data are resident in their particular environment. It's private to them. It's not shared. It's not used for large language model development or generative AI. It's their data. And I think once we walk them through, we are big. Our company is created on security. I think once we walk them through all of our security and give them the comfort around their data, that's easily overcome. So then it just gets down to, are they culturally ready? And do they want to take on a transformation like this?

Megan - 00:23:20: And as we look at the role of CFO itself, are there particular skills or new competencies that CFOs need to develop to effectively manage and leverage AI-driven tools and processes? Whether that be storytelling, which I hear a lot, or becoming better at technology. What skills would you recommend CFOs be focusing on today?

Keith - 00:23:44: Well, I think the CFO needs to be the chief change agent, quite frankly. I think they're in the best role to do that and to drive the change that needs to occur. And one that's so strategically important to a company. I mean, these are no longer just replacing your accounting systems. This is really empowering your data, treating it like an asset so that you can run your business better. And I think CFOs need to understand that and they need to be shown that and they need to grasp and create their own vision. But they're in the best position as well because this change requires a lot of cross-functional collaboration. When we think about data and AI and the outcomes and we think about the processes, things are going to need to change between organizations, roles and responsibilities, how data flows. But at the end of the day, the CFO needs to get everybody strategically aligned, not only just the financial data, but all the people as well. And they need to help our cross-functional teams make the right technology decisions. Technology shouldn't serve an organization. It shouldn't really serve a strategic objective and strategic process. So this world of technology for an individual organization, bolt on because I like the way something looks better than something else. I mean, those days need to be behind us. These platform approaches with a comprehensive data strategy aligned to strategic objectives is going to win the day. And I think CFOs need to really start to think about that and understand it and start making those tough calls and be that chief change agent to bring everyone together to understand and really drive that new outcome in order for their businesses to be successful long term.

Megan - 00:25:36: And if there's a CFO that's out there listening, that's excited for all of this, ready to take on that change agent role, but is working for an organization that's resistant to change. Any advice for maybe rallying the culture of the organization to get on board?

Keith - 00:25:54: I think going and talking to other companies and even befriending them and maybe even when I was at General Motors and Caesar, I took my team to other places who have done great transformation and talk to their people. I mean, it's always scary for our people, but you have to show them the outcome and what's in it for them and how they can play a great role during and after the transformation. Plus, the thing is, I mean, in the world of cloud. Change never stops, which is the really exciting part, if you ask me. And so I think if we just teach our people and we get strategically aligned, they understand the vision, what we're trying to accomplish. And I'll tell you, the people who lead great transformations, it does start with the people. I mean, we really are trying to not only improve the business, but improve people's lives. And so I think sitting down and really aligning these things together and having people understand exactly what we're trying to accomplish, and having them be a big part of it. I mean, that's just the way to have successful transformations. That's the way I've always done it. And it seems to work so far.

Megan - 00:27:04: Yep, that's great advice. And looking ahead, what are some of the most exciting or disruptive AI trends that you foresee in the finance industry? Where is Oracle focusing their investments these days?

Keith - 00:27:19: Well, like I said, AI agents, what some people are calling this agentic flow, that's exciting. When we think about this connected finance and continuous and real-time data-driven outcomes aligned to strategic objectives, that's very exciting. It's what I think about every day. I think the third spot that I talked about earlier, so we've got touchless operations, predictive insights, but also this collaborative actions. We're working, the team's working with bringing banks into the platform where companies can directly work with banks from the platform, turning things that may take weeks into days, like opening an account or closing an account. Also, introducing different financial instruments, if you will, virtual credit cards or whatever that our customers can select to help pay and optimize working capital. So the team is really looking through all of these different collaborative things that we can do in our ecosystems between other companies to make business that much more easy to execute, whether it be a transaction to execute or payment to execute, a financing or otherwise. Take these very complex third-party interactions that we do and make them easy with the assistance of AI directly from your desktop. I mean, I think that's going to be an area to watch as well, in addition to all these agents, which as I've described, are going to change every aspect of finance.

Megan - 00:28:48: Yeah, I'm excited to see what the future brings.

Keith - 00:28:50: Yeah, it's not about just replacing what we have. It's really creating these new capabilities. And I think that's the amazing part of it is where can this go and really make sure that we can show the value. You don't want to do things just to do them. It really does have to help people and reduce costs and increase efficiency and improve business outcomes. And what I see at Oracle, the team is just laser focused on that every day. It's very fun to watch.

Megan - 00:29:17: Pete, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Keith - 00:29:19: Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you.

Megan - 00:29:23: Yeah, thank you so much for finding the time to be here with us today to share your experience and knowledge. And I wish you and Oracle all the best. Sounds like you're doing some amazing things.

Keith - 00:29:33: It's exciting. That's for sure.

Megan - 00:29:35: To our listeners, please tune in next week. And until then, take care.