South Africa's finance leaders are redefining the CFO role around decision speed rather than traditional reporting. Key obstacles include slow forecasting cycles, fragmented data systems, and poor data quality that undermines AI adoption. The piece argues that a 'single source of truth' is critical but difficult to achieve, and that finance teams must shift from transactional work toward analysis and strategic judgment. Five practical steps are outlined: measuring decision delays, defining data ownership, automating one manual process, piloting AI against specific outcomes, and treating adoption as a core deliverable.
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The bottleneck isn’t ambition, it’s the forecastSingle source of truthAI is only as smart as your messy middleThe talent shift: from transaction work to judgment5 practical moves to speed up decisions without losing controlLearn more about Sage Intacct .Sort: