
Digitally Curious
Digitally Curious is a show all about the near-term future with actionable advice from a range of global experts Order the book that showcases these episodes at https://curious.click/order
Your host is leading Futurist and AI Expert Andrew Grill, a dynamic and visionary tech leader with over three decades of experience steering technology companies towards innovative success.
Known for his captivating global keynotes, Andrew offers practical and actionable advice, making him a trusted advisor at the board level for companies such as Vodafone, Adobe, DHL, Nike, Nestle, Bupa, Wella, Mars, Sanofi, Dell Technologies, and the NHS.
His new book “Digitally Curious”, from Wiley delves into how technology intertwines with society’s fabric and provides actionable advice for any audience across a broad range of topics.
A former Global Managing Partner at IBM, five-time TEDx speaker, and someone who has performed more than 550 times on the world stage, he is no stranger to providing strategic advice to senior leaders across multiple industries.
Andrew’s unique blend of an engineering background, digital advocacy, and thought leadership positions him as a pivotal figure in shaping the future of technology.
Find out more about Andrew at actionablefuturist.com
Digitally Curious
S7 Episode 4: How Agentic AI is Transforming the CFO's Growth Strategy with SAP Concur
In this episode, Andrew Grill welcomes back Chris Juneau from SAP Concur to discuss the latest findings from the 2025 CFO Insights report, “Action for Growth.” The conversation explores the evolving role of CFOs, the growing impact of AI and automation in finance, and the introduction of new agentic AI capabilities within SAP Concur’s platform.
Key Topics Covered
- Evolution of CFO Mindset:
The shift from “repositioning for growth” to “action for growth” reflects CFOs moving from reactive strategies to actively driving business expansion. - Expanded Research Scope:
This year’s report surveyed not only 350 CFOs but also 115 HR and 150 IT leaders, providing a more holistic understanding of business pressures and cross-functional collaboration. - Top Challenges for CFOs in 2025:
- Geopolitical tensions cited as the top external challenge by 37% of CFOs
- Concern over worsening economic conditions has declined
- A dramatic rise in manual processes as a pain point
- AI’s Transformational Role in Finance:
- Adoption of generative AI is now mission-critical for managing data overload and driving efficiency.
- AI is being used for forecasting, closing the books, fraud monitoring and creating new pricing models.
- SAP Concur’s “Verify” tool now automatically audits 100% of expense reports, with 97% requiring no human intervention.
- Agentic AI & SAP Joule:
- Introduction of “Joule,” SAP’s generative AI copilot, embedded across SAP applications.
- Joule automates mundane tasks, pre-audits expense reports, and provides real-time policy compliance checks.
- Joule acts as an agentic AI, orchestrating decisions and actions across multiple business processes, not just within finance.
- Integration and Real-Time Data:
- SAP Concur now integrates with payment providers like MasterCard and American Express to capture real-time authorisation data, streamlining expense reporting and improving categorisation.
- Data Privacy & Security:
- All financial data processed by Joule is contained within the customer’s environment and is not exposed to external AI sources.
- Data is anonymised when used for model training, ensuring compliance with strict privacy standards.
- Customisation & Future-Proofing:
- SAP’s Business Data Cloud enables organisations to unify and govern all SAP and third-party data, supporting custom AI queries across previously siloed data sets.
Resources & Further Reading
SAP Concur CFO Insights Report
Upcoming Events
Catch Andrew Grill and Chris Juneau on stage at Fusion Exchange in London on June 12.
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Welcome to Digitally Curious, brought to you by SAP Concur. Your host is world-renowned futurist and author of Digitally Curious, Andrew Grill. Every episode is filled with actionable advice about technology that will help enhance you and your business.
Speaker 2:Today on the show, we have a returning guest, chris Janoo, senior Vice President and Head of Product Marketing at SAP Concur. Chris was on the show last season when we looked at insights from their 2024 CFO Insights Report Repositioning for Growth. He's back again to look at insights from their 2025 report titled Action for Growth. We'll also hear about new agentic AI capabilities from the platform. Welcome again, chris.
Speaker 3:Thank you, andrew, great to see you and speak to you again.
Speaker 2:So since our last conversation, you've taken on the role of SPP, of product marketing, at SAP Concur. Tell us what you're doing in this new role.
Speaker 3:In my new role, andrew, I'm even more focused on growth than I was in my previous role, and by growth I mean looking at what we call the five Ps, but it's really four out of the five Ps positioning, placement, packaging and pricing and so my team is bringing an outside-in view of the marketplace to enable our product engineering team to develop the products that deliver the outcomes our customers seek. You know so. Product engineering owns the fifth P and then last in this new role, and it fits right into the conversation we're going to have about our 2025 CFO insights. I'm spending a lot more time with the SAP Concur CFO specifically around growth initiatives.
Speaker 2:So how does the shift in report title from repositioning for growth to action for growth reflect the evolution of CFO strategies and mindset over the last year, moving from repositioning to actively leading the charge for further expansion?
Speaker 3:You know, andrew and I in the 2025, one of the big numbers that surveyed. The big number that stood out to me was 81% of CFOs see themselves as the primary drivers of business growth, which is one of the many highlights, and there's a growing sentiment, particularly among SVPs and other leaders, that this responsibility should be shared. And so this is where it's somewhat of a paradox CFOs see themselves as the primary driver, but the rest of the C-suite because we expanded the research which we'll talk about in a moment sees that as more of a collaborative effort and not just solely the purview of finance, and that it requires more coordination across marketing, product HR, it, which is exactly where I'm finding myself alongside with the CFO and so that, when you layer on top, you know AI. The digital transformation being driven by AI creates an enormous opportunity for organizations to really optimize their business, grow their business, while also controlling their costs.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned this 2025 survey. You expanded its scope, so, rather than just HR leaders, you looked at 350 CFOs, also 115 HR and 150 IT leaders, compared to just 300 finance leaders last year. So how did incorporating these additional viewpoints enrich the findings and provide that more holistic understanding of the business landscape for CFOs?
Speaker 3:We decided to expand the personas to include HR and IT leaders this year to have a better understanding of the pressures concerns and what success looks like in these key business functions and what was their working relationship with the finance function of the pressures concerns and what success looks like in these key business functions and what was their working relationship with the finance function Selfishly, this was also trying to understand how the C-suite buys technology and so we were doing it in part to better understand how we message and position, but it proved very valuable to ultimately to all sources of organization and how we go, build products and services, and also it's helping us drive our technology investments and, ultimately, in how we serve our customers.
Speaker 2:You mentioned some of the findings already, but maybe you could look at some of your own key highlights from the report and did anything challenge or surprise you from the findings compared to last year?
Speaker 3:The good news is this is our third report, so now we have three years to look back and now we have infused the point of view of IT and HR leaders. But a few things stand out this year versus last year, from a CFO's perspective, 37% of CFOs cited geopolitical tensions as their top external challenge. This year that's up from 11% last year. And, just for context, this report was done prior to January of this year and so we all understand what's happened since January of this year. Certainly in the US that's having an impact.
Speaker 3:So even before January, 37% of CFOs were citing geopolitical tensions as their top external challenge, up from 11%. Second, we saw a% of CFOs were citing geopolitical tensions as their top external challenge, up from 11%. Second, we saw a decrease in CFOs being worried about worsening economic conditions as their top challenge, declining from 55% to 41%. And that's also which pre-January 20th, you might say oh okay, that seemed robust economy and so forth. Of course, that's up for debate now and then the last shift we saw that which was significant is in 2023, going back to 23 versus 24, only 1% of CFOs listed manual processes as a top challenge. In 2025, we're seeing 38% are stated that treating manual processes and remedying those manual processes is now a top challenge. So a significant, significant increase.
Speaker 2:So the report highlights that finance leaders are now spearheading expansion efforts after repositioning for growth. So how has the role of the CFO evolved over the last few years, particularly in transforming from managing downturns to driving growth, and how does the impact of generative AI help them in their role?
Speaker 3:I think there's a few points to that. I think, tying back first to the 1% to the 38% in terms of focus on those manual processes, I think that CFOs' experience with AI technology and where they've infused it within the organization with the support of IT, they're seeing the real benefits and now they're looking for other problems to go solve, particularly those manual processes. Second, the CFOs are overloaded with data. All the applications that they use generate vast amounts of information and data and the CFOs rely on data to make quick, informed business decisions in an ever-changing environment. But with more and more data to interpret, the application of generative AI now becomes mission critical in helping CFOs make those decisions.
Speaker 2:So I believe there's a huge opportunity to build influence through collaboration within the C-suite, and you've alluded to that. So where do you see the most significant untapped potential for collaboration between finance, it, hr across an?
Speaker 3:organization. Finance leaders had the opportunity, through shared ownership of growth initiatives, to get buy-in from their peers in the C-suite. And the shared ownership model doesn't diminish a CFO's influence anyway. Instead, I believe, as I believe you do, it enhances the CFO's influence anyway. Instead, I believe, as I believe you do, it enhances the CFO's influence by making finance a unifying force within the organization.
Speaker 2:So when we look at how AI can help every department, you say in the report that internally, manual processes have become enemy number one, spiking from 1% to 38% of CFOs cited them as a top challenge in just two years. So why has this become such a pressing issue and what does this shift indicate about finance priorities?
Speaker 3:Andrew, I think the growing adoption of AI is driving this shift. A few years ago, generative AI some would say was a parlor trick. In terms of Gartner's hype cycle it was on the upswing. But each year, as CFOs and their organizations and their competitors have adopted AI, they're seeing the benefits now from those investments. And this year's top goal for fueling expansion comes first by optimizing cost driving efficiency, and finance leaders are turning to automation and AI to drive the performance, with a focus on, as I said that, going from 1% to the 38% in terms of automating those manual processes, so the net-net. They're seeing the benefits of their initial AI investments bearing fruit and now they're looking for other opportunities to drive those greater efficiencies, ultimately to fuel their growth.
Speaker 2:So one thing that jumped out for me in the 2025 report was this dramatic increase in AI automation for general tasks. Perhaps you could share some of the most impactful AI use cases you're seeing in finance departments today.
Speaker 3:Certainly, finance departments we know are typically not growing in most organizations and especially even companies I've spoken with that are going through mergers and acquisitions. Those groups typically aren't growing. So AI has the opportunity to automate those mundane financial tasks and so we're seeing AI teams use it for forecasting, using for closing the quarter and so forth, and our report significantly at AI automation is creating new pricing models, which jumped from 5% to 22%. New pricing models which jumped from 5% to 22%. Ai is being used for fraud monitoring, which rose from 28% to 45%. In addition, sap Concur we even introduced Verify Concur Verify a few years ago, which is sort of a self-serve audit solution for expense reporting and it automatically checks 100% of expense reports to identify potential compliance issues and then has then the company's auditors then go focus on those specific reports. It uses AI and machine learning that we've developed over the past decade.
Speaker 3:So imagine finance organizations have to make a choice Do I manually audit 100% of my expense claims? Do I do a random sample of typically 18% to 20%? No, I don't have to make those choices. I can evaluate 100% of expense claims with Verify and then have my auditors look at those quote-unquote reports that were flagged as an example from January 2022 to June 2023, we interrogated almost 3 million expense reports pass through Verify. 63.7 million audit checks were conducted automatically without human intervention. And then 97% of those audit checks failed didn't require a human. Only 3% of the expense reports literally required a human auditor. So imagine the scale if you're a CFO sitting there saying, okay, I've automated 100, I can verify or validate 100% of my expense claims. 97% were done without human intervention. So that's one example. So if you're a CFO, you say, okay, where can I apply this to my other financial processes?
Speaker 2:What I say to all my clients is that AI is really great at things that need speed and scale, and this is one great example of that having all those things run by Verify. So you alluded to the Gartner hype cycle and GenDriv AI last year was certainly high on that. I don't know about you, but my LinkedIn feed today is just full of people talking about agentic AI or AI agents. So if 2024 was all about generative AI, 2025 is all about agentic AI, and you recently announced some new agentic AI capabilities called AIJewel. Can you tell us?
Speaker 3:more about these. Jewel is SAP's generative AI co-pilot. These Joule is SAP's generative AI co-pilot and we've now integrated Joule into SAP Concur Solutions. And Joule is being integrated across all the SAP applications and we're excited about this integration because it'll automate some of the historically mundane tasks for employees, specifically within expense management, and Concur Expense is an example. Joule helps to ensure expense reports are ready for submission, so Jul will look over and say, hey, you might want to check this and that's a capability that's coming before you submit, literally sort of pre-auditing, and it does two things First, hey, did you mistype something? So, second, likelihood of that expense claim being returned for correction. And then, third, it also puts the employee on notice that hey, there's technology that's watching what I'm doing, so it can benefit the employee for less returned expense claims, so faster reimbursement. But it also serves as a reminder to employees that hey, even before I'm submitting, what I'm potentially claiming on my expense claim is being reviewed.
Speaker 2:Maybe you could give us in a nutshell what is Agentic AI and how does Joule perform that role as an agentic or an AI agent?
Speaker 3:Joule is the co-pilot, so Joule sits on top of our application. You could be in SuccessFactors, the HR system, as a manager and Joule could say, hey, you now have an expense report to approve and, without getting out of that SuccessFactors application, you immediately, within Joule, say is there any exceptions to this expense report? No, therefore I approve. And so that's one example of Juul. Specifically with regard to agentic AI, it's about creating these autonomous decision-making agents that can work across processes, and then Juul will be part of that orchestration across the processes. That's the thing. So when we think of AI in generative AI, it's looking at sets of data with regard to the specific application, we have many use cases I'm sure I'll highlight in a moment. But then the agentic AI how can I go across processes to make decisions on my behalf and do it in an automated fashion?
Speaker 2:What I tell all my clients is whatever tool they're using, they need to really ask their vendors are they actually AI enabling the tools? And clearly you are. So what inspired SAP Concur to develop Joule, and how does it fit into the broader SAP AI strategy?
Speaker 3:Well, sap has a wealth of applications which, generating tremendous amounts of data and so forth, and having Joule, this AI co-pilot assistant, which can now traverse all the applications and it's always on, so, regardless of where you're working, it can help you work more efficiently. With the example that I cited earlier, with approving a simple expense claim while even though you're in another SAP application, and then by embedding Juul into Concur Expense and Concur Travel, we brought our portfolio one step closer to another step in automating travel and expense process. That's seamless across our customers, and so it's going to result, we believe, in better decision making, but also better experience for managers and also the end users as they perform their task, as they either book their travel or complete their expense claim post-travel.
Speaker 2:So maybe you could walk us through what the most common pain points are in expense management that Juul aims to solve.
Speaker 3:One of the things that we're looking for Juul to help solve is answer those employees' questions before they travel. I can talk to many of our customers and their employees who reads their travel policy prior to traveling. I would ensure that's a pretty dry document and one that's not reviewed too often. So before booking travel, Jewel, am I allowed to take business class, since my travel is over eight hours from Phoenix, Arizona to the UK? So being able to interrogate loading up your travel policy, your entire T&E policy, is one great example before even booking the trip. Another is travel requests, very common in Europe and also in Asia Pacific. Pre-travel authorization is now today. Traditionally, users would go using Concur Travel.
Speaker 3:Let me see what my trip's going to cost. You know, Chris, come from Phoenix to the UK. Okay, my air is going to look like this. I think if I rent a car, it's going to look like this. My hotel rates are going to look like this. Now, with Juul, Juul create a travel request for me. I am traveling to London to concur Fusion in London, to meet Andrew and the rest of our customers and partners. How much is it going to cost? And Joule will say you're taking air ride, share hotel and immediately give me that, I submit it for my boss to approve and ultimately that begins creating my expense report. It just saves tremendous amount of time and gives me a more accurate estimate of my travel costs.
Speaker 2:Now, one thing that's really important for both employees and managers is compliance with policy. So how does Juul ensure accuracy and compliance when automating expense categorization and policy checks?
Speaker 3:Before even submission you know submission of the expense claim just as your EA was doing previously. It's looking like, hey, you know, you're missing a taxi here, how did you go from there to there? So it's smart enough to look at that expense claim, that timeline, to say, hey, these expenses align. So in doing so, you're driving greater compliance, but you're also helping the employee be more efficient, which is extremely important for the frequent travelers such as myself and yourself. And as part of that simplification, it also means fewer support cases, better employee experience, greater efficiency, higher reimbursement times and ultimately, everyone benefits the employee, the finance administrators who are managing the travel and expense process, and then the managers of those employees.
Speaker 2:SAP Concur is not the only piece in the travel solution, so how does Juul integrate with existing payment providers like American Express and MasterCard to deliver real-time insights?
Speaker 3:We've integrated what we call RTA data real-time authorization with MasterCard and now with American Express. And what real-time authorization data? And you've likely experienced it, and all of us listening to this podcast experience this in their personal life You're tapping your personal card, whether you be at a prep manager or somewhere else you know, buying quick lunch or coffee, and you immediately get a text notification. You know, x transaction on this date. That's a real-time authorization notice. We're now able to capture that real-time authorization information as another digital data point, which now with AI, then says oh, andrew was at prep manager, tapped it, it was, you know, 10 pounds and so forth. Ah, it's likely lunch and it was on this date. So let me start creating the expense claim even before that credit card transaction arrives, maybe in 24 to 48 hours later, within concur expense and so. So it's another piece of rich information. And if it's a big amount, joule would then say hey, andrew, it was maybe 50 pounds at prep manager. Did you have others with you? Should this be called entertainment expense or a lunch expense? Who are those other attendees? So those are the examples that, using another rich source of information, create that expense claim. Begin now applying policy.
Speaker 3:As soon as you tap helping saying was this just an individual meal expense or based on the value? Maybe it was an entertainment expense and therefore I need more information. So at the moment of tap, andrew can then say you're right, absolutely. I took Chris Juno out. I took Alistair Kent out who joined me. Great, I don't have to think when I'm back in the office, in my home office in three weeks okay, 50 pounds at PretManager. I knew I was out. Who was I with? Do I go to my calendar and figure it out? No, you'd already captured the information at that point.
Speaker 2:So everyone's worried about data privacy and security. So what measures are in place to protect sensitive financial and personal data when using Juul?
Speaker 3:Data privacy and security is top of mind for everyone when it comes to, first off, protecting their rich financial data and, second, protecting it from being vacuumed up into these large language models that can contain sensitive information. So all the information that is collected and stored within Juul is completely contained. None of this financial information that Juul is interrogating is ever exposed externally to any other AI sources. It's all contained within our customer's, our customer's environment. So none of that information is ever exposed outside. Quote, unquote, the four walls of this, of the expense management process, and then also, as we're analyzing that data collectively across our customers, we're anonymizing that data as part of the overall process. So there's no PIA information that's being scrutinized, that's being retained, and then all the information that we are using is being anonymized as we build our models. But all our models is absolutely being contained within Concur Expense and not being exposed externally.
Speaker 2:So we talked about how Joule can help with policy compliance. In what ways can Joule help businesses identify cost-saving opportunities?
Speaker 3:First it begins, as I said, the 1% to 38% is automating, and through automation you have that rich information. And so, with this automation, faster processing of expense claims, tracking its policy and approvals, and so you're bringing wealth of information, cost efficiency, smarter, more accurate expense categorization and, ultimately, reconciliation. Better views, richer insights in terms of how you're doing against budget. And then identifying and we have many use cases of where we're employing AI. We were talking about Verify earlier is reducing risk management and potential fraud is this overall process. So there's cost savings and compliance.
Speaker 3:What I like to say and I may have said it when we previously spoke AI traditionally organizations have had to make a tradeoff between efficiency, the human experience and, ultimately, compliance. Driving compliance in many organizations pre-AI was I will just put more audit rules in place, which were Boolean. If this equals this or is greater than that, then flag it, or I'm going to put multiple approval steps in, because I need more eyes on this, because I'm concerned about this financial process. With AI now you can actually deliver greater efficiency and an employee experience while also driving greater compliance. Ai is helping us break the bond between I want to drive a great user experience, I trust my employees to yes, I trust my employees, but I do want to ensure compliance. I can now do both.
Speaker 2:I think everyone agrees that AI is going to change every single role, every single process out there. But how do you see AI, like Jewel, changing the role of finance teams and travel managers in the next few years?
Speaker 3:I think Jewel will help ease some of the manual repetitive tasks that fall under both finance and travel managers. Jewel help ease some of the manual repetitive tasks that fall under both finance and travel managers, which I truly believe will help them focus on more strategic options. Imagine if you could ask Jewel Jewel, I'm considering changing my expense limit or my daily meal allowance because of inflation. What would be the budgetary impact of that? So instead they would have to try to run reports and try to calculate what would be the impact of that, because I'm seeing the shifting costs and so forth.
Speaker 3:Or, juul, I am looking to replace all short haul flights in Europe by mandating rail. What would be the cost difference in that? And also what would be the impact in terms of reducing my carbon footprint? So imagine those kind of things. So you have all this rich information. Now a travel manager or finance manager can now step back more strategically and do that. Hey, how can I help my business either be more sustainable, how can I be more proactive with regard to manage my costs in the face of changing environmental conditions and so forth, instead of stuck in the mundane, manual, paper-intensive processes?
Speaker 2:So one of the issues with AI for a long time now has been the fact that it's a bit of a black box. We're not quite sure how decisions and recommendations are made. So how does SAP concur and ensure transparency and explainability in Joule's AI-driven recommendations and actions?
Speaker 3:Well, first, SAP's guidance and principles for its approach to AI are based on UNESCO's recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence. These principles cover proportionality, safety, fairness, sustainability, privacy, human oversight, transparency, responsibility, awareness, etc. Ensuring that AI solutions respect human rights and contribute to sustainable development. In addition, to promote ethical use of AI, SAP requires that all its user interfaces display a short AI notice when the user is using an AI feature or the result has been generated by AI. So we're informing the user of when AI is being applied or when results are being delivered by AI, and more complex or high-risk AI features show a more detailed acknowledgement Icons or messages also let our customers know when they are triggering an AI-based transaction. So we're trying to provide full transparency to all users of how AI is being applied, when it's utilized and when it's returning information or recommendations.
Speaker 2:I think that's really key. It's the first time I've heard someone explain that when AI is being used, it almost flashes up a warning to say, by the way, this is now being processed by AI. Because I think what we're seeing out there is we're not quite sure whether AI content, or whether content generally, is AI generated or not, and if we know that it's AI generated, we'll deal with it in a different way. So I think that gives a lot of comfort to the end user. So I'm glad to see that you're doing that. Every client tells me that they are unique and they have specific business requirements, so can Jool be customized or extended to meet unique business needs?
Speaker 3:Well, sap always works with its customer base to find ways of meeting their specific needs. Sap recently announced what they call the SAP Business Data Cloud, which is a fully managed SaaS solution that unifies and governs all SAP data and also will include third-party data. Will include third-party data and in doing so, think of the Business Data Cloud, as now it's an ability to assimilate all that rich data that all the SAP applications are generating, including concur, expense, concur, travel and including third-party data. Then you can harmonize that data in a semantic data layer and then you can apply AI, generative AI and Joule to ask questions that are now across processes and across data that was typically previously siloed. So in doing so, organizations can sort of ask their specific questions that they have by looking at all their rich data sources, not just the single data sources which a given process or financial application is producing.
Speaker 2:So, for organizations considering adopting AI-driven expense management, what advice would you?
Speaker 3:offer. Do not attempt to automate your current manual or semi-automated expense reporting process, and we would recommend this even pre-AI. The disservice that we could do for our customers is automate a process that may have evolved over many years for various reasons. Instead, define the outcomes that you want and the insights that you desire. So we ask our customers to start with the outcomes in mind and share those outcomes that they wish to drive and then, in doing so, then go five years out Are your outcomes the same? And then, with that five-year outlook and then today's outlook in terms of outcomes, then make those technology choices, collaborate with other functions across the business to make sure that you're implementing a solution that not only solves the problems for today, but into the future.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to get you to look a little further out. So maybe in the next five years, what do you see as the future of AI in business travel and expense management over that period?
Speaker 3:I think, andrew, it's going to become even more ubiquitous than it is today. We've been on a 10-year-plus journey leveraging machine learning and AI, now generative AI, now agentic AI so I think it's going to be literally ubiquitous across all financial processes and really continuing to change the shape and how we consider travel booking expense claims, and it's hard to predict, you know, five years out, let alone one to two years out. But I think in one to two years we could be having a conversation about no longer about expense reporting, but essentially it'll be exception reporting, because, with everything being analyzed in real time, with real-time authorization data and so forth policies being applied at TAP, do you need an expense report anymore? Why do those transactions?
Speaker 3:An expense report is a legacy of the old days where you had paper and you filled out the and I am experienced enough to remember the days of the form that you would fill out, staple the receipts and mail them in your inter-office mail and hopefully in a month you would get reimbursed. So, as we think about expense report today, that's really a visage of that previous time and when I started my career in the 80s. So maybe we'll be talking about exception reporting instead of expense claim reporting one to two years, or certainly within five years.
Speaker 2:So, as a futurist, I must ask given this is the third iteration of the SAP Concur CFO Insights Report, what emerging trends or challenges do you anticipate will be the key areas of focus for finance leaders in 2026 and beyond, based on the trajectory seen in this year's findings?
Speaker 3:Andrew, I think that the trend with regard to targeting those manual processes and stamping those manual processes out within organizations will absolutely continue. I will continue to see that. Second, I think that the importance of data, as it's already top of everyone's mind, will continue to increase and then ultimately breaking those data silos down so that AI can be applied across an organization's business. Second, I think we're experiencing it today. The geopolitical landscape continues to evolve and is posing risks for businesses, and I think that their investments they're making from a technology perspective is to sort of insulate them from the volatility that we experience. And then, third, I think in 2026 that we're going to see more collaboration across the C-suite between the CFO, the CHRO, the CIO, with finance leaders being in a good place to lead that cross-functional collaboration. We know that 96% of finance leaders rate themselves excellent or good at getting buy-in from the wider business, and we believe that that's going to continue and that's going to be the superpower that the CFOs bring to the table in 2026.
Speaker 2:So, as we close, what are the three most important pieces of advice you'd offer to CFOs and finance leaders as they navigate the challenges and opportunities of the coming year?
Speaker 3:Collaboration is key. By working with other departments, businesses within your business, you can unlock the growth opportunities. Second, continue to embrace AI. Our report found that 94% of finance leaders say AI has already helped them improve decision making. With 73% it says it's positively impacted costs and risk reduction. And these benefits finance leaders are embracing and I think there's even more to come. And then third is not to be afraid to work with your suppliers, but also to ask the right questions, which you asked earlier with regard to data security, data privacy, and then also knowing when that data is being used and the results that you're interpreting is being generated by AI, and I think so. You shouldn't be afraid of AI, but we should be informed of how we're using AI every day in our ongoing business so we can still make the right decisions for our organizations.
Speaker 2:So I think, chris, you've whet everyone's appetite. How can we find out more about you? Access the report and the new AI dual offerings?
Speaker 3:So I'd suggest you head to the SAP Concur website to download the CFO Insights report and then also visit our blog, where we announced recent dual updates for everyone to see.
Speaker 2:I'll put all those links in the show notes. A fascinating discussion, Chris. Thanks again for your time and I'll see you on stage in Europe, in London at Fusion Exchange.
Speaker 3:Looking forward to it. Andrew, take care, we'll see you. See you in June.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Digitally Curious, brought to you by SAP Concur. You can find all of our previous shows and order Andrew's book Digitally Curious at digitallycuriousai. Find out more about Andrew and how he helps corporates become more digitally curious with keynote speeches and C-suite workshops at digitallycuriousai. Until next time, we invite you to stay digitally curious.