Adobe needed AI ideas fast. CFO Dan Durn shares how a hackathon sparked 100 ideas they whittled down to 5 winners

When it comes to AI, CFOs are testing their teams to see who can hack it.

I recently had a conversation with Dan Durn, CFO and EVP of finance, technology services, and operations at Adobe, and we talked about one of the hottest topics there is right now: AI in finance.

Durn recently decided to tap into the creativity of his team for solutions. “We did a bottoms-up hackathon,” he explained. “We crowdsourced 100 ideas for operating efficiency improvements. We narrowed it down to a shortlist of 15. We put our teams in a sandbox environment with dummy data for proof of concept. And we’ve decided to move forward with five of those projects.” 

Durn shared some information on two of the projects. One is called Story Bridge, which uses AI and generative AI to assess performance data and identify the root cause of variances or deviations and then generates summaries to enable decision-making. Another is called DX Data Driven Narrative Automation. It’s a first pass at using generative AI to automate early readouts of quarterly business reviews and quarterly financial reports to allow for drill-down queries for deeper insights.

The finance team is still testing these tools, it’s not yet part of the workflow, according to Adobe. Still another area they’re exploring is building a “forecasting engine,” Durn said. “How do you adopt generative AI techniques, bring in more sources of data, and weigh the variables associated with that data to get a more effective predictive algorithm that defines business performance?” He said.

A Q3 survey from tax and advisory firm Grant Thornton LLP, released on Monday, finds CFOs leaning more into generative AI. Forty-three percent of finance chiefs said their organizations are using generative AI, up from 30% who said the same in the previous quarter. And 45% of finance chiefs said they are exploring potential use cases for generative AI, according to the survey of more than 200 CFOs across industries. 

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, heartily endorses the hackathon model, he told an audience at Workday Rising recently (Workday is a CFO Daily Sponsor). He explained: “You tell everybody, ‘We’re going to take a day off from everything else you’re doing, and we’re going to show you some basic training, not just on ChatGPT, but a set of other tools that can help you. And we want you to use it for the particular things you’re doing in your daily job.’” This unleashes employee creativity, and helps get the buy-in, Brynjolfsson said. 

Have you used hackathons with your teams? If so, send me an email and tell me about it.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

Leaderboard

Alan Keifer was named interim CFO at Cactus, Inc. (NYSE: WHD), a provider of products for onshore unconventional oil and gas wells, effective Nov. 13. Stephen Tadlock, who currently serves as EVP and CFO at Cactus was promoted to CEO of the Spoolable Technologies segment. Tadlock will continue to serve as CFO of Cactus until Keifer begins his service. Keifer is a former VP, controller and chief accounting officer of Baker Hughes Inc., who has worked with Cactus since it went public in 2018. 

Ilan Daskal was named EVP and CFO at Viavi Solutions Inc. (Nasdaq: VIAV) a provider of communications test and measurement and optical technologies, effective Nov. 7. Daskal joins Viavi from Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Where he has served as EVP and CFO since April 2019. Before that, he held CFO roles with multiple technology and engineering companies. Daskal was previously the EVP and CFO at International Rectifier Corporation, which was acquired by Infineon Technologies in 2015.

Big deal

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Going deeper

Coins2Day's Quarterly Investment Guide for Q4 2023 released this morning focuses on real estate. A team of reporters drilled down on the best opportunities for buyers and investors and tapped the smartest minds for information about how long rates will stay high. 

Overheard

“Empathy is not a soft skill. In fact, it’s the hardest skill we learn—to relate to the world, to relate to people that matter the most to us.”

—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a recent interview with Axel Springer’s CEO Mathias Döpfnerz.