Have you ever sat at your desk late at night, wondering why you’re still manually crunching numbers, reconciling reports, or matching data across systems? You're not alone. Finance has been chasing this automated Nirvana for 20 years—but why does this moment in time feel different? In our past webinar, From Manual to Machine: Finance Processes AI can Automate Today, our expert panelists tackled exactly this topic. Here are some key insights and highlights from the engaging session.

Meet the Experts

Our dynamic panel included:

• Kelly Battles: Kelly Battles is a seasoned finance professional with deep experience leading and advising companies through scale, transformation, and governance. She has held finance chief roles at companies like Clari, Genesys, Arista Networks, and Quora. Her perspective spans startups, public companies, and mission-driven organizations—grounded in decades of operational and strategic finance leadership.
  
  
• Liz Brittain: Liz Brittain is a seasoned finance professional with extensive experience leading finance teams across high-growth startups and enterprise companies. She has held finance chief roles at companies like vArmour, HackerOne, and Base CRM (acquired by Zendesk). Her work spans everything from early-stage scaling to mature operating rigor—grounded in decades of hands-on FP&A, strategic planning, and operational leadership.
  
  
• Sandeep Madduri: Co-founder and CEO of Precanto, bringing deep FP&A expertise from years at Symantec, Pure Storage, and Palo Alto Networks.
  
  
• Paul Barnhurst: Conversation moderator, host of three finance podcasts, and founder of The FP&A Guy.

Their live conversation broadcast March 26, but you can view the video and read highlights of the transcript, edited for clarity and length, below. 

Watch Here ← Will upload the graphic and link on-demand page in webflow

Key Takeaway: Accelerate the Fun with AI-driven Finance

A clear theme emerged during the webinar: today's finance teams can leverage AI to dramatically reduce time spent on manual tasks, allowing them to focus instead on insights, strategic decisions, and—believe it or not—fun. By automating data reconciliation, forecasting, anomaly detection, and expense management, finance professionals can shift from "data custodians" to strategic advisors, significantly improving business agility and decision-making.

From the Transcript: Best Moments & Key Insights

Sandeep Madduri:
"Right now, a financial analyst’s role involves pulling data from multiple systems—NetSuite, Workday, Greenhouse—and manually reconciling it all. Imagine having an 'expense forecasting agent' that automatically consolidates all this data and serves it up to stakeholders with minimal supervision. This is where AI takes us. Our vision at Precanto is to 'agentify' FP&A so finance teams can focus on asking the right questions rather than crunching numbers."

Kelly Battles:
"If you zoom out, the role of finance at its essence is to shorten the time to insight and optimize decisions. The inefficiencies we see—manual, error-prone processes, conservative mindsets, outdated systems—AI is poised to attack these areas. It's not about reducing finance jobs; it's about making us better, faster, and sharper at our jobs and focusing on the fun stuff: insights, recommendations, and optimizations."

Liz Brittain:
"My perspective is from the startup world, where cash flow is particularly critical. Often, these teams don't even have full-time finance people. AI can step in here, offering crucial visibility and urgency. I joined one startup who thought they had six months of cash—turns out, they had three. AI could have surfaced that critical insight much sooner."

Paul Barnhurst (Moderator):
"I've personally experienced the manual grind. I had a role once where my manager asked me to manually confirm headcount numbers for 30 different companies. I told him the only thing I could guarantee was that my final count would be wrong. It's funny now, but this is exactly why finance teams need AI-driven tools."

Liz Brittain:
"The biggest challenge I've always had is being the 'single source of truth.' Knowing you've made the right assumptions and having accurate data is crucial. AI can be that second set of eyes, that best friend, providing more data and freeing finance to add real strategic value."

Kelly Battles:
"At Genesis, we gamified AI adoption by running internal competitions. Employees proposed AI-driven solutions to improve their workflows, resulting in exciting efficiencies. This decentralized approach really empowered our teams."

Sandeep Madduri:
"Three main areas we see today for impactful AI use in finance are: first, interactive forecasting and planning between finance and stakeholders; second, auto-generated machine forecasts as starting points; and third, anomaly detection to prevent and catch forecasting misses early."

Wrap-up: A New Era for Finance

Manual processes, late-night reconciliations, and endless spreadsheet work don’t have to dominate your finance career. As Kelly put it, it's time to "accelerate the fun" by allowing AI to do the heavy lifting. The potential to transform FP&A is massive—and it's happening now.

Missed the webinar? Don’t worry—these insights are just the tip of the iceberg. Watch the full webianr On-Demand Here!