IBM TM1, Agentic AI & Finance Transformation Insights

At our recent CFO roundtables in Perth and Melbourne, one theme surfaced faster than any other: governance isn't a nice-to-have for finance AI projects, it's the reason most of them stall. Finance teams don't operate under the same rules as the rest of the business. Data handling in finance carries obligations most other functions never have to think about — audit trails, regulatory reporting, materiality, segregation of duties, and a level of scrutiny that assumes every number will eventually be checked by someone whose job is to find the problem. That's a very different starting point to a ...

Over the past few weeks, Octane Solutions ran AI roundtables with finance leaders in Perth and Melbourne. No decks, no slideware, no "AI 101." Instead, we sat down with CFOs and their teams, showed them real AI models solving real finance problems, and let the conversation go wherever it needed to go. That last part mattered more than we expected. These sessions weren't a pitch delivered at finance executives — they were a conversation with them. And what came back was some of the most candid, useful feedback we've heard on where finance actually stands with AI today. The format: show, don't ...

The third theme from our Perth and Melbourne CFO roundtables was the one every finance leader recognised instantly: Copilot is already in place, it's genuinely useful — and it hasn't moved the needle on the business. Copilot works. It just isn't wired into finance Almost every finance team we spoke to has Copilot rolled out. People use it to draft emails, summarise documents, get a first pass at a memo done faster. Nobody in the room disputed that it helps. What nobody could point to was a case where it changed how the finance function actually operates. The reason came up repeatedly once we ...

When your finance team spends more time wrestling with data than analysing it, your planning software is working against you. For enterprise transportation and fleet operations leaders, selecting the right planning analytics software directly affects everything from route optimisation decisions to fuel cost forecasting. This guide walks you through the evaluation criteria, integration requirements, and automation readiness factors that matter most when choosing a platform for IT-led financial planning. The planning analytics market has matured significantly. According to Gartner Peer ...

“Your finance team today is probably the largest it's ever going to be.” That statement sparked plenty of discussion during my presentation at the Finance Transformation Summit Victoria 2026 at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. For many years, finance transformation conversations have centred around automation, process improvement and digitalisation. This year felt different. The conversations were no longer about whether AI will impact finance. They were about how quickly organisations can implement it, where to start, and how to do it safely while maintaining governance and control. With more ...

AI in Finance : Governance Is Not a Feature. It Is the Foundation. Why ungoverned AI in finance is an audit risk, a compliance risk, and a strategic liability — and what a properly governed agentic finance stack actually looks like. There's a question I get asked at almost every CFO event I present at. It comes in different forms, but it's always the same underlying concern: 'If the AI is making decisions, who is accountable?" It's the right question. And the fact that so many senior finance leaders are asking it tells me that the governance conversation around AI in finance is still ...

Octane Hosts Auckland AI in Finance Summit: Why your next hire should be a AI agent ! The conversation around AI in finance has changed dramatically over the last 12 months. Finance leaders are no longer asking whether AI will impact their teams. They are asking how quickly they can implement it, how they govern it, and how they prepare their organisations for a future where AI becomes embedded into everyday finance operations. That was the focus of the recent Octane AI in Finance Summit, hosted at the beautiful Sofitel Auckland Viaduct Harbour, where more than 50 senior finance and business ...

How AI Transforms Your Financial Close — End to End Month-end close consumes 6 to 10 days of your finance team's time every single month. Here is what it looks like when AI takes on the heavy lifting — across all five phases of close. Let me start with a number that should bother every CFO: 6 to 10 days. That is what the average mid-to-large organisation loses each month to close activities — data loading, reconciliations, journal entries, intercompany matching, commentary, board pack production. Over a year, that is between 72 and 120 days of your most skilled finance people doing work that, ...

The AI Bill Shock Coming for Every CFO Token costs, uncontrolled AI spend, and the governance gap that will cost your organisation — if you don't act now. Every CFO I've spoken to in the last 12 months has signed off on at least one AI initiative. Most have signed off on several. Claude, Microsoft Copilot. ChatGPT Enterprise. AI features bundled into your ERP, your FP&A platform, your HR system. It's everywhere, it's accelerating, and for most organisations the cost of it is currently invisible. That invisibility is about to end. I'm not writing this to slow down your AI adoption. I'm ...

The Cost of Siloed Planning: Why Integrated Planning Matters The case for integrated planning — and why AI makes the absence of it more dangerous, not less. There's a story I use when I'm talking to CFOs about integrated planning. It's not a hypothetical. It's a company called Cochlear — a publicly listed medical device business. In a single trading day, the company lost approximately 40% of its market value recently. The reason wasn't fraud. It wasn't a product failure. It was a disconnect. Sales were declining. Inventory was building. The two facts were sitting in different systems, owned ...

Your Finance Team Is Already at Peak Headcount Three shifts reshaping finance — whether your organisation is ready or not. I've spent the better part of the last two decades inside finance functions — as an accountant, a systems architect, and now as someone who helps CFOs use AI to work smarter. I've sat through a lot of keynotes about the future of AI. I've also watched a lot of organisations be caught completely off-guard by shifts they could see coming but weren't prepared for. So let me be direct with you — peer to peer — about three things I believe every CFO needs to sit with right ...

Not all financial close platforms are equal. Here's exactly what to look for, what questions to ask, and why most vendors will struggle to answer them. The financial close software market looks more crowded and more confusing than it did five years ago. Task management tools, RPA platforms, ERP-native modules, AI copilots, and now agentic AI systems — all claiming to solve the same problem, all using similar language to describe very different capabilities. If you're evaluating options in 2026, you need a way to cut through the noise and ask the right questions. This guide gives you exactly ...