There are two different directions for AI in finance, says Didi Gurfinkel, Co-Founder and CEO of Datarails.

You can use AI to extend your hands.

Or, your brain. 

He says: ”Using AI to extend your hands involves automating processes, making everything faster, reducing headcount shortening time to deliver, which is amazing. But it’s not a life changer. In this situation maybe you can reduce the gap between 10 employees to five employees but this will not be what will save your business or ultimately make it successful.

“The more interesting part is to look at AI as an extension to your brain. Here, I think this is a life changer. Letting the CFO or the FP&A manager have a tool that can be like an extension to the FP&A brain. If you take your analysis or approach to analyze your business, the AI can run it at scale with all your historical data, internal data and external data.”

In this episode Didi Gurfinkel talks about setting up Datarails, the FP&A the AI-powered Financial Planning and Analysis platform for Excel users and the multiple challenges and learnings along the way.

He reveals:

• Starting his career at Cisco the biggest IT company in the world (“I imagined that everything will be automated end of month – I was wrong”)
• Setting up Datarails in 2015 and the challenges of getting traction for an initial concept of “connecting organizational spreadsheets into one centralized database”
• Four years of trying (and How he finally found product market fit) 
• Understanding the power of Excel as core to finance allowed us to focus on finance
• How FP&A use cases are the classic consolidation challenge because every FP&A process starts from collecting data from multiple sources in different structures, different shapes, and  different systems. 
• Our capability to transform semi-structured data into structured data landed a very strong competitive edge,
• Our “SaaS wake up call” – how we learnt to grow at the same pace with 50% less expenses  
• AI is either an extension of your head vs AI as an extension of your brain and why the latter is the real game-changer
• From a good CFO to an amazing CFO with AI
• My expectations as a CEO from my finance team
• Why ChatGPT is amazing at text but the challenges come with replicating this with accurate numbers
• My favorite Excel function
• Surprising fact you wouldn’t know about me 

Didi was previously a GM at Cisco. He has extensive senior management experience with a focus on growth and innovation. Didi oversees business, strategy and operations. He holds a B.Sc in economics and computer science, and an MBA in business management.

Follow Didi Gurfinkel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/didigurfinkel/