Good morning. On Thursday, during the Fortune Emerging CFO virtual event in partnership with Workday, leaders discussed how AI is reshaping finance and the evolving responsibilities of CFOs.James Glover, principal and finance transformation AI leader at Deloitte, emphasized that AI must align with a company’s core strategy. CFOs should first define their objective—efficiency, control, effectiveness, or engagement—then target the finance areas that best support that goal. Companies deploying AI one use case at a time, without a broader plan, are struggling to capture meaningful enterprise value, Glover said.CFOs are also assessing agentic AI platforms to drive efficiency. “But you actually have to train your people to use it, otherwise they’re going to sort of treat it like a Google search,” Glover commented. That means AI prompting skills are crucial. Implementations for these platforms often take six to 12 months. He advised companies to introduce simple AI productivity tools early to build comfort while planning more ambitious initiatives, and to implement guidance for governance and compliance alongside them.CFOs typically ask Deloitte three questions: What’s the ROI for AI? Where should they begin? And should they buy or build? Early adopters are starting to see “green shoots” of ROI, Glover said.Developing use cases for AIA panel of CFOs shared their experiences, emphasizing AI’s impact on accuracy, forecasting, productivity, and the importance of iterative learning and cross-functional collaboration.Craig Mestel, CFO of Webflow, a website platform for marketing, design, and development teams, said his finance team spent significant time answering routine policy questions. Webflow now uses large language model applications to automate those queries, freeing his team for higher-value work. The company has also built chat-based access to its data. “Non-technical analysts on my team can use natural language to chat with the data and start to get insights,” Mestel said.He added that Webflow’s CEO has mandated clear expectations around AI use. “We’ve partnered with HR to create a framework that ties into performance reviews,” Mestel said. Thadd Stricker, CFO of INRIX, which specializes in transportation analytics and location-based data services, said AI is transforming the business in two major ways. It enables analysis of massive mobility datasets—more than 50 petabytes (a unit of digital storage equal to one quadrillion bytes) and 45 billion daily data points—allowing clients to draw actionable insights. And within finance, AI tools have significantly improved reporting and forecasting accuracy, including ARR, reaching up to 95% accuracy with greater transparency and less manual input. He expects those capabilities to expand as similar tools are integrated into platforms like Workday.Michelle Cheung, CFO and COO of Greenlight, a consumer subscription fintech focused on family finance and safety, said AI strengthens risk management by analyzing transaction data, streamlines operations by automating contract reviews, powers educational content in the app, and improves collaboration by reducing siloed work. The company also conducts hackathons for a better understanding of AI, Cheung said. ‘Don’t give up’The CFOs noted that not every AI use case succeeds, highlighting the importance of keeping human oversight in the process. For example, Mestel said early experiments using ChatGPT as a junior analyst fell short. “It’s not ready for that yet; it’s not great at math,” he said. His team also struggled with automating variance analysis due to inconsistent results, but after iterating and testing, they achieved greater reliability and impact.“The point I would share with CFOs is: if you fail the first time, that’s okay,” Mestel said. “Don’t give up—keep going.” Have a good weekend. Sheryl Estradasheryl.estrada@fortune.comThis story was originally featured on Fortune.com