Data-driven steering
How modern finance teams work with data, AI and automation
A look inside how leading finance functions organise themselves in 2026 — tools, processes and skills.
The finance teams we meet who are furthest ahead have one thing in common: they have stopped seeing IT as a vendor and started seeing data as a product.
Three principles
Data as a product
Every data domain has an owner, an SLA and a consumer. It is not free-for-all spreadsheets.
Automation first, then AI
No fancy models on processes that still require manual handling. Clean up first.
Generalist roles
"Finance engineer" and "analytics translator" are the new roles. Excel alone is no longer enough.
What you can do this month
- Map your data sources
- Find three repetitive processes to automate
- Define three KPIs once, for the whole company
