The CFO in Crisis Mode: Modern Times Call for New Tools | Andreessen Horowitz

Receipts and checks are not going to disappear overnight, but tech tools like optical character recognition and machine learning can eliminate the need to manually enter invoice information, collect receipts, and match the information against checks received on a company’s bank statement.

Another approach is to build connective tissue—software that sits on top of existing tools, extracts data, and provides intelligence to help with dynamic planning

It’s time to rebuild tools for point solutions like expense management that can also offer predictive analytics and forecasting. Imagine if your expense software told you who usually paid on time and who didn’t, sent reminders, and set payment terms based on past performance.

The CFO role is plagued by manual, repetitive tasks, from initiating bank transfers to recording checks into the ledger.

To update the company’s forecast for a newly hired employee, for example, someone on the finance team typically needs to send a series of emails across the finance and HR departments.