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What happens when almost every finance team buys automation, but only a few can prove it actually works? This piece drops you into a world where CFOs are running near-daily scenarios, moving planning into the cloud, and still fighting to turn all that tech into real cost savings and faster decisions.
Take a moment to see how the finance function is quietly shifting from monthly hindsight to near real-time course correction.
20-Minute “Cloud Cost Hotspots” Sweep
In 20 minutes, give yourself a simple, repeatable view of where cloud spend is spiking so your finance team can partner with engineering before the invoice gets ugly.
Log into your primary cloud provider’s cost explorer or FinOps tool and export the last 7 days of spend by tag (team, product, environment) into a spreadsheet.
Add columns for Prior 4-Week Average, $ Change, and % Change versus that average for each tag or service.
Sort by % Change (largest increase first) and keep only the top 15 rows, then quickly tag each one with Owner (ENG manager or team) and Environment (Prod, Staging, Dev).
Highlight any row with both High $ and a >20–30% spike and drop those into a short “Hotspots” section at the top of the sheet.
Send a one-line note in Slack or email to each Owner, including a screenshot of the Hotspots table, and ask for two bullets by tomorrow: Driver (what changed) and Plan (one action to cap or validate the spend).
Ask your VP Eng or Head of DevOps to plug this “Hotspots” view into their weekly standup so anomalies are reviewed in their forum, not just in your month-end variance meeting.
Immediate payoff:
You will catch misconfigured resources and noisy experiments days earlier, turn cloud cost from an end-of-month argument into a weekly joint habit, and your finance team will earn credibility as a partner in optimizing unit economics instead of just policing the AWS bill.
📊 63% Deploy Automation, Only 21% See ROI, CFOs Rewire Finance
Deloitte surveyed 1,326 finance leaders and found widespread use of cloud and smart tools, yet measurable gains lag. CFOs are shifting from monthly reviews to near-daily scenario runs, tightening cost control and steering strategy with faster reads on risk. The lever is better planning systems, but proof of value still trails, so scale now, measure tighter next. See full article.
Why this matters (fast take):
🧭 Scenario Cadence Jumps: Walmart’s finance team moved from monthly scenarios to near-daily analysis to track market shifts and competitor moves.
☁️ Cloud Cuts Costs: 48% of leaders say they deploy cloud tools for company-wide cost management and optimization today.
📉 From 3.4x to 1.6x: Astellas CFO Slashes Leverage, Rethinks Nomikai
Astellas’ CFO Atsushi Kitamura cut gross leverage from 3.4x to about 1.6x in two years, shifting from net cash to net debt after a $6 billion deal. He pushed cash productivity, tighter pooling, and faster scenarios as the firm readies for a loss-of-exclusivity pivot in 2026. The next lever is culture, with structured, global touchpoints replacing after-hours socializing. See full article.
Fast move:
💰 Leverage Falls Fast: Gross leverage dropped from 3.4x to 2.2x to ~1.6x, driven by working capital gains, cash pooling, and better borrowing structures.
📊 Cash Rules Apply: Priorities stay fixed: invest in R&D, tech, and BD, keep stable dividend growth, and return surplus cash via buybacks.
🛡️ APAC Cyber Claims Up 22%: Why CFOs Now Fund Passkeys First
Hong Kong finance leaders are treating breaches as financial events, not IT glitches. The piece pegs 2024 cyber insurance claims in APAC up 22% and urges CFOs to treat identity controls as capital protection. The unlock is phishing-resistant MFA, which strengthens internal controls, lowers premiums, and shortens recovery time. See full article.
Fast move:
📈 Claims Spike 22%: Aon reports APAC cyber insurance claims rose 22% in 2024, lifting evidence demands for modern authentication.
🔐 Passkeys Beat Phish: Hardware-backed MFA blocks credential replay, reduces interruptions, and improves insurance terms.
Daily CFO Snapshot in Your Inbox
Automate a one-page daily view of cash, collections, and key payables so you stop asking “Where are we today?” and instead start the day with answers. This snapshot comes from your existing bank, ERP, and CRM data and can be owned by your finance team, not IT.
Pick the 5–7 KPIs: Decide what you want every morning (e.g., total cash, available credit, yesterday’s collections, overdue AR, AP due next 7 days, yesterday’s bookings/revenue).
Set up daily exports: Configure your bank, ERP, and CRM/billing to drop simple CSV reports (cash, AR/AP, bookings) into a shared folder with consistent names.
Build a single “Daily Snapshot” tab: Use Excel or Google Sheets with data connections/Power Query to pull those files in and calculate each KPI on one summary tab, plus a simple 30-day trend line for each.
Automate refresh and email: Use Power Automate, Zapier, or a scheduled macro/script to refresh the file at a set time each morning and email the summary as a PDF to you, the CEO, and your core finance leaders.
Benefits:
Saves 30–60 minutes per day of status chasing and manual reporting.
Reduces the chance of cash or collections surprises by making issues visible immediately.
Control check:
Once a week, have the controller compare that day’s snapshot to the bank portal and to the ERP totals to confirm that all feeds and formulas remain accurate.
📊 Take This Edition’s Poll:
Would you rather run planning scenarios how often?
Why It Matters
This shift matters because tools alone will not move the needle if planning, data, and measurement do not keep up. When CFOs tighten scenario cadence, link cloud tools to company-wide cost control, and demand hard proof of ROI, automation becomes a strategic lever instead of just another expense line.
It is a reminder that the future of finance belongs to teams that can scan the dashboard and act on it with confidence.
Until the next financial insight,
Corrine Maxwell
Editor-in-Chief
CFO Executive Insights
P.S. Interested in sponsoring a future issue? Just reply to this email and I’ll send packages!