Good morning. The management of Block does not want to simply add AI on top of the existing workload.

"What we're considering is a fundamental restructure of how the company operates," said Amrita Ahuja, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Block, during a roundtable discussion I moderated at the Fortune Most Influential Women Summit held in Santa Barbara on Tuesday. She was joined by executives from Synopsys, Cloudflare, and Amazon.

Over the past few years, this fintech company has been integrating and streamlining processes, and since the beginning of 2024, it has started using AI in its operations. Earlier this year, Square and its parent company Block, which also owns Cash App, laid off 40% of their employees and reduced the number of management levels.

"We firmly believe that in the AI era, it is absolutely essential to have people at the center," said Ahuja. She stated that companies still need those who are adept at building, setting goals, and making strategic decisions in every function. However, she added that there is no longer a need for those whose role is merely to pass on information or to check it once before it reaches the actual reviewers.

At Block, engineers increased the efficiency of code review changes by 150% between the beginning and middle of this year, and 'even those who are not engineers saw a 60% improvement,' said Ahuja. She added that currently, 15% of code changes are almost fully automated – which means 'only one person is left at the end of the process to make the final decision,' she said.

However, the way in which returns are measured is still evolving. She said that a large portion of companies in the industry are still weighing the relationship between AI costs and staff savings. Block is working on improving a metric called “timed customer value”, which tracks how a single code change translates into a certain feature, then to a customer interaction, and ultimately to value.

For the company Synopsys, Chief Financial Officer Shelagh Glaser of Synopsys stated that the cost aspect quickly became very realistic. The company develops software for semiconductor design and verification. She said that the expenditures were "still reasonable before they became unreasonable," and compared employees' usage habits to snacks in the lounge. It was necessary to decide who could use advanced packages and who could use internal models. In cases where some suppliers did not provide measurement tools, the company established its own measurement systems. The goal is to "make very conscious decisions about where to invest" and to measure returns based on customer outcomes, not just product releases.

Cloudflare, co-founder and president, Michelle Zatlyn, stated that the company is currently recruiting two types of roles: "employees" and "agents," and hopes that about 5,000 of its employees can become builders within the business. She cited a prominent example: a finance director who made extensive use of AI agents was later selected by the chief financial officer to lead the transformation of the finance team. Zatlyn also mentioned that Cloudflare has committed to hiring over 1,000 interns by 2026, and these interns will help make each team more "AI native."

Amazon, the vice president in charge of customer experience, products, and services, stated that "as a leader, what's most important now is to ensure that you give your team the time, space, and permission to learn." She mentioned that when the company measures the return on investment of employees using AI, it first looks at the adoption rate, then at the level of participation, and finally assesses efficiency through results such as time savings.

"You want to create something that is beneficial to the customers, and then you also have to find a way to make it beneficial to the business as well," she said. She added that leaders also need to figure out how long they are willing to invest before they see a win-win situation for both customers and the business.

Ahuja indicates that she expects more companies to incorporate AI agents into their organizational structure and have their employees be responsible for both training and deploying these agents.

"The direction in which things are developing—and I've already heard that several companies are doing this, so we're at the forefront of it—is that when you look at the organizational structure diagrams published by these companies, there will not only be departments, but also agents," she said. "These agents aren't much different from humans; they also need to be continuously trained over time."

Sheryl Estrada

Sheryl.Estrada @ fortune.com

Leaderboard

Andrew Hodson has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of PharmaCorp, effective from October 27th. Hodson will take over from Terri Tatchell who retired on that day. Tatchell will continue to serve as a consultant for three months to assist with the transition. Hodson recently served as the Financial Supervisor for Marshall Land Systems. Prior to this, he held the position of Vice President of Finance at Vendasta Technologies, responsible for the financial aspects of strategic acquisitions. He also worked at Deloitte Canada for six years.

Nathan Iles has been appointed as Senior Vice President of Finance at Dauch Corporation, a supplier of transmission systems and metal forming parts for the automotive industry, effective from November 2nd. He will assume the role of Chief Financial Officer on December 1st, succeeding Christopher May. On the same day, May will become Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, continuing to be in charge of the IT organization and undertaking senior supervisory responsibilities for human resources. Iles possesses over 25 years of financial leadership experience and most recently served as Chief Financial Officer at Standard Motor Products, a supplier of automotive parts. Prior to that, he held the position of Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at UCI International Holdings.

Big Deal

According to the first Forward Finance Index released by OneStream, many finance teams adopted AI at a faster pace than their level of trust in the output of AI. The survey covered 1,300 chief financial officers and other senior financial executives from medium-sized markets and large enterprises in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents stated that AI has reduced manual work in the checkout, reporting, and reconciliation processes. However, only 14% said that their investment in AI has brought about "business value and decision-making impact." Data is the main obstacle: although 71% are confident that the team can provide credible data for decision-making, only 40% believe that the financial reporting data is completely transparent, meaning it can be traced, explained, and verified.

Forty percent of the respondents stated that data quality issues often hinder or delay the AI project. Employee readiness is also a major gap: only 15% of the employees possess fully embedded AI skill sets, despite two-thirds believing that if employees are not properly prepared, the organization will become irrelevant within five years.

Overall, only 6% of financial organizations that meet the leader standards in the five areas measured by this index – AI strategy, data, employees, operations, and IT collaboration – are considered leaders. More than half (52%) are classified as "followers." OneStream, which sells financial software, believes that leaders regard AI as a transformation of the operational model, rather than a series of pilot projects, and it is based on credible data and a workforce that is well-prepared for AI.

Going deeper

Overheard

"As business leaders, we are naturally driven to pursue speed, scale, and efficiency. However, in our quest for something bigger, better, and faster, we must not overlook a key element of lasting success: trust."

—— As written by Kate Barton, the CEO of Dentons Law Firm, in a viewpoint article published on Fortune.