In the field of artificial intelligence, technical personnel and software vendors must be wary: do not just build a "faster horse." This is the view of Alok Ajmera, CEO of Prophix, a company that provides software services to the office of the chief financial officer.

Ajmera cited a sayingoften attributed tothe famous automaker Henry Ford—if you ask customers what they want, they will answer "a faster horse," not a car. In an interview with CFO Dive, Ajmera said that when examining the capabilities and potential of AI, this witty remark precisely depicts "the historical moment we are in."

The leap forward of agentic AI

In the realm of the CFO's office, the AI counterpart to Ford Motor might be concepts like "continuous budgeting." Ajmera said this idea "we have discussed for 20 years, but it has always been extremely difficult to implement operationally."

Ajmera has worked at this Toronto-based company for 22 years. The company provides financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting products to the CFO's office. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has served as CEO since November 2016. Before taking the top management position, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer for 12 years.

Today, many budgeting or forecasting processes still run on legacy infrastructure, and when closing the books or preparing the annual budget, they still follow the same historical patterns and obstacles. However, if you eliminate the "drudgery" that comes with these tasks, "you can truly rethink how these things are done," Ajmera said.

"These are things we have discussed for 20 years, and we have been moving slowly with the help of technology. But now, with agentic capabilities, we have the opportunity to take a huge step forward, because you can actually shift the workload significantly," he said.

However, to capitalize on this leap forward, tech companies need to approach customers with the right combination of innovation and comfort.

"You can't leave customers behind," Ajmera said. He pointed out the "challenges and opportunities" that existing vendors like Prophix, which has approximately3,000 global customersface in finding the right balance. Providing value and service is crucial, but "that said... as a tech company, you can't ignore where the world is heading, and you need to quickly build products for that world," he said.

Between customer comfort and customer needs

To achieve this balance, staying sensitive to human needs is crucial. Many tech or software vendors caught up in the development race may forget that "at the other end of the technology, there is a group of humans who are the recipients of this technology, and this technology will completely change the way they work," Ajmera said.

For example, although finance professionals might dream of "continuous close," CFOs currently have legitimate reasons to be cautious about AI—ensuring that the financial data they process and present is 100% accurate remains a top concern.

Ajmera said that while CFOs are indeed experimenting with AI, they are not particularly stepping out of their comfort zones. There is still an "inherent fear" among financial leaders about using AI—many are comfortable letting technology analyze financial data or numbers, but not comfortable letting it modify a number.

He mentioned a conversation with a CFO who is also a Prophix customer. That customer used the company's One intelligent platform (a financial planning and analysis solution). Despite being satisfied with the Prophix One product, when asked whether she used the AI agent budgeting tool, she replied: "'Oh, no, no, I wouldn't let it touch any numbers.'"

For technology providers like Prophix, proving the safety and credibility of these technologies is a key step in persuading finance executives or other customers to step out of their comfort zones in AI deployment.

"What we must do as technical people, actually, is... we must ensure there are legitimate guardrails," he said. "There must be real trust embedded in the applications. There must be auditability, there must be traceability."