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CFOs face a pivotal choice as finance moves into a Fourth Age, with delay now carrying a real and escalating risk.
Automation is still perceived as a threat to jobs, when in fact it is one of the only viable tools to address the burnout, inefficiency, and growing complexity that are overwhelming finance teams. Without automating high-volume, repetitive work such as the financial close and account reconciliations, organisations will continue to drain their best people on low-value tasks, accelerating attrition, and weakening their capacity to deliver strategic impact.
Mac Weaver
General Manager, APJ
Finance has already passed through three major eras: the age of the ledger, which established a single trusted source of truth; the age of Excel, which enabled modelling and analysis at scale; and the age of the ERP, which consolidated systems and transactions into unified platforms. The Fourth Age—the age of intelligent, autonomous finance—builds on these foundations, but fundamentally raises the stakes. It is defined by real-time insight drawn from consolidated, accurate data, allowing finance to operate as a truly strategic function that actively guides the business forward.
Organisations that fail to make this transition risk being trapped in a perpetual state of catch-up. Many are already stuck between the second and third ages, relying on sheer human effort to bridge fragmented systems and broken processes. This dependence on manual work not only slows the close and clouds visibility, it also undermines decision-making, increases operational risk, and erodes competitiveness at a time when speed and accuracy are critical.
For CFOs, the shift to the Fourth Age is no longer optional, nor a future aspiration. It is an immediate strategic imperative. Those who delay will struggle to grow, lose ground to more agile competitors, and face mounting talent and governance risks.
So, what must be done? BlackLine group General Manager, APJ Mac Weaver advises that having a growth mindset is paramount.
“True transformation and preparedness come from fundamentally rethinking how the work is done, demanding a culture of rebuilding your foundations in conjunction with change, not in reaction to and by leveraging an enterprise platform to help guide the way,” he says.
Looking ahead, leaders in the finance function must prioritise process and data, technology, and people.
When it comes to data, the purpose is simple: make informed decisions. Yet, in many organisations, data remains trapped in silos, scattered across systems and teams, and ultimately under-utilised. Fragmentation forces leaders to fall back on gut feel, not insight. But when data is centralised, accurate, and connected, it stops being a collection of numbers and becomes something far more valuable: actionable intelligence that drives decisions and outcomes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the past year, seven in 10 APAC-based finance leaders admitted to using inaccurate data to make strategic decisions.
The root cause of this isn’t just a design flaw; it’s a process flaw. ERPs have a gap in the financial close and finance teams use spreadsheets to bridge that gap, creating an endless, manual cycle of exporting data, manipulating it, and re-uploading it, hoping it all ties back.
Points of failure creep into every one of these manual steps, which is how leaders end up making decisions based on untrustworthy data.
To this end, a key priority for finance leaders must be choosing software that aligns properly with organisational goals and can be trusted, especially given the AI-inspired, seismic shifts in required skills for workers.
“Instead of trying to bridge the gap with a manual spreadsheet, intelligent automation creates a direct, controlled link to your ERP and other data sources. The system does the heavy lifting; automating reconciliations and matching millions of transactions in minutes to proactively find the exceptions and flag the risks,” Weaver says.
Intelligent automation helps close the accuracy gap by eliminating the very manual steps that create errors, giving teams a foundation of data that can be trusted.
Modern finance tools can also model and stress-test business scenarios, alerting stakeholders with timely tactical and strategic insights. Together, these capabilities push finance and accounting teams toward what they are increasingly expected to become: a proactive, insight-led strategic powerhouse.
Elsewhere, intelligent automation can relieve burnout and assist with the talent crisis in accounting. For finance leaders, the workforce is the most important element in entering the Fourth Age of Finance.
While tech won’t replace people, it will expand what’s possible, creating new opportunities and new ways of working that were unimaginable even a few years ago. As processes improve, platforms mature, and trusted data becomes the norm, the future of finance isn’t about reducing headcount but augmenting it, giving professionals the tools to operate at their full potential.
Elsewhere, intelligent automation can relieve burnout and assist with the talent crisis in accounting. For finance leaders, the workforce is the most important element in entering the Fourth Age of Finance.
This is a transformation of roles and expectations, preparing finance teams for the age of autonomous, intelligent finance.
By automating the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that burn out our best people, leaders can free them to focus on what truly matters; analysis, strategy, and partnership.
In the new age, CFOs can solve their talent crises and enable the next stage of autonomous, intelligent finance. From this, they can upscale teams, and turn yesterday’s spreadsheet wizards of yesterday into the tomorrow’s strategic advisers.
Five or 10 years ago, Weaver says, a CFO could scrape by with surface level briefings, educated guesses, summary level information, perspectives that are often held together with hope and the sweat equity of an overworked team.
“That’s no longer enough. Effort alone will not get us there,” he warns. For BlackLine, which has decades of domain expertise, AI solutions aren’t just marketing stories – they provide a layer of business applications that will transform how companies work. Such new technologies are, finally, giving professionals a forward-facing view.
“Instead of just reporting on last period’s results, we can model what happened next. Now more than ever, this is what it means to be a proactive strategic business partner using the right tools to move us to the age of intelligent, autonomous finance,” Weaver concludes.
While tech won’t replace people, it will expand what’s possible, creating new opportunities and new ways of working that were unimaginable even a few years ago. As processes improve, platforms mature, and trusted data becomes the norm, the future of finance isn’t about reducing headcount but augmenting it, giving professionals the tools to operate at their full potential.
This is a transformation of roles and expectations, preparing finance teams for the age of autonomous, intelligent finance.
By automating the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that burn out our best people, leaders can free them to focus on what truly matters; analysis, strategy, and partnership.
In the new age, CFOs can solve their talent crises and enable the next stage of autonomous, intelligent finance. From this, they can upscale teams, and turn yesterday’s spreadsheet wizards of yesterday into the tomorrow’s strategic advisers.
Five or 10 years ago, Weaver says, a CFO could scrape by with surface level briefings, educated guesses, summary level information, perspectives that are often held together with hope and the sweat equity of an overworked team.
“That’s no longer enough. Effort alone will not get us there,” he warns. For BlackLine, which has decades of domain expertise, AI solutions aren’t just marketing stories – they provide a layer of business applications that will transform how companies work. Such new technologies are, finally, giving professionals a forward-facing view.
“Instead of just reporting on last period’s results, we can model what happened next. Now more than ever, this is what it means to be a proactive strategic business partner using the right tools to move us to the age of intelligent, autonomous finance,” Weaver concludes.
Mac Weaver
General Manager, APJ
BlackLine is a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls financial close and accounting processes, helping organizations modernize away from manual, spreadsheet-based work. The company unifies financial data and processes, automates repetitive accounting tasks, and improves visibility and accountability so companies can close their books faster and more accurately. Founded in 2001, BlackLine now serves thousands of global customers, including a large share of Fortune 500 companies.
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