Beyond the General Ledger: Modernising Finance Architecture for Speed, Control, and Scale | SAP Fioneer, EY | FF Virtual Arena #366

Every finance function will tell you their numbers are accurate and on time. Far fewer can say they're transparent, flexible, or efficient to produce. In this discussion, host Mark Aubin is joined by Adrian Mustafa, Product Director at SAP Fioneer, and Mike Dolan, Partner at EY, to unpick why CFOs across banking, insurance and asset management are being asked to do more with less — and why the general ledger, however vital, was never built to carry the weight now being placed on it.

The conversation ranges from what a modern subledger actually has to deliver to why the tempting shortcut of a data platform plus AI rarely holds up, and the surprisingly human side effect of getting the architecture right. Mustafa brings the product-builder's perspective from SAP Fioneer's [Cloud Accounting Subledger] — including a frank admission about what it took to make their own platform AI-ready — while Dolan shares what EY sees in the field: why big-bang implementations tend to fail, what the organisations further along the journey can now do with AI that others simply can't, and one CFO's verdict on the real payoff, which wasn't efficiency.

If your road to procurement still depends on the one person who's been there 25 years, or you've been asked to "just put AI on top of it," this one is worth twenty minutes of your time.