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How CFOs can turn AI investment into enterprise impact
In this episode of the Better Finance: CFO Insights podcast, Andrew Ashton, Cisco's Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, shares how CFOs can prove AI's impact while the value case is emerging.
In this episode of the Better Finance: CFO Insights podcast, Myles Corson speaks with Andrew Ashton, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance at Cisco, about the question facing every finance leader right now: how to invest in AI when the value case is still emerging?
As organizations increase their AI investment, determining where to invest and how to measure success can remain far from straightforward. Andrew makes the point that AI spend is additive rather than a substitute for existing budget, which turns prioritization into a real trade-off. He explains why Cisco avoids a large-scale approach to AI adoption. Instead, the organization uses smaller pilots across the business to understand where AI is delivering value. That value does not always show up through traditional ROI measures. It can appear through better forecasting, stronger insights and faster decision-making. As those improvements begin to repeat, they can help identify where additional AI investment is justified.
Andrew also discusses the role finance can play in determining where to focus. He describes the CFO as a strategic coordinator, bringing together efforts across the business and helping people understand the benefits those investments are intended to deliver. In his view, the role is not simply to allocate budget, but to build alignment around why the organization is prioritizing certain initiatives and where value is expected. He closes by looking ahead to what finance could build next: real-time insight for the CFO and CEO that surfaces issues as they arise, rather than after the fact.
Key takeaways:
Treat AI spend as additive rather than a substitute for existing budget and prioritize accordingly.
Use pilots to identify patterns of value through better forecasting, stronger insights and faster decision-making.
Coordinate AI activity across functions to reduce duplication and focus resources where they can have the greatest impact.
Establish governance and security controls early to support AI adoption across the enterprise.
Embed AI across existing priorities rather than treating it as a standalone initiative.
For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available.
Myles Corson
Hello and welcome to the EY Better Finance: CFO Insights podcast. I'm your host Myles Corson from EY. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Andrew Ashton, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance at Cisco. Andrew, it's great to have you here.
Andrew Ashton
Thanks, Myles. Great to be here.
Corson
So, Andrew, one of the reasons I was excited to have you on the show is that you sit at the center of Cisco's corporate finance organization and that gives you a practical view into how companies are thinking about the infrastructure needed to support AI [artificial intelligence] at scale. So, let's start there. When CFOs [chief financial officers] and finance leaders are looking at large-scale AI infrastructure investments, how are you seeing them build a clear capital allocation case when the long-term value case is still emerging?
Ashton
It's an interesting one because, as you say, it's very early days. It's, you can't approach it in a traditional way. I think, I like to think of it coming up from a, from a business perspective and looking at outcomes. So, there's two things I think that we need to think about. One is, AI is happening to us.
Ashton
AI will become, every company will become an AI company. Every product, process, workflow will be AI-embedded. So, it is coming for us, it is coming with us. So, you need to get on board. And if we don't invest in the AI infrastructure to keep up, we will be left behind. So, I think that is one of the most key things I hear from, from all our customers and partners. (The views and opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of EY.)
Ashton
And the second is security, you know, with the latest releases of the, some of the models that have come out that were not released to the public, for good reason. It's imperative that companies invest in the AI infrastructure to ensure that they are not vulnerable. I think we've gone from a time of, you know, what we're seeing is Cisco as part of Project Glasswing, which was working with Mythos.
Ashton
And really what we're seeing is the time, the window from vulnerability being discovered to being exploited is near zero. These things are happening at machine speed. So, I think the need to invest in AI infrastructure to keep up is imperative for a company's survival. But also, it's an excellent driver for future productivity.
Corson
You again, you made the point very clearly, AI is here. It's coming. We've got to be ready for it. And taking this long-term view, I think one of the things I hear from, from CFOs and finance leaders I talk to is how do you make the ROI [return on investment] case, particularly when we're thinking about a technology we don't really understand the full potential of
Corson
and what is the real return upside? So again, you know, in your organization, How do you think about capturing that return so you don't under, underinvest in the size of opportunity?
Ashton
It's a fine balance right now. I think we, I think one of the things you can't do is take a big-bang approach to the investment, because we don't know what's going to work and what's not. So, we approach it from a piecemeal. So, we might take a number of pilots, a number of use cases across the different organizations, and we approve those based on a very finite kind of business case.
Ashton
Then we'll have some that are more experimental where we want them to go and see what they can do outside the norm and kind of judge them and measure them on those more finite, measurable cases. Because I think there, we don't know which way it's going to go. There is an enormous amount of costs that could be incurred.
Ashton
So, then we'll do an ROI in those kind of smaller pilot cases until it's kind of proven.
Corson
And I've heard that sort of described probabilistic versus deterministic thinking. Make the small bets, learn what you can through the pilots. Is that again how you think about it? And, I think, in that case, it's really important to understand what, what did you learn through the pilot or through the, through the test case?
Ashton
Yeah, exactly. So that measurement is kind of “what do you learn?” What are you seeing? And I think some of the, the ROI that comes back is almost not like a one-off measurement. It's, it's, it becomes a pattern. You see, start to see a pattern of improvements. You might see better forecasting, better insights, faster decision-making. So, across the organization, you see different ways that come out.
Ashton
So again, it's not a single measurement that, you know, traditional ROI business case. But you are, we are seeing it proliferate through the organization.
Corson
Again, I think one of the things that gets a lot of media coverage right now is just the scale of the investment in AI infrastructure, right, and the numbers that could put out there, sort of mind-boggling, frankly, in terms of the kind of the capital expenditure required. Again, as you think about it, as you need to plan for cash flow forecasting when you need capital available, I think that puts a lot of constraint on the business in terms of, you know, again, what else you can, you can do.
Corson
How do you think about cash flow planning in a scenario like this?
Ashton
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, hyperscalers are investing the hundreds of billions of dollars. Cisco has been the benefit of some of that, because I think they understand the need. I think from an enterprise perspective, we're really top of the first inning, from an investment and what we need to be doing. And the way to think about that is AI investment is, it's additive.
Ashton
It's not a substitute for other spend. So, that's a tricky way to think about it, because we've certainly got another line item that we have to account for. It comes down to then our prioritization exercise. And I think you need to think about not necessarily resource replacement, although there will be some of that. It's going to be a lot of augmenting, augmentation to the resources that we have to drive that productivity.
Ashton
Again, it's not something that can be avoided. It's not something that should be prioritized out, but you do need to have that prioritization exercise.
Corson
And again, you mentioned the hyperscalers and you are presumably working very closely with them to understand the demand patterns are going to be generated for your business as they scale up. So, that sort of connectivity to the customer is something that we've talked about a number of times, that finance, if finance leaders are really going to play that business partnering role, supporting those commercial decisions.
Corson
So again, do you, as part of your organization, your role, are you part of those conversations? How are you getting engaged and helping the business be better prepared for what's coming?
Ashton
I think you have to take a strategic approach and join across the businesses, because I think one of the things that we're seeing is these hyperscalers need to make money and it is with their own ROI. So, they're tapping into a lot of different parts of the business. And everybody at the moment is kind of running their own show.
Ashton
Well, there's a potential for them to run their own show, go and build up, get their own token spend, engage in different LLMs [large language models]. And I think the role of the CFO is really to bring that together and be the strategic coordinator, if you like, to make sure that the engagement with the hyperscalers and the large language models are done in a way that is probably governed, that is prioritized across the organization.
Ashton
I think not everybody probably needs to have the same access. I think there's a lot of science projects out there. I think there's a lot of duplication in work that could be, could be rationalized. So, I think finance needs to play a part to both measure where we are seeing real return and also ensure that we're not, you know, it's not the Wild West when it comes to engaging with these guys.
Corson
Well, you mentioned prioritization and that it's such an important role that finance plays in helping with those, those allocation decisions. And again, there's this trade-off, right? Because you want to be a business partner. You want to be seen as enabling the business. But you've also got to bring the fiscal discipline and responsibility. So, how do you strike that, that balance?
Corson
And I think it comes back to this point about communication and engagement and collaboration. We talk a lot about on the, on the podcast, right? Leaders that can communicate effectively when they make those tough decisions. I think you really demonstrate the ability to build trust and you have confidence to their teams, but instead your perspectives on that.
Ashton
Yeah, I think there's, there's two ways, usually carrot and stick. And if you start with the stick of your budget, it is going to be X. So, figure out a way to make that work. But then you're right. The better way is on the, on the carrot, which is getting the business leaders to understand the benefits they're going to achieve across, across the organization.
Ashton
Getting them to focus on things that moves the needle from an enterprise perspective, not just their function. Because I think there's a lot that will. You know, engineering and R&D [research and development], in particular, will dive deep into the embraced Codex from ChatGPT and making some great gains there. But there's a lot of functions who will go into things so that we need to understand that prioritization might mean we are going to invest heavily in engineering, which means, you know, maybe finance or HR [human resources] need to back, back down a little bit to ensure that we're prioritizing the right things that get the best return.
Corson
Yeah. And it comes back to another theme that we've talked about in the past, which is the human, I think, preference to, to avoid loss and downside versus realizing the upside. And I think it's particularly true in the case of AI, right? And you mentioned some of the cyber threats, right? Most leaders, if they get told we need to spend money on cyber, it's like, how much, when do I cut the check versus more of the opportunistic stuff?
Corson
And we had Rory Sutherland on podcast. He talked about missed opportunities don't appear on the balance sheet, so there's really no downside, as you think about that balance between what you've got to do to protect the enterprise versus making sure you don't underinvest in the upside.
Ashton
Yeah, I think, they are right, the security has been the number one priority for the last five or 10 years. I think it continues to be. I think AI needs to be up there with it. It's somewhat integrated. I think there, you know, with the way we're spending our money now is on security. The way we think about it as we build out the agentic era is we need to protect agents from the world and protect the world from agents.
Ashton
So, we need to ensure that the security around agents is tight, the governance is tight, their identity is rationalized, so they're not let loose in the network, but then also ensuring that bad actors don't get into the and play with the agents and cause havoc across the enterprise. So, a lot of those security-wise, investments that kind of continue, need to continue from a missed opportunity perspective.
Ashton
Everything is happening at the speed of machines. You need to lead with the security-first posture, with a reliability posture and avoid downtime. So, none of that can be missed. But at the same time, again, kind of coming back to the lesson, you can't miss out on the opportunity.
Ashton
Don't be left behind. Everything needs to be invested so that you become that AI company.
Corson
From a technology perspective. This isn't the first technology that requires regulation. And we always see the challenge that regulators and government agencies are always behind the curve from the tech companies. How do you see the role of tech and government coming together to make sure the governance that needs to be in place is, is keeping pace?
Ashton
That is a tricky one because I think we don't want to over-govern, or our competitors and our geopolitical competitors will get ahead of us because they won't have the same regulations. So, I think it's critical that we don't overstep on the regulation perspective, but obviously, in a role that really could be played, it should be played by the CFO team as well is ensuring that we have responsible AI, ensuring that what we're building is,
Ashton
fits within our society and societal requirements. So, I think there's a role to be playing there. I think we do need to be careful, though, and I think the government is, having met with someone from government recently, they got a long way to go to understand it, let alone regulate it.
Corson
So, more to come. Fantastic. So, I just wanted to touch a little bit on innovation, Andrew. Cisco's obviously now one of the, the veterans, one of the large organizations of the Valley. Organizationally, how do you maintain kind of an innovation culture? Because obviously, you're surrounded by all of these startups, all these new new entrants market.
Corson
You're the established player now. How do you maintain what it was that made Cisco successful from sort of a cultural perspective at an enterprise level? And then we'll talk a little bit about what it means in the finance context.
Ashton
Sure, yeah. So, I mean, innovation has to be key. To survive in the Valley, you've got to be innovative. And I think we approach it two ways. One is we do lead with a “build first within” and innovate within. We have a highly talented group of individuals in our R&D organization, but we also acquire. We're a pretty acquisitive company and we recognize the talent that's out there, a lot of it in startups that we either partner with, we invest in or sometimes acquire.
Ashton
Because their talent is so good. So, ensuring that we get that mix and that blend of new ideas that are coming up through all those startups. So, it's a combination. Our engineering leader would certainly say that we like to build it first with internally, but then, if needed, will go external.
Corson
To pivot that to the, to the finance conversation, right? You mentioned finance is often at the back of the line when it comes to investment. Then you take technologies. And I think AI is when we're actually, you know, finance could be leading, particularly when you think about the adoption of AI-enabled workflows across the enterprise, right? The access that finance has, the context, the access to data.
Corson
I think there's a real role for finance leaders to play. But again, what we hear in the research and conversations is sometimes they feel like they're not empowered to be leading those, those conversations. And I think some of that comes down to demonstrating that finance can innovate and I sometimes find that, you know, sort of the traditional perception and brand of finance is not associated with innovation.
Corson
So again, as you look at the finance organization within Cisco, how do you kind of inspire people to do things differently, to challenge the status quo when it may not be their natural, natural setting?
Ashton
Yeah, you're right. We do need to have a strategy. So, I think the core thing is and what we've done as well is lead off with, “What is your AI strategy across finance?” So, ensuring that you have a North Star that you're aiming towards.
Ashton
And then from that, we set up two horizons, a kind of horizon one is all the tactical things that teams are doing. Everybody's out there automating processes. You know, maybe accounts payable is done in an automated way. It's really just automation on steroids, I guess with AI. But then horizon two is the more agentic and ultimately physical AI that you need to have a process around.
Ashton
You need to be thinking about what this is going to look like, that what we do in finance moves the needle from an enterprise perspective. So, it's got to be, it can't just be “I can get my AP [accounts payable] paid faster.” It's got to be “I'm able to produce a forecast or provide insights to the executive team that changes the way that we, that they lead and they do business.”
Ashton
So, I think that enterprise impact is what matters.
Corson
Yeah, I think that's so well said. And you mentioned the term science projects earlier on. I think there's lots of interesting intellectual things you can potentially do. But actually from finance perspective, you can tie it back to where there is a material business case, something that, as you say, really moves the needle. That's where I think you start to get traction.
Corson
But I love the point about creating the North Star, the vision, creating the guardrails so people know what they can operate, the constraints they can operate within. One of the things that I see a lot is organizations where there's a very clear tone from the top, from CFOs and finance leaders. CFOs really leading by example tend to again, probably move, move faster.
Corson
Any examples about how you or other leaders within the finance organization at Cisco are kind of really demonstrating that?
Ashton
Yeah, and I think being a technology company, we kind of have to show that we are innovating with AI internally. So, you know, starting from the very top is we're, you know, we talk to the benefits of AI, the investment needed to build out, the infrastructure that's needed. And so, that kind of permeates through the organization. And we have, you know, we set the strategic priorities for the fiscal year.
Ashton
And one of them was AI, as you'd expect, I think crazy, although I'm starting to pivot that I think AI shouldn't just be a standalone priority. I think it should be embedded in all the priorities. So, I think, but that is something that we're driving. So, we've driven a, we're driving a project, as I mentioned, around these kind of two horizons of continue to drive the team, but have a North Star so that everything you do should be, you should be using AI.
Ashton
We're opening up training for all our employees. We're ensuring that the mindset that they have is AI first. We expect productivity out of this. We expect that as the company grows, you may not be getting more human resources. So, you need to augment it through AI.
Corson
Yeah, but you made a really interesting point though, which is you don't, you don't sort of use technology for technology sake, use it in pursuit of a broader objective. And I think, you know, the finance leaders are able to articulate the reason that we're adopting the technology is because it enables us to free up capacity to be better business partners, or it helps us to again, drive better, quicker decisions.
Corson
When you think about what are the big opportunities for the enterprise and for finance that AI can help accelerate, any particular things that you see as being big opportunities?
Ashton
I think one, one that I'm kind of interested in right now, I'm trying to drive is creating a, like a cockpit for the CFO and CEO [chief executive officer], and it goes beyond just automated reports or a dashboard. These are things that will be proactive, that touch on all aspects of the business and maybe set off red lights, where there's things that need to change, but it's happening real time.
Ashton
It's enabling that faster decision-making where it's insights, not after-the-fact insights, but real-time insights, that can enable leadership to pivot quickly. So, we're kind of developing that. And I think that finance obviously has a key play because we pretty much control the finance data.
Ashton
So, that's where I think there's a huge opportunity. Of course, it's on us to make sure that the data is clean and the data structure is clean, which is a big challenge for a lot of enterprises. But that's key to get that right. And then, I think that it will enable that really that real-time decision-impacting insights.
Corson
And that's a great example. I really appreciate you sharing that one. And again, that sort of real-time decision support insight. And I think you sort of alluded to the point, right, that it has to go beyond just financial measures and the nonfinancial measures. And, I think, part of that is, is how do you bring quantitative and qualitative measures, again as you think of expanding the scope of finance beyond the traditional, you know, very financial analytical stuff,
Corson
how do you kind of build an organization that is more comfortable with things that aren't quite as finite?
Ashton
Yeah, I think there's, it does need to be a huge mindshift change. And I think it potentially even a skill set change within finance. I think the finance professional of the future probably looks different than the current finance professional, because I think you're going to be doing things a long way. And I think, by the way, that I think that applies to any organization now in any function. I think they're going to look very different and the skill sets that they have, and I think the, you know, the young talent coming out of college now are going to be AI-native.
Ashton
So, I think that mind shift change around, you're going to be driving to outcomes rather than trying to define the process or rather than run the process you're going to be running, how do I ensure that the outcomes are delivered because AI will come up with the best process? So, I think that outcome-focused.
Corson
That's fantastic. And you've hit on a couple of the key, I think, challenges with adoption that we saw in our CFO survey. So, you mentioned data quality. You mentioned the talent side.
Corson
The pace with which technology is changing means it's very difficult to stay informed and educated. Sort of traditional learning tools, design, unable to keep pace. So, within your organization, how do you encourage that continuous learning? What are the resources you're encouraging people to so they'd stay up-to-date and relevant as everything revolves literally week by week,
Corson
at this stage.
Ashton
Yeah, we're really promoting teams to get out and use the tools. So, we've created our own internal, but we also have them access to GitHub and Copilot and a number of other tools that we encourage them to build out. We have competitions, we have awards. So, we're really proactively driving teams to get engaged because I think the AI and AI tools are really one that you can only learn by doing and practicing.
Ashton
It's hard to, hard to teach it. So, I think that just continuous use, continuous promotion and reward for engaging and understanding and delivering use cases. I think we, we have, you know, last I looked at 150 live use cases that we're running with, and we kind of keep promoting that and encourage teams to deliver outcomes.
Corson
To your point, you've got to get people comfortable with the tools, you've got to get them ramped up. So sort of early stages, you are looking at utilization, looking at the tokens being used, adoption rates, I think, is really important.
Corson
But at some point is, when do you make that inflection? Say, great, so we've got the personal knowledge and understanding. How do we now pivot this to make sure there is an enterprise kind of value? And we're actually sort of really seeing scalability in some of these decisions. So where are you at that journey and how do you see that sort of that inflection point playing out?
Ashton
You touched on the token usage. I think it's an important one.
Corson
Particularly until we actually know what the tokens cost, right?
Ashton
Yeah. And it's where we're working through that now actually it's, it could get away from you very quickly. And so, I think ensuring that you put that governance around token usage. But I think it's, it's, there's a couple of things that I think I would say is, one is creating some kind of knowledge hub, because I think there's a lot of duplication happening out there that's driving up cost, but also preventing widespread use and knowledge.
Ashton
I think creating some knowledge, some kind of knowledge hub with the governance around it that allows people to share what they're doing, I think, is going to boost knowledge across the organization. And I think also hopefully reduce costs from duplication. And I think prioritizing again, as to where that's going to be spent so that you're getting the biggest return, which is again, probably more on the engineering side now.
Ashton
Yeah, I think the knowledge governance, security, they're kind of the key.
Corson
So, we've covered a lot of ground and it's been great, great conversation. Really appreciate your insights. As we wrap, as you kind of would think about giving advice to our listeners, to finance leaders on this AI journey, what would be the things that you'd say to really focus on as you think about adopting AI in your own organizations?
Ashton
I think although the cost could get prohibitive if left alone, I think the key is you've got to keep promoting it. I think let the teams run with it. Don't hold them back. I think there's some incredible ideas and very creative minds out there that if let loose, will produce things that do help the enterprise. So, I think you've got to promote that.
Ashton
You've got to keep that training up. Get outside advice if acquired to help you kind of steer that if needed. But I think it's really encourage and build it as part of your priority. Again, it shouldn't be seen as the technology, should be seen as the way that we're going to be doing business in the future.
Corson
Really appreciate those insights. So, as we wrap, we'd like to ask a few more personal rapid-fire questions just to get to know you bit better. So, as you sort of reflect back on your career, what's one of the all-time favorite quotes that you refer back to and why?
Ashton
Yeah, so there's one that I lived by all my life, and it's more sweat in training, less blood in battle. And that stuck with me because my father had it on his desk. He worked at IBM for 30 years, and he had it on his desk growing up. So, I saw that there. And that stuck with me as a kid.
Ashton
And that's kind of stuck with me for life.
Corson
Fantastic. There's a lot of variations on a theme. It's all of us, all about the practice and exactly as you do. Exactly. That's great. And again, reflecting back on your career, was there a particular piece of advice that had a sort of outsized impact on your career or the way you've become a leader?
Ashton
Yeah, I think it was lean and take risk, grab opportunity when it arises. I've been privileged enough to work in four continents. I've jumped at opportunities when they've come up, leant in, going sideways if need be to go up. And I think that's, it really key that you don't be afraid to take those risks, even if they're life-changing risks and you end up in a different continent.
Corson
Moving across four continents is a pretty significant undertaking. I mean, when you made those moves, were you confident in what you were moving across to, you know, uprooting everything and moving across the oceans?
Ashton
Yeah, I mean, I've lived in a lot of different places in my life, so I've kind of got comfortable in doing that. But yeah, you never know what you're going into. I think you go in with open eyes and it can be exciting.
Corson
Fantastic. I haven't done that myself. I agree, I think, you know, sort of being prepared to take the risk and seize opportunities is really impactful. And then finally, obviously everyone is super busy, work super hard. Is there anything you do to maintain wellbeing and balance just to try even it out?
Ashton
I'd say skiing is my thing, so the mountains are my happy place. But I think the way I try to approach it is, you know, a certain level of work never stops. It doesn't shut down for weekends, but I think you try to balance it from integrating it into lifestyle. So it might be, you know, maybe there's calls on Sundays but at home.
Ashton
But there's also, you know, you're able to go and take them from the sidelines of your kids’ soccer practice. And so, try to integrate it in ensuring that you don't sacrifice either work or play. I think I found a way to integrate it.
Corson
Well, thanks, Andrew. That's been great insights. Really appreciate you joining us.
Ashton
Thanks, Myles. Great to be here.
Corson
So, if you've enjoyed this or any episode of the EY Better Finance: CFO Insights podcast, please subscribe or leave a rating or review. You'll find related links at ey.com/betterfinance.
Corson
And as always, thank you for listening and for supporting the podcast.
