These pressures are landing on teams already stretched thin just keeping up with the day-to-day, and most have already started reaching for AI as the answer. Yet only a minority run it in their core financial processes, and most that try fail to scale it. finance is being handed both a bigger job and bigger constraints. The role itself is expanding to include a broader strategic advisory role, on top of increasing compliance burden. At the same time, the talent pipeline is thinning and budgets are tightening, leaving less to meet the rising demands.