Interview with Philipp Kortüm, Chief Financial Officer of TÜV Rheinland AG

KORTÜM At TÜV Rheinland, we want to make the world a safer place. The safety of AI-supported products and services is becoming increasingly important and directly affects our core business as a global testing company. We want to establish ourselves as a service provider for the certification of AI systems, develop our own AI-based services and also use AI internally to optimize processes. 

KORTÜM We use AI, for example, to detect vehicle damages or defects in large photovoltaic systems. We also audit and certify medical products that use AI and offer certification in accordance with ISO 42001, the first international standard for a management system for artificial intelligence. 

KORTÜM Finance departments are predestined for AI: they process large amounts of data and routine transactions - both of which are perfect for automating processes and using AI. We created the basis for using AI early on with cloud computing systems, data cleansing and clearly defined processes, for example in the automatic processing of invoices. We are building on this today: Our "Future Finance" vision includes a clear technology roadmap with around 60 initiatives that will lead us to an "Autonomous Finance" organization in the medium term.  

We see efficiency potential particularly in transactional processes such as invoice-to-pay, while in the plan-to-steer area, AI enables better insights and forecasts. As a result, finance is becoming more of a business partner and the quality of decision-making is significantly improving. In my view, the core of the CFO role remains unchanged: Statutory (mandatory) tasks must be performed reliably, efficiently and close to the organization. However, AI opens up additional opportunities to deploy resources in a more targeted manner and increase the quality of decision-making. At the same time, we need to actively manage technological, regulatory and cultural risks. While the CFO has a central role to play in resource allocation and ROI assessment for the former risks, well-founded change management is required for the latter. Employees need to be empowered and involved in the change process. Accordingly, the CFO of the future needs AI expertise in order to effectively exploit the opportunities that arise, manage risks, assess and use technologies, optimally align the organization and inspire its people to embrace change in the long term. 

KORTÜM The technological, social and regulatory framework conditions differ considerably between individual countries and regions. In China, we are seeing a very rapid implementation and scaling of AI technologies, while in Germany and Europe, data protection and ethical standards traditionally play a much greater role in the use of AI. In the U.S. and China, AI remains -partly deliberately- unregulated in order to secure competitive advantages. These regulatory differences will remain, and we will help our customers to deal with them. 

KORTÜM One focus is now on predictive analytics for more precise financial forecasts, natural language processing (NLP) for fast and error-free processing of documents and process mining as well as robotic process automation (RPA) to automate routine tasks. In addition, real-time dashboards optimize our reporting, while AI-supported solutions in compliance ensure reliable adherence to regulatory requirements and tools such as chatbots support users in creating analyses and reports largely independently. 

KORTÜM It is important to find the right balance: Analyze the most strategically important areas and prioritize your initiatives accordingly. Make room for experiments and the implementation of quick wins. Ensure at an early stage that responsibilities for the introduction and use of AI are clearly defined. This avoids critical mistakes, especially when dealing with data protection and personal rights! 

Develop use cases - preferably with external input - but above all use the knowledge and creativity of your employees.  

Actively involve your workforce: Inform them about the objectives, background and personal benefits - and empower them in dealing with new technologies. We have established e-learning courses and an internal "AI Challenge" for this purpose and are expanding this further with our Finance Academy. For me, this also means: establish experts and multipliers who combine financial and digital know-how - real "digital heroes" within your finance organization!