I'm a CFO and COO. Here's what IT leaders need to know.
Managing investments is more than money and ROI. Here’s how I work with our CIO.
In my decades as a CFO—and now serving as both CFO and COO—I’ve seen financial leadership evolve from a back-office accounting function into a strategic partner to the business that drives growth. Part of that comes from the vantage point: the CFO is one of a few leaders who sees across functions, and the job is to translate operational metrics and cross-functional data into a winning strategy the company can execute against. This means that every investment I evaluate comes down to one question: does this make it easier for our employees, customers, vendors, and partners to do their jobs, or to work with us?
To act on that view, I rely on the partner who owns the systems and processes that power the business: the CIO. Ashwin Ballal, our CIO, and I meet or communicate, in some form, nearly every day. Right now, we're running about a dozen cross-functional projects aimed at removing friction for employees and customers, and IT touches every one of them, sometimes leading, sometimes supporting. That constant contact isn't a nice-to-have; it's what enables a CFO to rely on IT to execute against the business model.
How I work with our CIO
Together, we’ve brought about considerable change for the business. When I arrived at Freshworks, employees could buy whatever software they wanted, resulting in hundreds of tools scattered across the go-to-market side alone. Too often, multiple reporting tools were supposed to show the same numbers, but didn’t.
Ashwin and I built a path: If you want to buy something, there's a process, governed by IT. This process is essential, but once it’s in place, you can start to step back and let the business own the solution. The HR software we use is the clearest example: IT owns the connective tissue linking it to everything else, but HR owns the tool and utilizes it to drive our workforce strategy around engagement, retention, and growth.
Constant contact with the CIO isn't a nice-to-have; it's what enables a CFO to rely on IT to execute against the business model.
Tyler Sloat
CFO and COO, Freshworks
I also want our best IT talent close to the business, not buried in admin. The best CIOs spend their time solving customer-facing problems and driving cross-functional work, not ticket queues. That's what earns IT a seat at the table on strategy, not just infrastructure.
Finding the ROI
Evaluating existing tools or new ones gets the same scrutiny: how will it drive the business forward? We recently replaced three separate travel and expense management tools with a single software platform, reducing manual work and complexity. And, counterintuitively, we invested in a collections tool that cost more upfront, but the payoff was automating workflows to reduce human error and streamline our operations. Every one of these decisions has a business case behind it before we build or buy anything.
Read more: The making of an AI-era IT leader
AI investments are no different. We don't fund a replacement because it's newer or has an AI label. We fund it because it's meaningfully better. These tools fall into three buckets: First, if there are AI capabilities already built into software we consume, we should use them, make sure they’re secure, and hold the vendor accountable for delivering on those capabilities. Second, there are new AI-native tools like Cursor and those get evaluated on their own. Finally, general access tools like Gemini or Claude for the broader team.
Every bucket is tied to an outcome: productivity, accuracy, or some other measurable return. But because so much AI spend is consumption-based rather than a fixed license cost, IT's governance role only grows as they partner with business owners to hold vendors accountable for what they promised.
IT’s best role
If you want IT to become the operational gurus of the business, you have to free them from manual work first. That’s what governance, ROI discipline, and AI’s business-case test are all in service of, not the tools themselves but what they free up IT to do. That’s the partnership I have with Ashwin, and it’s what I’d tell any CFO to look for in their own CIO.
