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From Cost Center to Control Center: Why CFOs Need Task Intelligence

In a turbulent economy, CFOs are stepping into a broader role: not just managing cost, but shaping resilience and powering growth. According to PwC, 57% of CFOs are actively reshaping short-term strategies in response to macroeconomic uncertainty, and 58% are investing in AI to drive real-time forecasting and smarter decision-making.

But while finance leaders have made big gains in optimizing capital, supply chains, and procurement, there’s still one critical blind spot: the workforce.

You know what your labor costs are – but do you know what that spend is actually producing?

To move from cost control to value creation, CFOs need a clearer view of how work gets done: what tasks people are performing, how time is being spent, and where there are opportunities to unlock margin, automate low-value work, or redeploy talent.

This is where task intelligence becomes essential: offering CFOs the visibility to align labor investment with real business impact.

Why Task Intelligence Matters to Finance

Traditional labor cost reports show how much you’re spending … but not necessarily what you’re buying. Task intelligence changes that, by connecting operational activity with workforce data. It reveals:

  • Where redundancy or duplication is driving unnecessary cost
  • Where automation or role redesign could unlock margin
  • How labor spend aligns (or doesn’t) with strategic priorities
  • How much time is spent on different types of tasks

And when you connect task data to skills intelligence – insight into the capabilities of your workforce – you get a powerful new way to measure the ROI of labor: by understanding not just what people cost, but what they can do and are doing.

For example, senior engineers might be frequently carrying out basic troubleshooting tasks that could be handled by junior staff. Product managers and UX designers may be, separately, carrying out very similar forms of user research. Manual order entry might be performed by both Operations and Customer Support, or status reporting duplicated between Finance and Sales.

Smarter Labor Cost Management

Finance leaders have spent years optimizing capital expenditure, supply chain efficiency, and procurement strategies. Now it’s time to bring that same level of precision to workforce investment.

With AI-powered task intelligence, you can:

  • Track the true cost of tasks (not just salaries)
  • Pinpoint where high-cost roles are performing low-complexity work
  • Spot mismatches between talent and task
  • Identify areas where retraining or reallocation would be more cost-effective than hiring

Better Forecasting, Better Trade-Offs

As AI and automation reshape how work is done, Finance needs tools to evaluate the changing economics of labor. Task intelligence from Beamery enables you to model “build vs. buy vs. automate” scenarios with actual task-level costs, and forecast the impact of headcount changes beyond surface-level cost savings.

With these insights, you can confidently answer: Where should we automate? Where should we invest? Where are we wasting workforce spend?

Supporting Strategic Finance, Not Just Control

Modern CFOs are stepping into a broader enterprise role: one that spans transformation, operations, and growth. You’re expected to manage risk, drive productivity, and enable agility – not just close the books.

Task and skills intelligence give you the tools to:

  • Partner with HR and Operations on intelligent workforce design
  • Contribute to M&A due diligence by assessing capability gaps and overlaps
  • Identify costly skill shortages before they disrupt delivery
  • Monitor early warning signs of underutilized teams or attrition risk

By seeing where value is created (or lost) at the task level, you gain a financial edge in managing your most complex and expensive asset: your people.

Speak To Beamery

Beamery’s agentic AI platform connects internal and external data to give CFOs and their business partners a live, intelligent picture of workforce activity, cost, and potential.

By bringing together task intelligence, skills data, and labor market metrics, Beamery enables:

  • Clear visibility into how labor spend translates into business value
  • Evidence-based decisions about where to hire, retrain, or redesign
  • Smarter trade-offs between automation, outsourcing, and internal mobility

The result: faster, smarter decisions that protect margins, support growth, and help you lead with confidence in a changing world of work.

Discover how Beamery helps CFOs turn workforce cost centers into engines of value. Get in touch today.

About the Author

Erinn Tarpey is Chief Marketing Officer at Beamery. An expert in scaling B2B SaaS marketing for global enterprises, she leads the company’s brand, positioning, and go-to-market strategy. Erinn is recognized as an expert in HR and finance technology marketing, and works closely with enterprise organizations to connect marketing efforts with business outcomes. She has held senior roles at Visual Lease, iCIMS, and several SaaS procurement platforms. Prior to Beamery, she served as CMO at Visual Lease, where she led revenue-driving marketing initiatives and helped the company achieve significant growth during her tenure.

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