Beyond Excel: How Modern CFOs Leverage Power BI and AI for Better Insights

94% of finance professionals still rely on Excel for reporting. But spreadsheet-driven processes are slow, error-prone, and difficult to scale for strategic decision-making. 

CFOs today are expected to deliver real-time insights — not just historical data. Yet, over 85% of FP&A teams struggle to meet the demand for faster, more actionable financial intelligence.

But reporting isn’t just about faster numbers. It’s also about communicating clearly across the business: helping non-finance stakeholders understand how their actions impact financial performance and strategic goals. And with most FP&A teams under pressure to do more with less, clarity and speed are no longer optional — they’re a competitive necessity.

“Finance people are no longer just report builders — they are insight generators.”
— Deloitte

By combining Power BI, AI, and visual storytelling, finance leaders can transform how performance is analyzed and communicated — and influence decisions at every level.

“45% of CEOs believe their company won’t be viable in 10 years if it stays on its current path.”
— PwC, Future of Finance

You'll learn:
How to guide your finance team’s shift beyond Excel — while preserving what works
How to use AI and automation to uncover trends, reduce manual work, and speed up reporting
What to automate, standardize, and rethink across your reporting stack
How to empower your team to interpret data — not just prepare it
How to leverage the latest technologies and best practices in finance reporting
Presenter

Andrej Lapajne

Founder & CEO at Zebra BI
Andrej brings 25 years of experience in business intelligence and software development and 20 years as a consultant. Helping numerous international and regional companies achieve consistent and efficient internal reporting throughout the organization inspired him to build Zebra BI.

Tilen Barbarič

Lead BI consultant
Tilen Barbarič is a Lead BI Consultant at Zebra BI, with expertise in business intelligence, data visualization, and financial analysis. With a strong background in consulting and finance, he helps companies simplify complex reporting and turn data into meaningful business insights.

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The State of Financial Reporting in 2025

Despite the availability of modern analytics platforms, Excel still dominates finance workflows. But it’s becoming a liability: 

  • Reporting remains slow, fragmented, and hard to maintain 
  • Insights are buried in spreadsheets — not clearly communicated 
  • Stakeholders lack timely, decision-ready views 
  • Finance teams spend more time preparing data than interpreting it 

71% of finance teams spend an entire day each week on operational reporting
— Insightsoftware, 2023 

Today this inefficiency doesn’t just slow things down — it holds finance teams back from adding strategic value. 

The Shift: From Reports to Real-Time Strategic Insights

CFOs are no longer just managing the numbers — they’re driving strategy across the business. This transformation means adopting and implementing tools that support better decisions — not just better reports. In this webinar, you’ll see how leading finance teams can use Power BI, AI, and visual storytelling to deliver insights that drive strategy.

  • Power BI allows you to build scalable, interactive dashboards that update automatically and adapt to changing business needs
  • AI enhances your reports with instant, context-aware insights — generating clear narratives, flagging key changes, and helping users understand what’s really going on.
  • Visual storytelling, powered by Zebra BI, transforms rows of numbers into clear, digestible insights that support faster, more confident decision-making across departments

“CFOs are expected to be change agents, using data and technology to deliver faster, better-informed decisions.”
— CFOdrive.com 

Why This Matters for CFOs

As 82% of CFOs report expanded strategic responsibilities, the pressure to deliver value beyond traditional finance has never been higher. 

You’ll see how Power BI + AI, combined with Zebra BI visuals, are used to analyze real financial data from companies like Coca-Cola, GM, and Nike — uncovering KPIs, trends, and insights that drive strategic decisions.

This session is designed for CFOs, finance directors, controllers, and FP&A leaders ready to transform reporting into a strategic advantage.

Trusted by Finance Teams at Leading Companies

Zebra BI is trusted by leading companies like Coca-Cola, IKEA, Disney, Deloitte, P&G, Nestle and Microsoft to deliver clear, consistent, and actionable financial reporting in Power BI.

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What a great audience, so much knowledge in one place.
Patrick Soehlke
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Watching Zebra BI videos was a game changer for me in dashboard and report design! Thank you for always having great content! ⭐️
Meena Laird
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Woohoo! You guys rock the data viz world - keep up the great work!
Rachel Guthrie
Customer Success at Microsoft
Our financial landing page at KPN is completely based on the sales dashboard template. We also use a copy of the consolidated financials. The templates of Zebra BI are providing us with a lot of inspiration, and we don't "need to invent the wheel" again 😉
Wilco Nagtzaam
Senior FP&A Controller
You guys are amazing! Thanks so much for the great content! Keep up the fantastic work 👍
Kimberley Canoute
Business Intelligence Analyst
An amazing visual for finance. It has a lot of possibilities such as analytic periods, variances, or custom hierarchies for your income statement. 100% advisable.
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Awesome reports. Lots of tricks inside, thanks to the Power BI and the Zebra BI visuals.
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Zebra BI is the best feature that has been created for Power BI. It makes designing reports easy. Thank you.
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I spent a couple of hours searching for a solution, your brief tutorial was the only one that worked for me. Thanks so much!
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It looks so good to a point that makes me be like, what's the point of me learning given I'll never be that good.....😄
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Amazing, Mindblowing, Supereasy
Wilco Nagtzaam
Senior FP&A Controller
I've recently been experimenting with Zebra BI's custom Table visual, which is like the native Power BI matrix on steroids. If your work allows for the use of custom visuals, I think it's definitely worth checking out. Planning on doing a video on it soon...
Brian Julius
Chief Content Officer at Enterprise DNA Ltd.
Hot damn @ZebraBI...speechless. Can’t share it but it looks good!
Jonathan Kapoor
Commercial Reporting and Insights Manager
Hey @ZebraBI: Your CEO is a cool dude and your visuals for #powerbi and #Excel are insane. Thanks @lapajne for presenting today. It was a ton of fun 👊
Lars Schreiber
Power BI Consultant & Trainer
I can't believe you always manage to pack so many new and great features into every update :-)
Pascal Kiefer
CEO & BI Consultant
I dare to say that Zebra BI is the most realy hight level custom visual that exist right now. Amazin job, great updates. I definitely will keep recomending this custom visual to our clients.
Harry Ferrera
Senior Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst
I had a phone interview for a #PowerBI contract, where the interviewer said of the sample dashboards in my CV: "Great...I see you use @ZebraBI!" How cool is that? And they mentioned my top-secret passphrase on the call: "Actionable Insight". I'm in.
Jeff "Power BI Lobbyist" Weir
Modelling/Visualisation consultant and analytical storyteller
The reusable trick of switch I think is brilliant! And obviously, Zebra BI table replaces any other table now in Power bi. RIP to normal tables!
Manuel Barahona Gandía
Business Intelligence Reporting Manager
This visual from Zebra BI enables you to build stunning P&L, CF, and BS statements with complex structures with ease. Very intuitive for developers and users. In my opinion the best solution for Financial Reporting structures. 11 Stars!
Daniel DeHaven
Director of Financial Systems
Already tried stacked bar. It's fantastic! Thank you for such a great feature!
Tania Tombak
Principal Consultant, Executive Dashboards and Data Analysis
As you say, Andrej Lapajne, we spent A LOT, searching and explaining how to do Comments, with Power Apps, and also with the help of Excel. They were workarounds!!! No doubt...this is awesome and the simple way to go forward.
Esteban Fabiani
MS PowerBI Consultant