1217: A Sharper Portfolio, A Clearer Capital Story | Brittany Cerwin, CFO, Middleby Corporation

When Evan Goldberg, founder and executive vice president of Oracle NetSuite, declares that ERP as we know it is over, the statement carries particular weight. Goldberg helped pioneer cloud-based enterprise software in 1998, challenging the conventional wisdom about how businesses should manage their financial and operational systems. Nearly three decades later, he sees artificial intelligence driving an equally consequential transformation. Speaking with CFO Thought Leader at SuiteWorld 2026 in Las Vegas, Goldberg described a future in which ERP systems do more than organize information, automate transactions, and generate reports. Increasingly, they will anticipate problems, recommend solutions, and execute work—with human oversight. To Goldberg, the transformation rests on three developments: AI becoming the primary user interface, ERP becoming tailored to individual businesses, and software gaining the ability to perform more work autonomously. The implications extend well beyond technology. Goldberg believes finance teams will increasingly apply their analytical capabilities across the enterprise, identifying operational issues before they affect financial results. He also sees the traditional month-end close giving way to more continuous financial visibility. Rather than focusing exclusively on achieving a zero-day close, Goldberg argues that CFOs should consider how accurately their systems can reflect the business throughout the reporting period. That shift could fundamentally change how finance contributes to decision-making. "We're really trying to free up the CFO from firefighting mode to strategic analysis mode," Goldberg explained. For CFOs, the emerging opportunity is not simply to automate existing responsibilities. It is to redirect financial expertise toward decisions that shape business performance—while increasingly intelligent systems handle more of the underlying work.

When Steve Fox joined Every Man Jack in 2021, the men’s personal care brand had a new private equity owner and an ambitious growth agenda. Carlyle Group saw an opportunity: a widely distributed brand that had never invested heavily in marketing. The challenge was finding the operating leverage to fund that investment. For Fox, the answer increasingly lies in technology. At Every Man Jack, a company known for its outdoor-inspired grooming products, the finance team has remained at five employees even as transaction volume has tripled. Fox credits investments in technology and a growing emphasis on automation. The initiative even has a name: “Nix the Clicks by 26.” The goal is to eliminate manual transactions and replace traditional workflows with functional command centers where employees supervise automated processes, investigate exceptions, and monitor business performance. The transformation gathered momentum after Every Man Jack implemented NetSuite in September 2025. A month later, at SuiteWorld, the company’s IT manager connected the new ERP platform to emerging AI capabilities. Still, Fox recognizes that easier access to technology brings its own complications. With roughly 70 employees suddenly capable of creating software-driven solutions, the company established an AI oversight committee to prevent duplication and keep experimentation aligned with strategy. It’s a distinctly operational approach from a CFO whose career began in public accounting before taking him into retail management and high-growth businesses. And while Fox is enthusiastic about what technology makes possible, his guiding principle remains decidedly human: successful adoption begins with investing in people.

When Joe Iantosca arrived at Cyera as CFO, his first hire wasn't an accountant or an FP&A professional. It was a data engineer. For Iantosca, the decision reflected a conviction formed over years of working inside technology companies: Finance cannot help steer a business without reliable access to the information driving it. That conviction first took shape at Palantir, where he witnessed the impact of centralizing financial and operational data. At BetterCloud, where his responsibilities eventually expanded into the COO role, he carried the lesson further, connecting product, marketing, and business information into a common analytical foundation. At Cyera, that experience has become especially relevant. The five-year-old cybersecurity company operates across 15 countries, employs approximately 2,000 people, and has completed seven acquisitions. Its ambition is to build a comprehensive AI security platform that helps enterprises adopt artificial intelligence while protecting sensitive data. For Iantosca, financing that expansion involves more than allocating capital. It means understanding how customers are acquired, how products reach the market, and how new offerings become commercially successful. His operating background has also made him unusually comfortable entering customer conversations and examining the friction that can slow enterprise sales. Meanwhile, the company's investment in centralized data is helping finance pursue AI-driven automation, including potentially significant changes to the month-end close. The challenge ahead is balancing experimentation with financial discipline. Cyera encourages employees to test new ideas and move quickly, but major investments require evidence. Iantosca's priorities reflect that balance: adaptability, discipline, and the successful commercialization of new products.

When Tom Steer joined Sokin as CFO, he already knew the international payments company unusually well. As an investment banker at FT Partners, he had advised Sokin through a capital raise during a difficult period for fintech funding. He knew its leadership, its financial projections, and the ambitions behind its growth. What he had yet to experience was the challenge of building a finance organization capable of keeping pace. Sokin helps multinational businesses manage cross-border payments, currencies, and treasury operations across fragmented banking systems. Its infrastructure supports payments to 170 countries, while a growing embedded-finance offering allows other companies to bring Sokin’s capabilities to their own customers. For Steer, the challenge is deciding where to place the next investment. North America has emerged as Sokin’s fastest-growing market, while embedded payments and AI-enabled treasury tools present additional opportunities. Each requires capital, talent, and organizational attention. The assumptions behind those decisions can change quickly. An anticipated shortage of engineers, for example, became less pressing as AI improved productivity, shifting attention toward sales and partnerships. Inside finance, Steer encountered a different constraint: a lean team trying to accomplish too much. Three months into the role, he and his finance director stepped away from their daily responsibilities to map the work ahead. “We can’t get this done on our own,” he recalls. Today, Steer is building systems and teams designed for substantially greater transaction volumes. His guiding question is less about what finance can accomplish today than whether its infrastructure will still work when the business doubles in size.

At Vensure Employer Solutions, completing an acquisition is only the beginning. The company has acquired roughly 120 businesses in eight years, and each new addition enters an integration process containing some 1,400 steps. For CFO and President Kara Childress, the challenge is not simply bringing more companies into the fold. It is making certain the organization can absorb them without multiplying its own inefficiencies. That challenge has become familiar territory for Childress, whose career took an unusual turn when she left public accounting to join Vensure as COO. Having previously served as the company’s outside auditor, she knew its finances. Operations offered something different: an opportunity to remove roadblocks and help people perform better. As Vensure expanded into global payroll, HR technology, and human capital management services, Childress’s responsibilities broadened to include finance and the presidency. Along the way, she confronted a finance organization whose regional and divisional structure was duplicating work. The acquisition engine was not slowing down. The finance organization needed to change before further growth made its existing structure untenable. “We need to think about this differently,” Childress recalls. The resulting reorganization reduced duplication and positioned finance to support additional acquisitions without continually adding staff. Meanwhile, a dedicated integration accounting team now brings acquired businesses into a common reporting framework beginning in their first month. Today, Vensure is also expanding its AI capabilities while Childress concentrates on client retention, organic growth, and sales investment. For a company accustomed to acquiring businesses, the next test is making its growing organization work better.