Smart Finance: Leveraging AI for Enhanced Financial Planning and Analysis

Christian Martinez brings his experience implementing AI solutions at global enterprises to show finance professionals how to transform their capabilities using commercially available tools. Drawing on insights from training over 15,000 professionals through LinkedIn Learning courses, Martinez delivers a hands-on strategy guide for building AI-enhanced financial planning and analysis functions. You’ll learn to deliver faster insights, tighter forecasts, and more focused recommendations using ChatGPT, Python, and automation platforms.

Smart Finance provides a comprehensive roadmap through the four levels of ­analytics―descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive―demonstrating how AI expands professional offerings at each stage. You’ll discover prompt engineering techniques designed specifically for financial workflows, enabling you to generate Python scripts for data cleaning, report building, and trend analysis without programming expertise. The book explains machine learning, large language models, and generative AI in practical terms connected directly to daily finance work.

Build AI-enhanced dashboards that deliver executive summaries, variance commentary, and diagnostic insights in minutes rather than hours. Implement predictive analytics using Prophet and scikit-learn to create accurate revenue, cost, and cash flow forecasts. Automate repetitive FP&A tasks using Power Query, n8n, Make, and Zapier to dramatically reduce month-end cycles. Real-world use cases throughout the book show exactly how to apply these techniques in your own work immediately.

Smart Finance is essential for CFOs, financial analysts, FP&A managers, controllers, and finance executives seeking to offer more agile, accurate, and forward-looking services. Business leaders, data scientists, and AI enthusiasts will also find valuable guidance on harnessing artificial intelligence for financial applications, regardless of their current technical background or coding experience.

‘No one bridges the gap between finance and data science quite like Christian. He turns complex analytics into practical tools that drive smarter, faster decisions for CFOs and FP&A leaders.’
Nicolas Boucher, Founder, AI Finance Club

Transform financial planning and analysis with AI tools you can use today

Smart Finance: Leveraging AI for Enhanced Financial Planning and Analysis shows finance professionals how to harness ChatGPT, Python, and automation platforms to revolutionise every aspect of their work. From monthly closes to strategic decision-making, you’ll discover how commercially available AI tools can deliver faster insights, tighter forecasts, and more focused recommendations while competitors struggle to keep pace with evolving demands.

Navigate the four levels of analytics―descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive―with AI enhancing your capabilities at each stage. Learn prompt engineering techniques for financial workflows, generate Python code without programming knowledge, and build automated workflows using both code-based and no-code solutions. Create AI-enhanced dashboards delivering executive summaries and variance commentary in minutes and implement predictive analytics for accurate forecasting.

Written for CFOs, financial analysts, FP&A managers, controllers, and finance executives ready to transform their services, Smart Finance requires no technical or coding background. Business leaders and AI enthusiasts will also discover how to leverage artificial intelligence for practical financial applications.