4 countries, 1 retiring Controller, and no plan
Ian’s one of the CFOs in my community of 3,295 finance pros.
He manages a group that works in 4 countries. His International Controller is about to retire. So he had a big problem. He needed a 3-year plan. He needed to know who replaces who. Who gets trained. Which systems change. And he needed it across four countries at once.
A few years ago, this is a 6-month job.
You hire consultants and you wait. And you pay a lot of money. And by the time the plan is finished, you’ve run out of time to act on it – Ian did not do that. He opened Copilot Researcher, and ten minutes later, it came back with a full draft: succession for every role, a 2-page job description for the new Controller, and a training plan.
All he did was start with a good brief. So today, I’m going to show you how to do the same.
The CIA has used this method since the Cold War
The CIA has used the same research method for years.
The FBI uses it too. They call it ‘The Intelligence Cycle’. Plan the question. Collect the data. Process it. Analyze it. Share it. Then you get feedback and improve it.
What’s super important here is that you plan the question first. Before you collect anything. The quality of your answer is set by the quality of your question.
Copilot Researcher helps you do this In about 10 minutes.
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And speed is your advantage, because the work that matters most for your career is the work with no deadline. So your strategy gets delayed. You close gets done. Your board deck gets done. But the 3-year plan is always ‘a next quarter job’.
I’ve experienced this my finance career. People always delay strategy, because it's not urgent. But when you have one month's notice, you have no other choice. So you do it.
I once had a handover squeezed into 30 days because of office politics. It worked out, but nobody should have to plan in 30 days of panic.
A team of analysts that works in 10 minutes
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Copilot Researcher is a research agent inside Microsoft.
You give it a question. It searches through your work files, your emails, and the web. Then it comes back with a long, written report. If you have ever opened 20 tabs to research one topic, this does all of that for you.
Research mode is much better at finding information than the normal model. It reads more. It checks more sources. Then it builds a detailed report.
One note before you try it. Researcher needs the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot business license.
But you can also do this with other tools. Claude has Research. ChatGPT and Gemini have Deep Research. So pick the one that connects to your work data that you’re already using.
With all of them, you are outsourcing that analyst work. But you’re keeping experience by building it into the brief. Just like the CIA's step one, you plan the question first.
Here’s the full workflow.
A full 3-year plan in one afternoon
Step 1 – Capture reality first
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Each manager (including Ian) listed their responsibilities, then ran them through Copilot against their email, calendar, and Teams meetings from the past 12–24 months to make sure nothing was missed.
Step 2 – Load context into the research tool
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He fed in the responsibility lists plus the finance org chart, then ran a detailed prompt covering the company's global structure, revenue by region, strategic growth in India, China's declining volume, and the upcoming retirement of the International Controller. Asking Copilot to critically assess the current structure and recommend a world-class alternative with bench strength and succession planning for every role.
Step 3 – Add systems context for depth
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A second prompt added the technology roadmap: Power BI + Microsoft Fabric replacing BOARD, Vena replacing their financial consolidation tool, and ERP transitions in India and Italy (all with specific timelines). This produced two outputs: a 2-page International Controller job description and a detailed 3-year training plan covering finance technical skills, systems and data, AI integration, and leadership.
Step 4 – Turn it into a presentation
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The 17-page action plan went straight into Copilot in PowerPoint, which turned it into a presentation to share with the team.
The result: A lean, AI-informed 3-year strategic plan with a clear path to a world-class finance function.
Ian's top tip:
And he's already onto the next step: using Copilot to build a finance knowledge hub with ISO-9001 process documentation as part of the plan.
The One Thing To Remember
Ian didn’t need a 6-month project. He just needed a good brief, the right tools, and an afternoon.
So the next time you think about pushing your 3-year plan to "next quarter". Ask whether this is something you can do right now.
You most likely already have a tool with Deep Research mode. So open it, and start asking good questions.
You are one good brief away from walking into your next meeting with a strategic plan. While everyone else is still asking for the budget vs actual report 😉
Best,
Your AI Finance Expert,
– Nicolas
P.S – The best way to learn from me directly is to join my weekly masterclasses. 60-mins + Q&A where I’ll get all your AI in Finance questions answered. Join me here.
P.P.S – Build your strategic AI brain by uploading your org structure and strategy docs → How This CFO Uses AI to Save 10+ Hours Per Week