I have spent my career inside the finance problems I now help organisations solve.
Craig Clarkson FCCA is a Fellow Chartered Certified Accountant, finance transformation leader and specialist in practical AI for the Office of the CFO.
- · Fellow Chartered Certified Accountant
- · Former Finance Director and Financial Controller
- · Finance transformation leader
- · ERP and EPM programme delivery
- · Practical AI implementation
- · Founder of Altay AI
I began my career inside the finance function — as a Financial Controller, then a Finance Director — carrying the weight of the numbers and the responsibility for the controls behind them.
Over time, my work moved into the design and delivery of finance itself: ERP and EPM programmes, operating-model change, and the difficult work of making finance functions materially better rather than simply busier. I have led that work from inside senior finance roles and from alongside the CFO.
AI has changed the conversation. Not because it is magical, but because it finally makes tractable a set of finance problems that were previously judged uneconomic to solve — analysis nobody had time for, controls that only lived on paper, decisions that took too long to prepare.
I founded Altay AI to bring the consulting, engineering and implementation capability needed to turn that opportunity into working solutions inside real finance functions. Alongside it, I advise CFOs, write, and train finance teams.
I am writing a book for CFOs and finance leaders on the same subject. Details will follow when there is something worth saying about publication.
Formal qualifications behind the practical advice.
Finance AI work sits across technology, process, governance and people. These qualifications shape how I design, deliver and embed that work inside real organisations.
Chartered Programme Manager
Trained to run large, complex programmes with discipline — useful when finance AI work touches ERP, EPM, process redesign and operating-model change at the same time.
PRINCE2 Practitioner
Applies structured project governance and stage-by-stage control, which keeps AI pilots from drifting into vague experiments without clear deliverables.
Change Management Practitioner
Helps finance teams adopt new tools and workflows rather than simply installing them — because the value of AI only appears when people actually use it.
Benefits Management Practitioner
Focuses on identifying, tracking and realising the business value of investments — so AI work is judged by outcomes, not activity.