Which 1 AI tool should your finance team use? (hint: you already have it)

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Last month, I had a call with a CFO who was asking me which AI tool his team should use.

ChatGPT? Copilot? Claude? Gemini?

His finance team was all over the place. Some people were using their own personal ChatGPT accounts. Or worse, they were using free consumer versions of AI when they thought they were using private work accounts.

So I asked him this: "What do you use for email and docs?"

"Google Workspace," he said.

"Okay, so you have Gemini Pro already. It's included in your Google Workspace license."

Long pause.

"Wait. We have what?"

He did not know this.

Right now, I’m seeing teams do pilots for ChatGPT, while they already have access to a tool connected to their data (like Gemini or Copilot).

I see them go through another vendor selection process and security analysis process, when they do not need to do this at all.

Plus, the cost is not just the money (and time) you're wasting on subscriptions that are duplicated.

It's the time your team spends choosing which tool to use instead of actually doing the work.

I call this analysis paralysis. When you have too many choices, you spend time deciding instead of acting.

So today I will show you how to decide which tool is best for your finance team.

AI Tool Turmoil

This is the problem:

Your junior analyst uses their own personal ChatGPT account because they needed help with a variance commentary.

Your FP&A manager is using Claude because someone on LinkedIn said it's better for financial analysis.

Your senior director has access to Gemini through the company's Google Workspace account for emails and meeting summaries.

And you? You're trying to figure out which one the company should actually standardize on.

This creates three problems:

Problem 1: You're Paying Twice (or Three Times)

Your company already has Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. That means you already have Copilot or Gemini included in your license.

But your team doesn't know this. So they are using their own subscriptions (or asking you for budget).

Let's do the math:

• 10 people on your finance team
• Each person buys ChatGPT Plus at $20/month
• That's $200/month or $2,400/year
• For a tool you already own in a different form

And this doesn't count the other AI subscriptions people are buying. Meeting notes tools. Document summarizers. Writing assistants.

Plus, most of those features are already in Copilot or Gemini already.

Problem 2: Nobody Can Collaborate

Your junior analyst built an amazing prompt for generating variance commentary in ChatGPT.

Your FP&A manager built a similar prompt in Claude.

They can't share their work with each other because they're using different tools that produce different outputs.

So everyone's rebuilding the same prompts from scratch. There's no shared library or team knowledge base. Just individuals working in silos.

When someone leaves, their prompts leave with them.

Problem 3: Analysis Paralysis

This part is a big problem for getting work done.

Every time someone needs to use AI, they have to decide: Which tool should I use for this task?

They spend 10 minutes thinking about which tool to open before they even start the actual work (or they use all of them to see which is best which takes 3 x more time).

Multiply that across your team, and across every task. This is hours per week that are spent choosing instead of doing.

There is a better way.

The Ecosystem-First Approach

Instead of "which AI tool is best?"

Think "what ecosystem are we already in?"

Because if your company runs on Microsoft 365, you already have access to Copilot Chat. If you run on Google Workspace, you already have Gemini Pro.

And those tools can handle 80% of what your finance team needs AI for.

Here are 3 reasons why ecosystem first is a good option:

Reason 1: Security as standard

When you use Copilot through your Microsoft 365 license or Gemini through Google Workspace, you get enterprise-grade data protection by default.

Your data doesn't train their models. You have audit trails. Your IT team can manage access centrally. It's all under the same security umbrella as your email and files.

If you compare this to everyone using their own ChatGPT personal accounts. There is no central control and no visibility into what's being shared. And, no way to know if someone just pasted your company's confidential forecast into a free account.

Reason 2: Your team can collaborate

When everyone uses the same tool in the same environment:

Your FP&A analyst builds a great Gemini Gem for variance commentary and shares it in Google Drive.

Your senior analyst improves it and shares it back.

Your junior analyst uses it the next month without rebuilding from scratch.

This is the best way for teams to work. It avoids 10 people using 10 different tools with 10 separate conversation histories that disappear when someone leaves.

Reason 3: It is better connected

Most of your business lives in OneDrive or Google Drive.

When you use either Copilot Chat or Gemini, it has direct access to your files.

This means your team is not uploading files manually or copying and pasting data.

This is the advantage of using AI inside your existing ecosystem instead of bolting on another tool.

What About Advanced Features?

Now, I know that you are thinking this: ChatGPT Pro has thinking mode. Claude can generate real PowerPoint files. Aren't those more advanced?

Yes and No. Copilot now has GPT-5 with thinking mode. Gemini uses Google's latest Gemini 3 models (which also thinks) and can generate slides too.

These are not the free consumer versions from two years ago.

They're enterprise-grade AI with the same foundational models, just integrated into your workflow.

And for the times when you really need something more. Like building a complex financial model that requires deep multi-step reasoning. Or generating a complete Excel file with formulas from scratch.

Then yes, you might want to add ChatGPT or Claude as a specialist tool for that 10-20% of work.

But don't make the specialist tool your default tool for everything.

Google's 2025 ROI of AI report found that 74% of companies see ROI from at least one AI use case.

But, success only comes when teams use AI together, consistently for that use case.

So, the best AI tool for your team isn't the one with the most features. It's the one they'll actually use.

The 80/20 Rule

80% of your team's AI work → Ecosystem tool (Copilot or Gemini)

• Daily analysis, email drafts, data lookups, report summaries

20% of advanced work → Specialist tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Other tool)

• Complex modeling, deep reasoning, file generation from scratch

Once you make this decision, your team stops spending time choosing tools and starts spending time using them to do better work.

The goal with all of this is an 'AI first' finance team.

Which means that - while other finance teams are still debating which tool to buy - yours will already be creating better forecasts, creating board decks faster, and producing clearer variance commentary.

The Bottom Line

Make one decision based on the ecosystem you already live in. Then, add specialist tools only when your ecosystem tool cannot do this job.

One leadership decision and one primary tool, with clear guidelines on when to use what.

Because right now, your team is spending time choosing instead of doing. They are using their own versions of subscriptions that you own already. And nobody can share their work because everyone's in a different tool.

Your Move

Take 15 minutes this week. Open your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace admin panel (or ask IT).

Look at what you're already paying for, and you will find AI capabilities you didn’t know were there.

Then make the call.

The finance team of the future is the one with an ‘AI First’ mindset.

But you need to decide on a primary AI tool… first.

What will you decide?

Best,

Your AI Finance Expert,

Nicolas

P.S. - What did you think of this approach? Hit reply and let me know which ecosystem you're in and if you're planning to consolidate your team's AI tools (I read all replies).

P.P.S. - If you want to see my ChatGPT vs Copilot vs Gemini video, where I compare which is best for finance on YouTube, you can watch it here.