Shiny TechnologiesShiny TechnologiesWork with us

Field Note

Data contracts for finance teams using AI forecasting

LLM copilots are only as trustworthy as the ledger they read from. We set lightweight data contracts so finance leaders know what changed and why.

Published

Sep 30, 2024

Reading Time

7 min read

Topics

DataFinance opsGovernance

Key Takeaway

Short, explicit data contracts align CFO trust with builder speed by clarifying which tables, refresh cadences, and owners support AI forecasts.

Name the authoritative tables

Revenue, expense, and pipeline data often live in three overlapping systems. We pick the table the CFO will defend in a board meeting and label everything else as reference material.

Each table gets an owner, refresh cadence, and validation script that runs before the AI agent can read from it.

Expose assumptions to the business

Every prompt we use for forecasting calls the assumptions directly: currency, time horizon, segment definitions, and any exclusions.

Those assumptions render in the UI so finance can challenge them before the forecast lands in the Monday executive thread.

  • Use the same naming conventions across Snowflake, Notion briefs, and Looker dashboards.
  • Attach data-quality badges (green, yellow, red) so stakeholders know when to treat the output as directional only.

Keep the contract alive

Contracts fail quietly when teams archive them. We calendar quarterly reviews that include finance, RevOps, and the builders maintaining the agents.

When a schema change ships, the contract template forces us to list downstream tools and alerts the AI platform to re-ingest documentation.

Next Steps

Move fast without breaking trust

One-pager contracts

Limit each contract to a single page with table names, fields, owners, SLAs, and failure alerts.

Version control

Store contracts in Git or a versioned workspace so changes are reviewed just like code.

Finance rehearsal

Run a dry-run forecast readout with finance before exposing AI-generated numbers to the full leadership team.

Ready to turn this into a scoped engagement?

We help teams implement these approaches with hands-on execution, not slide decks.