Every finance team is being asked the same question: Should we be using AI to build our models? The Ankura OCFO® team ran identical prompts through Claude for Excel, M365 Copilot (Agent Mode), ChatGPT in Excel, Shortcut (Free Tier – Open SourceModel), and Shortcut (Pro Tier) against a fictional company (Fieldstone Retail Holdings, approximately $180 million revenue, three entities).
The three test scenarios — a Long-Range Plan, 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast, and Customer Profitability Analysis — were selected because they mirror common financial modeling exercises in PE-backed finance and operations environments. AI was used to generate the fictional company data and over 500 word prompts for each scenario.
