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Techsplainers by IBM offers quick, clear insights on generative AI, agentic AI, cybersecurity, and more, every weekday. Stay ahead in tech with bite‑sized episodes perfect for your commute or coffee break.

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AI‑Driven Finance Ops: From Planning to Performance Management

How can finance teams move from reactive number‑crunching to AI‑powered, organization‑wide strategic leadership? This week on Techsplainers, we unpack the future of Finance Ops, EPM, xP&A, AI in FP&A, scenario planning, and modern financial management, to reveal how connected planning, automation, and predictive insights transform business performance.

Finance Ops:

Episode 101: What is enterprise performance management (EPM)?
Episode 102: What is extended planning analysis (xP&A)
Episode 103: AI in financial planning & analysis
Episode 104: What is scenario planning?
Episode 105: What is financial management?

Episode 101 |

What is enterprise performance management (EPM)?

Voice: Teaganne Finn | Authors: Teaganne Finn , Ian Smalley

Learn more

Read the IBM Explainers

Developers collaborating in session at office environment

What is enterprise performance management (EPM)?

Close-up of a person pointing to financial data displayed on screen

What is extended planning and analysis (xP&A)?

Man working with multi-monitor setup

AI in financial planning and analysis (FP&A)

Two business people using a laptop together in an office

What is scenario planning?

Modern trading desk with multiple monitors

What is financial management?

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Getting ready for Think 2026

Explore these recommended episodes ahead of Think 2026 so you’ll arrive ready to dive deeper, follow the conversations with confidence, and get even more value out of the event.

Explore the Think 2026 catalog

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Alice Gomstyn

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: IBM Cloud Education Team

Voice: Matt Finio

Watch previous episodes

Data integration:

Episode 096: What is data integration?
Episode 097: ELT vs. ETL: What’s the difference?
Episode 098: What is real-time data integration?
Episode 099: What is change data capture?
Episode 100: Modern ETL: The brainstem of enterprise AI

Mastering Identity Security:

Episode 091: What is identity security?
Episode 092: What is digital identity?
Episode 093: What is nonhuman identity?
Episode 094: What is an identity fabric?
Episode 095: What is identity threat detection and response (ITDR)?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Alice Gomstyn

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: IBM Cloud Education Team

Voice: Matt Finio

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors:James Holdsworth, Matthew Kosinski

Voice: Bryan Clark

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors:James Holdsworth, Matthew Kosinski

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Annie Badman , Matthew Kosinski

Find all the episodes

Agentic AI

Techsplainers thumbnail - what is agentic AI?

Voice: Alice Gomstyn | Authors: Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - what are AI agents?

Voice: Alice Gomstyn | Authors: Anna Gutowska

Techsplainers thumbnail - AI agents vs. AI assistants

Voice: Alice Gomstyn | Authors: Charlotte Hu, Amanda Downie, Matthew Finio,

Techsplainers thumbnail - types of AI agents

Voice: Alice Gomstyn | Authors: Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - what is agentic architecture?

Voice: Alice Gomstyn

IBM Think Podcast thumbnail for Ep 7.031 - What is a multi-agent system?

Voice: Alice Gomstyn | Authors: Anna Gutowska

IBM Think Podcast thumbnail for Episode 7.032 - "What is multi-agent collaboration?"

Voice: Alice Gomstyn | Authors: Shalini Harkar

AI agent components

What are the components of AI agents?

Voice: Selma Pacheco | Authors: Cole Stryker

What is AI agent perception and AI agent planning?

Voice: Selma Pacheco | Authors: Cole Stryker

What is AI agent memory and agentic reasoning?

Voice: Selma Pacheco | Authors: Cole Stryker, Rina Diane Caballar

What is tool calling?

Voice: Selma Pacheco | Authors: Cole Stryker

What is AI agent communication and AI agent learning?

Voice: Selma Pacheco | Authors: Cole Stryker, Ivan Belcic

What is a simple reflex agent?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Cole Stryker

What is a model-based reflex agent?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Cole Stryker, Ivan Belcic

What is a goal-based agent?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: David Zax

What is a utility-based agent?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Cole Stryker, Ivan Belcic

What are hierarchical AI agents?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Ivan Belcic, Cole Stryker

Integration

What is electronic data interchange (EDI)?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Dan Nosowitz, Michael Goodwin

What is EDI integration?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Jim Holdsworth, Michael Goodwin

What is enterprise application integration?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Nick Gallagher, Michael Goodwin

What is iPaaS (integration platform as a service)?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Chrystal R. China, Nick Gallagher, Michael Goodwin

iPaaS examples and use cases

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Nick Gallagher, Michael Goodwin

Hybrid cloud

What is hybrid cloud?

Voice: Daniela Baez | Authors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley

What is cloud infrastructure?

Voice: Daniela Baez | Authors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley

What is virtualization?

Voice: Daniela Baez | Authors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley

What is multicloud?

Voice: Daniela Baez

What is cloud storage?

Voice: Daniela Baez | Authors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley

Asset management and maintenance

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Alexandra Jonker

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Mesh Flinders, Ian Smalley

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Alice Gomstyn

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Nick Gallagher

Voice: Ian Smalley

AI coding

What code LLMs mean for the future of software development

Voice: Erika Russi | Authors: Rina Diane Caballar , Cole Stryker

What is COBOL modernization?

Voice: Erika Russi | Authors: Rina Diane Caballar , Cole Stryker

What is legacy code?

Voice: Erika Russi | Authors: Rina Diane Caballar , Cole Stryker

AI code documentation: Benefits and top tips

Voice: Erika Russi | Authors: Rina Diane Caballar , Cole Stryker

What is code refactoring?

Voice: Erika Russi

Cybersecurity

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors:James Holdsworth, Matthew Kosinski

Voice: Bryan Clark

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors:James Holdsworth, Matthew Kosinski

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Annie Badman , Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - what is a data breach?

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is social engineering?

Voice: Bryan Clark

Techsplainers thumbnail - what is phishing?

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 1: What is ransomware?

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 2: What is ransomware?

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is authentication?

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is access management?

Voice: Bryan Clark | Authors: Matthew Kosinski, Jim Holdsworth

Data for AI

Techsplainers thumbnail - what is a data architecture?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Tom Krantz, Alexandra Jonker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is a data lake?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is a data lakehouse?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Alice Gomstyn

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is data fabric?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is data quality management?

Voice: Matt Finio

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is data integrity?

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Tim Mucci, Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is data accuracy?

Voice: Matt Finio

Data quality

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Alice Gomstyn

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: Alexandra Jonker, Tom Krantz

Voice: Matt Finio | Authors: IBM Cloud Education Team

Voice: Matt Finio

Voice: Mimi Sun Longo

Voice: Mimi Sun Longo | Authors: Judith Aquino, Alexandra Jonker

Voice: Mimi Sun Longo

Voice: Mimi Sun Longo

Voice: Mimi Sun Longo

DevOps

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 1: What is DevOps?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Gregg Lindemulder, Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 2: What is DevOps?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Gregg Lindemulder, Matthew Kosinski

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is continuous integration?

Voice: Dan Segal | Authors: Chrystal R. China, Michael Goodwin

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is continuous delivery?

Voice: Dan Segal

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is continuous testing?

Voice: Dan Segal

More episodes

Generative AI
Machine Learning
Observability
Quantum

Generative AI

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is generative AI?

Voice: Amanda Downie | Authors: Cole Stryker, Mark Scapicchio

Techsplainers thumbnail - What are large language models (LLMs)?

Voice: Amanda Downie | Authors: Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What are vision language models (VLMs)?

Voice: Amanda Downie

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is retrieval augmented generation (RAG)?

Voice: Amanda Downie | Authors: Ivan Belcic

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is vibe coding?

Voice: Amanda Downie

Machine Learning

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is machine learning?

Voice: Anna Gutowska | Authors: Dave Bergmann

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is supervised learning?

Voice: Anna Gutowska | Authors: Ivan Belcic, Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is unsupervised learning?

Voice: Anna Gutowska

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is semi-supervised learning?

Voice: Anna Gutowska | Authors: Dave Bergmann

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is reinforcement learning?

Voice: Anna Gutowska | Authors: Jacob Murel, Eda Kavlakoglu

AI MLOps

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 1: What is MLOps?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Tim Mucci, Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 2: What is MLOps?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Tim Mucci, Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is a machine learning pipeline?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Ivan Belcic, Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is AI lifecycle management?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Kazuaki Ishizaki

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is model deployment?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Rina Diane Caballar, Cole Stryker

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is data labeling?

Voice: Ian Smalley

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is AutoML?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Ivan Belcic, Cole Stryker

Observability

Techsplainers thumbnail - what is observability?

Voice: PJ Hagerty

Techsplainers thumbnail - Three pillars of observability

Voice: PJ Hagerty | Authors: Chrystal R. China

Techsplainers thumbnail - observability vs monitoring

Voice: PJ Hagerty | Authors: Chrystal R. China

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is network observability?

Voice: PJ Hagerty | Authors: Chrystal R. China, Sanchita Chakraborti

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is network observability?

Voice: PJ Hagerty | Authors: Chrystal R. China, Sanchita Chakraborti

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is SRE observability?

Voice: PJ Hagerty | Authors: Chrystal R. China

Techsplainers thumbnail - What is full-stack observability?

Voice: PJ Hagerty | Authors: Jim Holdsworth, Annie Badman

Quantum Computing

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 1: What is quantum computing?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Josh Schneider, Ian Smalley

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 2: What is quantum computing?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Josh Schneider, Ian Smalley

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 3: What is quantum computing?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Josh Schneider, Ian Smalley

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 1: What is a qubit?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Josh Schneider, Ian Smalley

Techsplainers thumbnail - Part 2: What is a qubit?

Voice: Ian Smalley | Authors: Josh Schneider, Ian Smalley

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