Some careers follow a straight line. Others trace something far more interesting, shaped by curiosity, geography, and the willingness to keep moving toward whatever comes next. Cristian Bøhnsdalen‘s path falls squarely in the second category. From his early days as a junior SAP FICO consultant in Argentina to nearly a decade of work across Norway, and back again to Buenos Aires where he now leads CB Consulting, his journey reads less like a career plan and more like a gradual discovery of exactly where his skills and the world’s needs would eventually meet. That meeting point, as it turns out, is artificial intelligence inside enterprise finance. And few people are better positioned to lead there than someone who has spent close to two decades understanding both the technical architecture of SAP systems and the human realities of the organizations that run on them.
From Accountant to Consultant: How It All Began
Cristian’s entry into the SAP world in 2008 was driven by a straightforward but consequential realization: his background in accounting did not have to confine him to traditional finance roles. SAP’s FICO module offered a natural bridge between financial expertise and enterprise technology, and he recognized it without hesitation. “I found my niche and my passion,” he says, describing that early decision with the kind of clarity that only comes when someone looks back and sees how obviously everything is connected.
What followed was a career that refused to stay in one place. He rose through roles in Argentina, led financial accounting teams, and eventually answered a call that most professionals would have hesitated at, relocating to Norway to work with Unit 4 Agresso, later returning to SAP in a country where he would need to operate professionally in Norwegian. His mother’s heritage gave him citizenship, but the language and culture were still genuine challenges he chose to meet head-on. The years in Norway proved formative in ways that went well beyond the technical. Working alongside colleagues from many nationalities, engaging with top-tier technology, and navigating the discipline of Northern European work culture gave Cristian a breadth of perspective that would later become one of his clearest professional advantages. When life eventually brought him back to Buenos Aires, he carried a truly international career in both passport and practice.
Building CB Consulting: Freedom, Focus, and a Bigger Vision
CB Consulting was established in September 2019, born from Cristian’s decision to step into independent consulting and embrace both the responsibility and the freedom that comes with building something of his own. “I enjoy freedom and the ever-changing dynamic environment,” he says. “Many projects have gone by, and I have a blast learning new things and specializing even more, each time achieving greater depth and expertise.” But the vision behind CB Consulting has always reached further than a single consultant’s project list. Cristian sees the company as a vehicle for something he believes in at a fundamental level. The conviction that technology, applied thoughtfully and with genuine competence, makes human life measurably better.
“Technology makes us better, improved human beings,” he says. “It is only through technological development that a high standard of living will be achieved for all the people on Earth.” The trajectory he has set for CB Consulting reflects this conviction directly. The company is actively evolving toward becoming a Business AI consultancy, offering AI-specific services within the SAP ecosystem, a transition he is not simply anticipating but actively preparing for with every engagement he takes on today.
What AI Is Actually Doing to Enterprise Finance
Ask Cristian what artificial intelligence is changing inside SAP financial operations, and the answer is immediate and grounded in specifics. SAP’s recently launched Autonomous Enterprise framework is estimated to automate up to 80 percent of tasks currently performed in Finance, and that is not a distant forecast but a shift already underway with real consequences for how organizations are structured and how work gets done. Collections management, for example, will increasingly handle the administrative and processing side automatically, freeing human workers to focus on the genuinely relationship-driven parts of the job such as calling customers, negotiating payment terms, and building the kind of trust that software cannot replicate.
On the payments side, SAP’s own AI assistant Joule can now receive an uploaded invoice and process it through to payment with minimal human intervention, though human oversight remains essential for verifying accuracy and catching exceptions. For the people at the top of organizations, the shift is equally significant. “Decision makers will be able to rely on automated processes obtaining real time insights on demand, instead of waiting forever for BI teams to customize and develop reports,” Cristian explains. The move from retrospective reporting to live, on-demand intelligence is one of the most consequential changes in enterprise management in a generation, and AI inside SAP is one of the primary engines driving it forward.
The Challenges Organizations Face and How to Navigate Them
Despite the momentum, Cristian is clear-eyed about the friction points that will slow AI adoption in enterprise environments. He identifies two challenges that organizations consistently run into. The first is stability and trust. Generative AI is still relatively new, and most large organizations will wait until solutions have accumulated a proven track record before committing them at scale. That caution is not irrational but the natural behavior of institutions that carry real financial and regulatory accountability, and that timeline needs to be respected rather than rushed. The second challenge is competence.
“Few people have the skillset to implement AI solutions,” he says. “Even if the business is ready to transition to AI, they might struggle finding the right competence.” The gap between organizational readiness and available talent is real, and it is one of the reasons Cristian sees an experienced AI-capable SAP consultant not merely as a service provider but as a genuine strategic asset for any client. His approach to both challenges is anchored in one principle he returns to consistently: explainability matters as much as efficiency. “AI must be auditable, or leaders will not trust its implementation,” he says. “Sometimes it might be necessary to sacrifice a certain degree of automation if it comes with higher levels of explainability, which can help top management move the case for AI forward.” It is a nuanced position born from genuine experience with how organizational decisions actually get made and where implementations most commonly stall.
Leadership in Practice: A Project That Captures the Approach
One project stands out as a clear illustration of how Cristian leads when conditions are complex, and the margin for error is narrow. During an SAP implementation for a medical technology company, he was responsible for the financial localization of South American countries, overseeing a multilingual team hired specifically for language capabilities and regional tax expertise. Development work had been outsourced to a team in India with limited experience in the specific requirements involved, and the gap between expectation and capability was significant.
Rather than treating that gap as an obstacle, he treated it as an information problem with a straightforward solution. “The way we managed was to overcome the lack of expertise with very specific instructions in our specifications to guide them step by step and support them in the whole process,” he explains. “When the team has less experience, they need more guidance, so that was the solution.” It is a leadership philosophy that is both practical and genuinely respectful, built on the belief that people can succeed when they are given what they actually need to succeed, and that a leader’s job is to figure out what that is.
What an AI-First Mindset Really Looks Like
When asked to define the qualities of an impactful AI leader, Cristian begins not with technical credentials but with orientation. “The AI-first mindset must be there,” he says. “The leader must embrace technological development and not resist change. He must acknowledge that change will take place anyway, and taking the lead will position his company with a unique advantage.” That mindset is not just a personal disposition but an organizational force. When it exists at the top, it cascades downward, shaping how middle management approaches decisions, how teams respond to new tools, and how deeply an organization is willing to commit to a transformation that will require genuine adaptation at every level.
Getting middle management genuinely on board is, in his view, one of the most underrated challenges of any serious AI transformation effort. “Politics will play a role,” he says, with the directness of someone who has watched implementations succeed and stall, and who understands the difference between leadership that announces a vision and leadership that actually brings people through one.
Staying Relevant in a Field That Never Stands Still
For Cristian, staying current is not a passive process or an occasional obligation. It is an active and ongoing commitment to learning through every available channel, including books, articles, videos, online courses, and in-person events where both knowledge and relationships get built simultaneously. He completed a postgraduate AI for Leaders program at the University of Texas, which he describes simply as “mind-blowing,” and he continues to participate in technology and AI events in major cities as a deliberate part of how he keeps both his thinking and his network sharp. The ability to translate complex technical capability into clear, immediately perceivable business value is, for him, as important as the technical knowledge itself.
“With the right AI competence, it will be easy to explain the benefits of AI so that customers can immediately perceive the advantages of the AI-driven focus,” he says. That communication skill, the ability to make transformation feel accessible rather than abstract, is what turns good consulting into genuine partnership.
Advice for the Next Generation
Cristian’s counsel for aspiring SAP AI consultants is direct and organized around three pillars he has come to believe in through his own experience. The first is education. “Finish a university career. It is important to have the foundation for what comes next,” he says, adding that the SAP world welcomes people from genuinely diverse academic backgrounds, not just engineers. Certifications and courses in both SAP and AI should be pursued alongside formal education, because eventually it all comes together. The second is hands-on experience. Every end-to-end project completed adds a layer of understanding and capability that no course alone can provide, and the accumulation of that experience is what separates a good consultant from a trusted one. The third is the network.
“Meet fascinating people and establish relationships with mutual trust to boost your career,” he says. “Thrive in the virtual world but in the physical as well.” In a field moving as fast as AI-driven enterprise technology, who you know and who trusts you matters as much as what you know.
The Road Ahead
The future Cristian is building toward is one where CB Consulting serves as a trusted partner for organizations navigating their own AI transformation journeys inside SAP. The focus will be on AI-driven projects, on building genuine internal competence within client organizations, and on accompanying businesses through a shift he sees as one of the defining transitions of the current era. “AI transformation is one of the pillars of the fourth industrial revolution, and eventually it will lead to higher levels of productivity for those who apply for it,” he says. His goal is not simply to stay ahead of that wave but to help others ride it with confidence, real competence, and a clear understanding of what they are stepping into.
For the organizations and professionals paying close attention, that kind of steady, experienced guidance is exactly what the moment calls for. For organizations that have spent years watching AI promises outpace AI delivery, Cristian represents something genuinely valuable: a practitioner who combines deep technical fluency with the patience to bring people along, and the honesty to say when the technology is ready and when it is not yet.
