DAF Night 2026: ZYLIO takes first place
On Monday 4 May 2026, the Théâtre de la Madeleine in Paris hosted the DAF Night, the disruptive night for CFOs, organised by Républik Finance in partnership with DFCG Île-de-France.
In the room: the leading figures of the French financial ecosystem.
On stage: finalists who had pitched before a jury of 25 CFOs from leading
groups (GE HealthCare, Sodexo, Thales, The Coca-Cola Company, DFCG).
That evening, ZYLIO won the trophy in the Cash, Capital & Efficiency category.
What the DAF Night reveals about decision-makers' priorities in 2026
An event that takes the pulse of the finance function
The DAF Night is an event rooted in the financial community, organised with DFCG Île-de-France, which brings together nearly 1,300 corporate finance members in the Paris region. Applications are evaluated by active CFOs and not by investors or tech journalists.
A trophy awarded by peers who face the same problems, the same constraints and the same responsibilities as your clients. That is a validation of a different order than that of a generalist jury.
The process was rigorous: application deadline on 20 March, oral presentation before the jury on 2 April, then the trophy ceremony on 4 May at the Théâtre de la Madeleine.
8 categories recognised:
Category 1: Digital Transformation & Intelligence Category 2: Performance & Innovation Category 3: Cash, Capital & Efficiency Category 4: Risk, Compliance & Cyber Category 5: CSR & Impact As well as: Female CFO, CFO on a Mission, Future CFO, CFO under LBO.
The CFO of 2026 is no longer a manager, they are a strategic decision-maker
There is another dimension that this evening brought to light. The CFO function is fundamentally repositioning itself. As the DAF Night programme summarised: "CFOs no longer simply secure figures. They transform, arbitrate, structure, innovate, take risks."
But to play this strategic role, one must have the time and data necessary. And that is precisely what document automation unlocks and enables.
Why document control has become the number one priority for finance departments
The on-the-ground observation that motivated our application
ZYLIO was born from a simple observation, repeated across dozens of different companies: procurement and finance teams spend a considerable share of their time on verification and comparison tasks that create no value in themselves.
Comparing quotes line by line in Excel. Verifying that invoiced prices match negotiated conditions. Checking that delivered quantities match those invoiced. These tasks are essential but they do not need to be manual.
When they remain so, the consequences are predictable: partial controls due to lack of time, small recurring discrepancies never detected, silent contractual leakage representing on average between 1% and 5% of annual procurement spend. On a budget of 5 million euros, that represents between €50,000 and €250,000 in lost margin every year without anyone in the organisation truly being aware of it.
Why generative AI is not enough and what agentic AI changes
Generative AI has opened new possibilities for finance departments. Summarising a contract, drafting a supplier email, generating a report, these use cases are real and useful. But they remain reactive: the AI waits to be asked for something.
Agentic AI works differently. It does not wait. It monitors, compares, detects and alerts continuously, across all documents, without human intervention on standard cases.
That distinction is at the heart of our victory.
What our clients observe in the field
The figures our clients report are not projections from theoretical models. They are on-the-ground measurements, on their own documents, in their own sectors:
3% average savings on controlled procurement volumes 70% time saved on verification and comparison tasks 99.9% accuracy in detecting document discrepancies
For a procurement director in the restaurant industry managing 47 active suppliers and daily orders, this translated into €6,800 in recovered discrepancies over three months, on invoices he would have validated without looking at them, due to lack of time.
What this recognition changes for our clients and for what comes next
A validation that goes beyond ZYLIO
Winning a trophy awarded by active CFOs, before a jury of CFOs from groups such as Sodexo, Thales or GE HealthCare, validates that the problem is real and recognised by peers. That French finance departments are ready to take action on document automation. That agentic AI applied to procurement is no longer a conference topic but an operational lever.
For our current clients, this recognition confirms that they made the right choice.
What to remember
The DAF Night 2026 did not reward a technological promise. It rewarded a concrete response to an on-the-ground problem recognised by France's most engaged finance departments.
This problem: teams overwhelmed by an exploding volume of documents, margin silently slipping away, time swallowed by tasks that should no longer be manual, is not specific to a few companies. It is structural, and it worsens with growth.
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