Autonomous finance is set to transform roles in the function through 2025, said Gartner recently.
According to the advisory firm, more than 40% of finance roles will be new or significantly reshaped due to finance technology through 2025.
Autonomous finance is a target operating model that CFOs are seeking to deliver finance capabilities through processes and activities that are partly governed, and majority operated by self-learning software agents that optimize front-, middle- and back-office operations, Gartner defined.
However, most finance leaders, including many CFOs, are ill-equipped to identify and address the rapidly evolving digital skills needed in finance, said Shannon Cole, senior director analyst, research in the Gartner Finance practice.
Expertise in traditional finance topics, while valuable, does not prepare leaders to train staff to execute on capabilities, such as deploying bots, machine learning, and AI algorithms, Cole added.
As more finance resources are directed towards digital transformation, it becomes apparent there is a need for deep process expertise, and for project management offices to provide governance and coordinate these initiatives, he noted.
A demand for digital skills is pressuring limited supply, meaning CFOs will experience long times to hire and rapidly increasing pay expectations, according to Cole.
CFO priorities for 2023 show us that transformation of their function remains very high on the agenda, he pointed out.
“By 2025, 80% of new headcount growth in finance will be in new sub-functions rather than traditional accounting and FP&A, requiring new roles and structures,” Cole predicted.
Finance IT, for example, is already one of the greatest areas of headcount growth in the function, Gartner observed.
The advisory firm experts expect these roles to grow fivefold by 2025 to address the impact of composable business architecture on financial reporting compliance, data mining and management, and decision support coordination.
At the same time, autonomous finance will reshape transaction processing functions such as procure to pay (P2P) and order to cash (O2C), Gartner said.
Armies of staff in these processes will be replaced by small teams of specialists focused on process excellence, data governance and application management, the firm added.
“CFOs that effectively lead and navigate transformation will add roles to their leadership team to address analytics and decision support, finance IT and global process ownership,” said Cole. “CEOs will give these responsibilities to whoever can lead the change best, and CFOs will have to compete with COOs, CIOs and CDAOs to retain these responsibilities.”
