Chief financial officers and finance leaders rated metrics, analytics and reporting as their top focus areas for the year coming, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc.
This findings of the October 2024 survey, which polled 251 CFOs, reflect an emphasis on delivering insight to improve business performance, as CFOs showed that finance transformation ranks much lower as a priority for them in 2025.
"The survey showed the most CFOs since 2014 prioritizing enterprise growth," says Dennis Gannon, vice president of research in the Gartner Finance Practice. "The marked return of growth and cost pressures mean that many CFOs are planning to be ruthless in delegating finance transformation."
Source: Gartner (November 2024)
Gannon says this shift in priorities reflects two trends: First, CFOs are now delegating day-to-day finance transformation activities to dedicated finance transformation leaders. Second, they are increasingly recognising that their time is best spent on the challenging, unanswered questions on finance’s evolution, which in 2025 will center more on the use of AI than on traditional finance automation and technology.
Beyond improving the use of data and analytics to drive growth, and adopting AI for various use cases in finance, CFOs and finance executives are also focusing on talent and leadership.
The profile of finance talent continues to evolve and requires a new perspective on how to find, engage and retain talent either by upskilling existing talent or recruiting differently to attract digital talent.
"CFOs expect one in two finance employees to be digital talent by 2027," says Gannon. "Given that digital talent currently makes up less than 20% of the finance function, there’s clearly much work to be done."
The study also revealed that CFOs recognise their own leadership profile needs attention in 2025, with an expanded CFO role creating a need to influence across the entire organization, raising the bar for CFO leadership effectiveness.
Finance talent management also climbed in importance as CFOs confront an expected uptick in attrition of longer-tenured finance workers while evolving their value proposition for digital finance talent.
