CFOs and finance leaders rate metrics, analytics and reporting as their top focus area for 2025 reflecting an emphasis on delivering insight to improve business performance, according to Gartner.
The research group’s latest October 2024 survey of 251 CFOs showed that finance transformation ranks much lower as a priority for CFOs in 2025 – replaced by a focus on AI adoption in finance which ranked fourth overall.
“The survey showed the most CFOs since 2014 prioritising 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.
“This shift in priorities reflects two trends: First, CFOs are now delegating day-to-day finance transformation activities to dedicated finance transformation leaders,” says Gannon. “Second, CFOs are increasingly recognising that their time is best spent on the challenging, unanswered questions on finance’s evolution which, in 2025, will centre 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 survey also showed 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.