Worsening economic conditions and geopolitical tensions are the biggest external challenges facing finance leaders this year, and some CFOs believe that more focus on digitalisation could help to reduce cost-related risks.
“Economic and geopolitical tensions are making forecasting and cost control even harder than in previous years,” according to a new report from SAP Concur, a US-based company that specialises in software services.
In response, CFOs view digitalisation as imperative to alleviate risks and drive growth in 2025, according to the report. Some finance leaders are looking to artificial intelligence and automation to prepare for an uncertain economic environment this year, with 38% of finance chiefs now treating manual processes as a top internal challenge, compared with 1% in 2023.
While economic concerns have fallen for CFOs in the last year (from 55% to 41%), concerns about geopolitical conflict have jumped sharply to 37% from 11% last year, the report said. According to respondents, those uncertainties have made inaccurate forecasting (61%), predicting future price rises (47%), and software capabilities (37%) more difficult.
Moreover, 59% cite lack of data visibility, problems with ease-of-use and adoption (56%), and limited reporting and analytics (48%) as the biggest barriers to implementing cost-control software efficiently.
SAP Concur surveyed 350 CFOs and senior finance leaders in eight countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the UK, and the US) in December 2024 and January 2025.
AI adoption is top of mind
To stay cost-efficient, finance leaders say they are now looking to AI to improve their operations. Ninety-four per cent of finance leaders say AI has already helped improve decision-making, 74% report positive impacts across cost and risk reduction, and 43% believe AI will likely improve forecasting accuracy.
Organisations who have increased AI adoption have also accelerated innovation across their processes.
More than half of CFOs (57%) say everyday tasks like generating emails, transcription, and summarising documents are highly automated by AI, compared to only 7% in 2024, according to the report. Other areas of increased efficiency include fraud monitoring (45%) and creating new pricing models (22%).
CFO role continues move into cybersecurity
CFOs have taken on more cybersecurity oversight recently, and in the report, more finance leaders expect cybersecurity responsibilities to fall under their remit in 2025.
“The latest cybersecurity statistics show breaches continue to rise in volume and severity,” the report said. “This anxiety is prompting a significant number to assume control, with 27% of CFOs taking over responsibilities in cybersecurity over the last two years.”
Finance chiefs view cyberattacks as a top risk to their organisations this year, and 59% of finance leaders plan to increase cybersecurity budgets to respond to growing threats.
But only 16% of CFOs expect cybersecurity expenses to come at the expense of long-term initiatives for their organisations this year, the report said. Fifty per cent plan to adapt growth initiatives to align with cybersecurity, and 33% expect growth plans to proceed as planned.
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
