CFO roles will broaden and create extra worth in 2025

2025 is shaping as much as be a 12 months of speedy change for CFOs throughout their accounting and finance departments. Persevering with expertise challenges, more and more harmful cyberthreats, renewed concentrate on ROI and the rise of AI will all affect — and completely change — the best way CFOs work and the way they drive worth for his or her organizations. 

IBM’s 2024 CFO Survey discovered that the highest 9% of CFOs when it comes to efficiency have been considerably extra engaged than the typical in actions together with cybersecurity, model status, enterprise technique and execution, expertise and expertise. Due to the connection between efficiency and wider involvement, the largest pattern we count on to have an effect on CFOs in 2025 is the necessity to take into account and contribute to actions throughout the group. 

In some instances, this engagement might appear to be a convergence or overlap between the roles of CFO and COO. CFOs who have not already cast working partnerships throughout their corporations might need to begin by making nearer connections to the CIO or CTO for the largest early wins. For instance, 65% of CFOs who participated within the CFO survey mentioned, “Their group is beneath strain to speed up ROI throughout their expertise portfolio,” however only a third mentioned finance and expertise strategize collectively early within the IT planning course of. 

The CFO embraces data-driven storytelling

To assist totally different departments enhance their ROI, CFOs more and more want storytelling expertise to craft narratives primarily based on monetary knowledge. That is vital for conveying to different decision-makers how they will create worth in a manner that resonates with their division’s objectives and the corporate’s objectives. If leaders in different areas of the enterprise can perceive the how and the why behind the CFO’s funds and buying enter, they’re extra prone to issue that enter into their selections and techniques. 

AI continues to reshape accounting and finance capabilities

In 2024, solely 34% of finance departments had carried out customary AI use instances, and simply 11% have been utilizing generative AI. These numbers will nearly definitely develop in 2025, as extra organizations implement use instances like automating accounts payable, accounts receivable, and month-to-month closing duties, so that folks can shift their time to value-added work. 

Extra organizations may additionally undertake AI-powered forecasting and budgeting, so these grow to be real-time processes quite than static actions that solely get up to date annually. Challenges for finance and accounting leaders who need to leverage AI embrace standardizing knowledge for AI fashions and monitoring the AI mannequin’s output for accuracy. 

Expertise shortages would require new methods

A dwindling pipeline of accounting graduates and workers’ growing want for higher work-life stability will drive CFOs and accounting managers to search out new methods to get the work executed. With out the choice to easily rent extra full-time workers or to count on folks to work 80-hour weeks, automating fundamental duties with AI might enable organizations to get the identical quantity of labor executed with fewer workers. Using outsourced expertise can even proceed to develop in 2025, as smaller corporations search folks to deal with their workloads and bigger corporations use outsourcing strategically.

Even the CFO function could be outsourced. Using fractional CFOs — contract CFO expertise that works part-time for a number of shoppers — might help corporations preserve stability whereas they seek for a everlasting CFO or cowl for a CFO who’s on go away. Smaller corporations and early-stage startups that do not want a full-time CFO can profit from working with a fractional CFO to set technique and concentrate on worth creation. This sort of momentary management function has grown by 57% since 2020 and is prone to continue to grow as extra corporations uncover the advantages of accessing CFO experience and not using a full-time dedication. 

Cybersecurity turns into a CFO concern

CFO collaboration with safety will probably be more and more vital in 2025 due to the rise in AI-enabled safety threats. These embrace cyberattacks on organizations’ networks to steal knowledge or disrupt operations, e mail assaults designed to steal funds or worker community credentials, and brand-impersonation assaults on clients that may inflict heavy injury on model status and belief. 

The potential for monetary losses to theft, reputational injury, compliance penalties and post-attack restoration provides CFOs an pressing have to collaborate with IT leaders on their organizations’ safety efforts. For instance, the common price of a knowledge breach in 2024 was $4.88 million, the best determine but. However solely a 3rd of midmarket organizations put the CFO in command of cybersecurity budgets in early 2024. As assaults get dearer, search for extra corporations to loop within the CFO on cybersecurity funding selections or change how CFOs employees and make the most of totally different workforce members.

These expertise will matter extra in 2025

Folks in accounting and finance will want some new expertise to profit from the expertise, safety and technique developments we count on to see in 2025. One space the place nearly everybody must upskill is knowledge literacy, to assist AI initiatives. Workers need not grow to be knowledge scientists along with accountants or finance leaders, however everybody within the group wants to know how to have a look at knowledge, spot anomalies and analyze them.

Mushy expertise will matter much more. Efficient collaboration, storytelling and relationship-building expertise might help everybody, particularly CFOs who could also be known as on to work with a rising variety of different leaders and teams inside their enterprise. 

Strengthening knowledge literacy and interpersonal expertise are methods to construct one other important ability for 2025, which is staying adaptable to alter. Flexibility is a requirement in immediately’s accounting and finance panorama, which is altering sooner than ever, as these developments point out. CFOs and accounting professionals who can sustain will probably be in the most effective place to create worth for his or her organizations in 2025.