CFOs weren’t kidding about moving into strategy

In these polarized times, we don’t know if seven out of 10 dentists could agree on which toothpaste to recommend. But you know where you can find that kind of consensus? CFOs, if you ask them about their top priorities for 2024.

Gartner did ask, and more than 70% of the 185 CFOs who responded agreed on five critical priorities—all of them strategic, according to the newly released survey results. Moreover, traditional finance and accounting tasks like monthly close, financial reporting, or cash management didn’t even make the list.

With the potential of generative AI dominating headlines, it’s no surprise that executives would be thinking about its promise for their organizations. But the CFOs were rating their top priorities, which underscores their central role “in evaluating and aligning investment in these transformative technologies, both in finance and across the enterprise,” Marko Horvat, Gartner Finance’s VP of research, said in a press release accompanying the study.

When asked to choose among 33 potential priorities, 79% of the CFOs Gartner surveyed agreed that leading digital transformation effortswas a top priority, followed by 78% who chose improving the finance function’s strategy and design. Improving finance metrics, insights, and storytelling (76%) and leading change management efforts (74%). Optimizing costs (72%) rounded out the top five.

Challenges: Implementing new tech can be difficult work—on top of running things as they are, Horvat said in the release. Apart from the difficulty of deploying tech, CFOs also told Gartner they’re concerned about its costs. They expect it won’t be easy to incorporate data scientists and other new technical roles into their teams and financial governance, or improve digital proficiency among their traditional finance teams.

Complementary: Gartner also heard from controllers, whose priorities are already nicely aligned with CFOs’. While sharing the CFOs’ focus on transformation and change management, controllers also prioritized the lower-elevation work of improving processes for accounting and transactional finance.