Heart your AR. Paystand is designed to seamlessly integrate into your existing ERP and automate your payment process. That means a fee-less, blockchain-based payment network that can reduce DSO by 60%. Book a demo and you could win a $150 Amazon gift card.
Even with chances of a recession rising, CFOs are still thinking growth in 2025. Or at least they were in November.
According to a Gartner Finance survey released this week, 87% of CFOs said they were likely to spend money on organic growth in 2025. But the survey was conducted in November 2024, and we are in a very different world six months later. It also doesn’t say if it was collected before or after President Trump’s victory.
Common financial sense would suggest that businesses should hoard a little extra money during these volatile times. But Janel Everly, senior director analyst in the Gartner Finance practice, suggested in the report that the best companies actually do the opposite.
She stated that businesses that grow efficiently and effectively invest in growth during hard times and “reduce operating costs when experiencing strong growth.”
Seems like some CFOs are following her wisdom. Acquisitions ranked as the second most common spending strategy for 2025; 61% of the 110 survey respondents planned to invest in them. This could end up as a good tariff mitigation strategy as companies shift manufacturing to the US or lower-tariffed countries.
But CFOs love to hedge their bets, so 52% also planned to hold on to extra cash.
While CFOs might be all in on growth, the Gartner report advised companies to allocate some resources—both labor and money—to compliance. Tax schemes, labor issues, and contracts are becoming more complex due to “the rise of deglobalization and nationalism.”
Geopolitical uncertainty is also complicating the picture. Different regions now have very different regulatory environments and requirements, and will continue to diverge. For example, the SEC dropped emissions and climate disclosure requirements in March, while the EU delayed the first reporting of its Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directives until 2028.