Midmarket CFOs’ biggest roadblocks ‘are organizational,’ survey says

CFOs of midmarket firms say their organizations’ biggest execution challenges “are organizational, not technological,” the CFO Alliance concludes in a new survey report.

The 230-plus senior finance leaders surveyed ranked prioritization challenges as their biggest internal execution barrier, as selected by 32.1% of respondents. Following that was talent and resource constraints (26.9%). AI enablement and tech stack limitations were both much farther down the list (3.7% each).

A peer community of finance pros, CFO Alliance said the findings show CFOs believe there’s no shortage of ideas or ambition in their organizations, but rather a dearth of “attention, capacity, and sequencing discipline” to execute those initiatives.

Nick Araco, the CEO of CFO Alliance, told CFO Brew last month that “2026 has to be a year where we replace debate with data and execution.”

CFO Alliance released a roadmap back in November intended to help CFOs navigate 2026. That report identified geopolitical and regulatory disruption, technology and AI adoption, talent and team capabilities, and stakeholder alignment and governance issues as the biggest barriers to execution. That reflected some of the same barriers as the midmarket CFO survey, but put a greater emphasis on technology and AI.

In a survey of C-suite executives and managers in the US, West Monroe, a technology consulting firm, found that 73% of respondents estimated that slow decision-making and delayed execution cost their organizations up to 5% in annual revenue.

While organizations may be investing heavily in AI to move faster, “speed doesn’t come from technology alone,” Bret Greenstein, chief AI officer at West Monroe, said in a press release. “It comes from removing friction from processes and between people—clarifying decision rights, reducing handoffs, and designing operating models that allow good decisions to turn into action.”

What else? The CFO Alliance survey also found that nearly seven in 10 CFOs expect at least 5% revenue growth this year. Nearly three-quarters saw “organic growth as a top-two priority,” and 56% said customer pricing pressures were a “top margin driver.”

Not many respondents were expecting a big return from AI investments, at least not yet. Just 12.5% said they had “high confidence in AI ROI,” the survey found.