CFO-Study 2024

The CFO´s path to a data-driven company

CFOs see huge potential in the transition to a data-driven company –
but there is still a long way to go

Times are getting rougher for CFOs. According to our new CFO-Study 2024, every 4th finance executive expects business to deteriorate. This is bad timing as the transformation towards a “data-driven company” has not made major progress in most companies in 2023. Whereas smart dashboards and other “low hanging fruits” of digitalization (e.g. RPA) are more and more established, not a single new technology with higher complexity, such as PredictiveFC, Maschine Learning or Generative AI is even partly implemented in the majority of finance departments.

Over 150 top finance executives from different countries around the world were asked about their expectations for 2024 and their current transformation status. Below we illustrate a few exciting results from the study:

Key aspect #01

CFOs’ optimism about economic development diminishes as they foresee difficult times ahead.

In contrast to previous years, the economic outlook of CFOs has clouded over noticeably. Nevertheless, they consider themselves well positioned for their company and see the worst phase of recent crisis-related developments behind them.

How do you assess the economic situation and development of your company for the rest of 2023 and 2024?

32 % -18 %

Only 32% expect that the economic development continues to perform positively which is an 18% decrease in comparison to the last CFO-Study April 2023.

Key aspect #02

New tasks have overtaken the crisis-related challenges.

Increased interest and inflation rates still challenge the CFOs in securing the companies´ financial stability but increasing digitalization and the general trend to report and incorporate sustainability into performance management draw more attention of the finance leaders.

What challenges do you expect to increase or decrease in 2023? (Top 3 answers)

Cyber risk

28 % Heavily increases 54 % Increases

Sustainable management

26 % Heavily increases 56 % Increases

Regulatory & compliance effort

16 % Heavily increases 60 % Increases

In today’s business environment cybersecurity, sustainability management together with regulatory and compliance effort are main challenges for the finance function.

Key aspect #03

The "war for talents" will continue to leave its mark on the Finance department.

Despite the overall optimistic expectation of achieving individual targets, the "war for talents" continues to be the major pain point for CFOs in a challenging economic environment. As a result, the stress level of employees increases due to more workload.

What is your expectation regarding the development of the staff situation in your company?

55 % Rather pessimistic 5 % Pessimistic

60% of the questioned CFOs are rather pessimistic or pessimistic regarding their staff situation and suffer insufficient qualified team members.

Key aspect #04

The paving stones for further future success are data.

CFOs see the value of data exploitation in advanced planning, proactive forecasting, and better decision-making as the foundation to boost profits by tapping on new revenue streams and cutting costs.

What priority do you assign to the transformation into a data-driven company?

18 % 63 % 17 % 2 %
  Top priority   Increased priority   Low priority   No priority                    

For 4 out of 5 finance leaders, taking the next step into the direction of a data-driven company has a high priority on their agenda. They are willing to allocate nearly a quarter of their transformation budgets on this strategic measure.

Click here for the study!

Your Contact

Kai Grönke

Kai Grönke

Achim Wenning

Achim Wenning