New data from the latest annual SAP Concur CFO Insights Survey* reveals the evolution of top priorities for finance leaders amid challenging economic conditions and geopolitical tensions – from AI to cybersecurity. The 2025 research highlights the opportunities and barriers finance leaders face today, while also providing comparisons with previous years’ results.
Economic conditions are the greatest external challenge
External factors are playing a big role in the decision-making of finance leaders. The following highlights demonstrate the uphill battle finance leaders now face:
- The highest ranked external challenge is worsening economic conditions, with 40% placing the concern in their top 3
- However, geopolitical tensions soared this year (37%) as a concern for finance leaders when compared with 2024 results (9%)
- Regulatory compliance related to climate change is no longer as much of a worry in 2025, remaining in the top three for just 28% of respondents – compared with 58% in 2024
Though the challenges businesses face externally are outside of the finance leaders’ control, being able to mitigate their impact is within their remit – and it comes down to the software solutions and tools they have available. Yet, a lack of data visibility is impacting 57% of finance leaders – with problems with ease-of-use and adoption (63%), and limited reporting and analytics (42%) next in line.
Unlocking AI & Cybersecurity
Manual processes are a top internal challenge for more than a third of finance leaders (38%). This has risen significantly in the past few years, with just 1% ranking manual processes as the top challenge in 2023.
However, finance departments are embracing AI today, with over half (45%) highly automating general office tasks – a significant increase on 2024’s results with just 7% reporting this level of automation in their organisation. That’s a significant uptick in usage in the space of a year.
- Other top AI automation use cases include journal entries and bookkeeping (38%), monitoring for fraud (37%) and financial planning (37%).
- Finance leaders report AI is having a positive impact on various areas of their organisation including decision-making (90%), risk reduction (72%) or achieving ESG goals (52%).
When it comes to cybersecurity, more than half of finance leaders (52%) plan to increase their cybersecurity budget. Only 28% plan to enhance collaboration with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and across the IT department though.
In fact, finance leaders today are split about who in the C-Suite should be responsible for driving progress on the increasing cybersecurity threat: 45% of finance leaders believe that driving progress on cybersecurity should be the reserve of IT leaders only, while 45% report it should be finance and IT leaders.
This sentiment comes at a time where the evolving cybersecurity landscape has the potential to influence organisation’s ability to pursue upcoming growth initiatives.
- A third (27%) of finance leaders report that their growth plans will proceed as planned, while half (58%) say they will adapt growth initiatives to align with the cybersecurity landscape.
- Just 13% say they will slow down growth initiatives to focus on cybersecurity.
Growth in 2025
For finance leaders in 2025, upskilling/reskilling workforce is a key priority to drive growth (60%) – with optimizing costs and efficiency (58%) and focusing on sustainability and ESG (55%) next in line.
But they know they can’t do it alone – ensuring cross-functional collaboration is vital for driving growth.
- The majority (90%) rate themselves as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ at communicating to get buy-in from the wider business on new growth initiatives – and 85% of HR leaders and 77% of IT leaders agree.
- Yet, there’s controversy among those working in finance over who should be responsible for this growth – with 81% of CFOs believing the CFO is the primary driver of growth despite only 52% of finance Senior Vice Presidents (SVPs) agreeing.
- Finance SVPs are more likely to think CFOs should support – but not lead – growth initiatives (20%) or that growth leadership should be shared across the c-suite (28%). While just 9% of CFOs agree that growth leadership should be shared.
“Given the current focus on efficiency and automation for finance leaders, it’s no surprise that investment in these areas will continue to increase – indicating that there’s not just a challenge to be faced, but an opportunity for growth.” Gary Goodenough, Regional Director at SAP Concur shared. “However, a key determinator for success will be in the CFOs ability to achieve cross-functional buy-in and share the responsibility for growth with solutions that work across the organisation.”
*SAP Concur surveyed 350 chief financial officers and senior finance leaders, 115 HR leaders and 115 IT leaders for its latest CFO Insights report.
The research, conducted between December 2024 and January 2025, covered Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.
