2025 CFO Agenda

In this episode of the “Gen AI Breakthrough Podcast,” Kyle McNabb and Vince Griffin discuss findings from The Hackett Group’s 2025 Finance Key Issues Study, highlighting the evolving role of finance as a valued business partner. They explore major challenges, including AI adoption, while also addressing priorities like cash flow optimization, cost-efficiency and data governance.

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s “Gen AI Breakthrough Podcast,” where top experts give actionable artificial intelligence (AI) insights, expert advice and strategies to achieve breakthrough business performance. This episode is hosted by Kyle McNabb, vice president and principal of Research at The Hackett Group. He is joined by Vince Griffin, principal and Global Finance and GBS Services Advisory practice leader at The Hackett Group. In today’s episode, they will explore key issues on the agenda for finance leaders in 2025.

To begin, Kyle and Vince start off by discussing how the role of finance has evolved and changed in 2025. The importance of a true valued business partner increased to 65% from those who responded in the survey. This speaks well for the function and permits them to lean in on enterprisewide decision-making practices, in addition to embarking on projects with generative AI (Gen AI). The primary challenges found in the study for business leaders was volatility and speed of change. They also found that they have to continue to do more with less. Revenues grew by 3.5%, but staff reduction and operating levels went down by 1%. This leaves a productivity and efficiency gap. There is also technology and investment in pushing forward with AI. In addition, there is change and environmental, social and governance as an up-and-down category with clients. We need to start thinking sharper from a reporting standpoint and making sure that we are developing the best employment opportunities with Gen AI.

Next, they talk about the top objectives for 2025 and how finance leaders are planning to achieve them. Their objectives align well with what they see on the feedback. These top objectives include cash flow, how to improve receivables, accelerating the finance transformation landscape, further investments in upscaling, supporting profitability more broadly, and partnering with sales and marketing folks. They need to make sure they are delivering in the most cost-efficient and effective way. There is a focus on costs and supply relationships that drive an organization. One of the core elements right now is around data and ensuring that we have the right types, but also how clean is it to drive deeper capabilities.

One of the biggest surprises from the survey was that talent was not in the top 10 because it has been for years. There is a skills aspect that goes with being a valued business partner. Another surprise was that merger and acquisition value creation came back in the top 10, which is a transaction combination of people getting comfortable that rates are where they are. The more that we are looking at our own businesses, the more we are getting at strengths and weaknesses to come up with strategic decisions to improve.

Kyle and Vince also discuss how organizations are preparing for Gen AI adoption through data, data acquisitions and governance framework. Gen AI requires good data that is clean with good types of control over the data. We are now moving into stages of exploration and being organized around the benefits and uses of Gen AI. They need to have an adoption of a good road map.

Additionally, 2024 was a year of education and 2025 is a year of pivoting from fundamentals to using Gen AI. There needs to be an active review of where use cases can come into play and looking across the organization for a single process level. We also need to move beyond the isolated use case in finance and find what that really means for us. We will have breakthrough results with what we can achieve as an organization, and we need to focus on the readiness for complexity. We can’t get bogged down by systems but invest in initiatives and focus on specific processes. Data is good enough to push forward to migrate over into other areas, and talent is also huge for the skills, ethical use, and management piece. We need to work and think differently. This includes thinking about that change management program and how we source that talent.

Time stamps:

• 0:39 – Welcome to this episode hosted by Andy Warzecha.

• 1:34 – How has the role of finance evolved and changed for 2025?

• 3:03 – Primary challenges found in the study for business leaders in 2025.

• 5:14 – What are the top objectives for 2025 and how are they planning to achieve them?

• 7:27 – What surprised you about the results?

• 10:27 – How are organizations preparing for Gen AI adoption?

• 11:58 – What additional actions do you think finance and their peers should be taking to accelerate their usage and adoption of Gen AI?