Between revenue growth, AI and talent: the strategic role of CFOs in shaping the corporate future

What are the strategic priorities that are shaping the future of the finance function? How are the CFOs responding to the repeated acceleration of business transformation initiatives? And how is their being on the front line translating into operational improvements, adoption of new technologies and enhancing staff skills to seize future development opportunities and manage the associated risks? These questions FTI Consulting tried to answer with its annual study "CFO Strategies: 2025 Global CFO Report", conducted on a sample of about a thousand Chief Financial Officers from medium-sized and large companies worldwide.

With the start of the new year, this is the overall scenario that serves as the premise for the survey results, many Chief Financial Officers have been called upon (and in several cases reappointed) to play a crucial role in guiding their organisations through a period of great uncertainty and change. More specifically, the figure of the Chief Financial Officer has evolved beyond traditional financial management, becoming more strategic in navigating technological innovations and economic challenges. More than half of the respondents, moreover, are prioritising the optimisation of their company's business model, thereby emphasising the importance of adapting to market changes and maintaining competitiveness in a fast-moving global environment.

Francesco Leone and Claudia Lotti, respectively Senior Managing Director - Head of Italy Corporate Finance & Restructuring and Senior Managing Director of FTI Consulting in Italy, explained to Sole24ore.com how, in reality, the figure of the CFO has indeed taken on an increasingly strategic dimension, but at the same time also a more critical one. "It is in fact a function on which many of the company's complexities converge, such as budget decisions, investments, the management of support services and, increasingly, also the supervision of information systems". It is therefore not surprising, as the two managers of FTI Consulting assure us, that the CFO is now considered a nodal point of the organisation, and it is a trend that no longer only concerns large organisations but also medium-sized companies, and in particular those participated by funds, in which a great deal is being invested in the search for CFOs with all-round skills, capable of flanking financial management with a broader vision of the business that includes technology and operations. "After the Covid crisis that put pressure on many apical functions," added Leone and Lotti, "the demand for figures capable of guiding the company through uncertainty has grown, and from this point of view the Chief Financial Officer plays a central role. And the more articulated the organisation, the more one feels the need for a CFO with a strategic and transversal vision'.

Getting to the heart of the study's key findings, we find that growth is seen as a central priority, with 72% of the managers surveyed on a global scale (60% in the Emea region) expecting revenues to increase by at least 10% over the next 12 months as a result of planned investments in digital transformation, increased operational efficiency and new customer acquisition initiatives. Many CFOs are driving these initiatives themselves, leveraging fintech and artificial intelligence technologies (89% of the surveyed sample plan to implement AI-based solutions to automate manual processes) with the aim of simplifying processes and ensuring greater scalability within the organisation. Overall, 86% of the surveyed managers identify these solutions among the most important areas of focus for 2025, with a strong focus on improving the accuracy of data-driven predictions and decisions and enhancing predictive capabilities.

Critical issues, however, are not lacking: skills shortages, tight budgets, and the complexity of adopting new technologies, the report's accompanying note states, represent obstacles to large-scale transformation and force CFOs to respond with innovative approaches to attracting and retaining talent. One in five CFOs (24 per cent to be precise) are less attentive to digital-related change initiatives because of these constraints, and this indicator, according to FTI experts, is not so much a warning sign or a lag signal, but a realistic and informed snapshot of the context in which many companies operate.