CFOs have their priorities straight, and lucky for us, they shared their thoughts with CFO Brew.
According to official metrics—Deloitte’s ever-solid CFO Signals survey, which polls over 100 CFOs—most finance chiefs are prioritizing financial performance, growth, and cost management in 2024.
According to less official metrics, well, here’s what CFOs told us they were prioritizing in 2024:
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Eric Mason, CFO of the City of Quincy, Massachusetts
2023 was the year of inflation, 2024 will be the year of interest rates.
In 2023, a large portion of financial management focused on maintaining flexibility to absorb inflationary pressures. In 2024, it will be ensuring that your organization is in a position to address changing interest rates. It is no secret the several trillion dollars in debt will be needed to be refinanced across the economy in 2024. We CFOs need to be making plans now to navigate these waters.
Michael Bayer, CFO of Wasabi Technologies
Enabling growth. Seems simple when you express it in two words, but it’s enormously complex in practice. It’s applying the right people (smart, savvy, growth mindset) to the right priorities (standardize, automate) with the right tools (technology, processes) at the right time.
This is an uncertain time with so many things to stress about. Leave the worrying behind. The markets will fix themselves. Capital will flow to good businesses that are growing. Identify what your customers want and deliver it.
Carl Seidman, CPA, principal at Seidman Financial
In a rapidly growing company, we cannot afford finance to be just a support function. We need to be more data-driven from a capability perspective and from a cultural perspective. Accordingly, CFOs should prioritize fuller integration of finance with the business and greater capability of FP&A overall.
This includes an investment in better technology that supports data integrity, more confident reporting, and real-time decision-making. This means having clean, repeatable, scalable processes. But it also requires greater engagement among the finance team and integration of FP&A with other parts of the business. We want to know that our systems are right and that our teams are switched on.
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Kelly MacDonald, CFO of Dynavax
In 2024, I expect CFOs to continue to focus on strategic leadership and disciplined capital allocation initiatives. This is particularly important, as accessing capital remains a challenge in most industries. This will translate to embracing technology and automation of routine processes, prioritizing talent retention and creating an environment for organizations to identify and evaluate opportunities to deliver value to stakeholders.
In 2024, we also expect M&A to play a greater role in transforming organizations, and CFOs will be expected to identify and lead strategic decisions that drive growth for their organizations as valuations continue to settle across certain sectors that could benefit from consolidation.
Jeff Noto, CFO of Zayo
The core focus areas for finance leaders will be aligning strategic and financial priorities, improving forecasts, leveraging data analytics, and championing ESG alignment. I expect continued growth in the tech and telecom industries next year—driven by strong ongoing demand despite wider global economic challenges.
Savvy CFOs will focus their finance teams on sharpening the alignment between strategic imperatives and financial realities, to drive more informed and synergistic top-line and bottom-line forecasting to drive more targeted business decisions.
CFOs will also prioritize getting more value from data to drive innovation. Modern analytics help quickly convert the really meaningful data from company operations into actionable insights. Applying tools like AI and automation allows finance to synthesize key patterns to guide business strategy and maximize new opportunities.
Michell Guzelgul, CFO of Empeon
In 2024, forward-thinking CFOs will be laser-focused on staying on top of the latest technological innovations like generative AI and looking for opportunities to implement new solutions within their organizations.
CFOs can stop relying on Excel spreadsheets for data management. There are so many modern technologies that enhance business efficiency and strategy. CFOs should focus on implementing and leveraging those tools rather than maintaining antiquated documents and processes.