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This year, more CFOs are setting their sights on the future.
At least, that’s according to McKinsey’s latest CFO pulse survey, which showed that far more CFOs are prioritizing long-term and strategic planning this year than in 2023. More than half (55%) of the 126 global CFOs polled said that long-term planning was top-of-mind for their finance functions, up from 30% last year. And six in 10 said strategic planning was a priority, versus 38% a year ago.
This year, CFOs are taking a more measured stance toward investment. Nearly half (46%) said their companies’ level of investment would remain “unchanged” over the next 12 months, twice the percentage (23%) who said so last year. Only four in 10 said they’d be investing more, versus 57% who did last year.
Supply chain issues have come to the fore as a key risk. Nearly half of the CFOs surveyed (49%) chose supply chain disruptions as a pressing risk, more than twice the percentage who did so last year (20%). Respondents also viewed economic volatility as an important risk.
AI’s still in its infancy: Only a fifth of respondents said they were using generative AI, and of that group, about half (49%) said their AI projects were in the pilot or experimental phase.
The biggest obstacles to using technology to gain greater value in the finance function are organizational, not technical, the survey suggested. A clear majority of CFOs (70%) said that high workloads were a barrier to adopting technology, and 67% named the skills gap as a barrier. Six in 10 (62%) said insufficient resources were a challenge. Relatively small percentages named inaccurate data (21%) or unavailable data (17%) as issues.