News built for finance pros
CFO Brew helps finance pros navigate their roles with insights into risk management, compliance, and strategy through our newsletter, virtual events, and digital guides.
There was a lot for CFOs to worry about this past year. So why not add to the crippling anxiety by asking about future worries? Let the existential dread set in and cue the maniacal laughter.
Gartner polled 250 CFOs and finance leaders who dialed into a recent webinar and found that attendees’ biggest concerns for next year were slower topline growth (selected by 19%) and talent attraction and retention (18%).
Other significant challenges that finance leaders identified included strategic alignment among executives (17%), cost increases (15%), and the quality of enterprise data (14%). Artificial intelligence and political and regulatory changes both netted high single-digit percentages. (Attendees were able to choose more than one concern.)
“Most CFOs think underlying market growth in their industries will be similar when comparing 2024 and 2025,” Alexander Bant, chief of research in Gartner’s finance practice, said in a news release. “However, three quarters of finance respondents said they are more focused on downside risk and cost containment in their scenario planning for 2025 budgets.”
The consulting firm identified some key strategies that top-performing companies follow. These firms plan ahead for phases of growth and retraction by “reducing operating costs incrementally when economic growth is strong and funding bold investment opportunities when economic activity hits a trough,” according to the release. They also remove potential roadblocks to growth, including overly restrictive corporate bureaucracy, disincentives for risk-taking, having a short-term mentality, and overstretching employees.
Bant also cautioned against cutting investment spending too deeply.
“CFOs often resort to cost-cutting to protect profitability during economic headwinds, but this can inadvertently jeopardize critical growth investments,” he said. “To avoid this, CFOs should play the role of ‘internal activist investor’ to relocate cost rapidly and find creative funding techniques to ensure growth investments continue to receive necessary resources.”