3 Critical Components to Building a Data-Driven Finance Organization

Finance leaders know that to navigate through an uncertain and constantly changing environment, access to real-time and reliable data is no longer a luxury, but a requirement. When asked about their near-term priorities in a recent survey, 49% of CFOs pointed to data management and analysis, putt...

By Joseph James • March 14, 2023

65% of Finance Execs Target End of 2023 to Adapt Automation: Weekly Stat

Finance leaders, regardless of industry, have lots of ideas about technology's potential impact. Whether it is freeing up more time for the CFO to be an active member of the C-suite, accountants using technology to improve their morale at work, or revamping and modernizing areas of businesses sta...

By Adam Zaki • March 8, 2023

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The CFO Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence’s impact on the office of the CFO continues to evolve, and finance chiefs must be aware of the opportunities it will create for growth. 

By CFO.com staff

CFO Cybersecurity Strategies: How to Protect Against the Rising Storm

Business leaders are coming up against the precipice of what might be the most significant challenge they face in 2023 and beyond: increasingly frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks devastating to business.  During the World Economic Forum’s 2023 annual meeting, experts warned tha...

By Joe Oleksak • March 7, 2023

ChatGPT’s Impact on CFOs: What is AI’s Limit in Replacing Humans?

As industries and executives explore how to use AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT best, the value of human intuition in the workplace has come into question. If technology can communicate at a conversational level with insight based on billions, if not trillions, of data points, how can humans com...

By Adam Zaki • March 6, 2023

Why Fintech Should Keep Its Faith in Blockchain

Many crypto unicorns have faltered. NFTs, cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges — these once-heralded technologies now appear on the verge of collapse. And with suspicions rising around crypto, unfortunately, that means blockchain’s reputation is tarnished. However, beyond its usage in crypto, block...

By Amrit Jassal • Feb. 28, 2023

9 Keys to Successfully Outsourcing IT

Small business CFOs wear many hats, often including that of chief information officer (CIO). Whether due to time constraints (strategic planning, financial reporting, business partnership, and other hats take time, too) or competency (not every CFO is a technology wizard), you likely rely heavily...

By Steve McNally • Feb. 27, 2023

An Interview With ChatGPT: AI Advice to Be a Better CFO

ChatGPT is proving to be a potential disruptor in nearly every facet of the professional working world, regardless of industry. Its current trendiness serves as a small example of what a widely intelligent AI-based language model can provide to an organization. And products like OpenAI's ChatGPT ...

By Adam Zaki • Feb. 27, 2023

75% of CFOs to Increase Tech Spending Amid Automation Push

Technology’s role in the CFO's office, as well as within finance teams, is receiving renewed focus.With new tools available to take over the front, middle, and back-office responsibilities, the CFO now must not only be a master of FP&A and treasury, but also must be aware of the fintech optio...

By Adam Zaki • Feb. 15, 2023

CFOs Vow to Boost Tech Influence in 2023

Among the innumerable hats small-company CFOs must wear, none is more 21st century than directing the strategy underlying the procurement and usage of technology systems.That’s not brand new in the 2020s, of course. Today’s finance teams are accustomed to plugging in the latest better tools. Fina...

By David McCann • Feb. 6, 2023

FinOps: A Way to Manage Growing Cloud Costs

Along with the growing use of cloud services and providers comes the potential for complexities and management challenges that can lead to cost overruns and other issues. This is the main reason why more organizations are turning to FinOps. As defined by the FinOps Foundation’s Technical Advisory...

By Bob Violino • Jan. 23, 2023

The Excel Equation: When Is It Time to Move Away?

Every finance person has a history with the ubiquitous spreadsheet software. This series examines why Excel became such a mainstay, and what happens when your company needs to move forward.

By CFO Editorial Staff • Jan. 18, 2023

Gartner Cuts 2023 IT Spend Growth Projection to 2.4%

Three months after Gartner forecast that worldwide spending on information technology would grow 5.1% in 2023, it has revised its projection. Gartner slashed its overall spending growth forecast a little more than half, to 2.4%. It now projects $4.5 trillion of IT spending this year.The research ...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 18, 2023

2023 Outlook: 4 Realms for Digital Acceleration

Two-thousand twenty-three's outlook is much different than the projections from a year ago. Coming out of 2021, executives were excited to continue recovery from a pandemic-induced economic struggle, and overall confidence in the outlook for the global economy was much more positive. Although...

By Adam Zaki • Jan. 17, 2023

Only 14% of CFOs Will Prioritize IT Infrastructure in 2023

Despite weary predictions surrounding labor markets and the overall economy this year, companies of all sizes are continuing to allocate toward different types of technology throughout the organization. Ideas around technology and its integration into corporate finance, moreover, were the talk of...

By Adam Zaki • Jan. 11, 2023

70% of Financial Institutions Lost Over $500K to Fraud in 2022: Weekly Stat

With a challenging economy and an already overflowing to-do list of preparation for the new year, CFOs must be mindful of technological threats to their businesses. Consequences of limited or misguided approaches towards cybersecurity can be lethal to an organization. According to the recent Stat...

By Adam Zaki • Jan. 11, 2023

The CFO’s Role in Building Data-Driven Workflows

Navigating a business through today’s turbulent digital climate requires resilience. CFOs can lead their companies toward more resilient operations by understanding what data to collect, how to leverage that data, and how to make sure their employees embrace new, data-driven workflows.  Alex Cedr...

By Alex Cedro • Jan. 10, 2023

3 Tips for Better Managing The Software Stack

Adopting the right software at the right price and time in a company's lifecycle is a competitive advantage. And within this turbulent macroeconomic environment, lowering costs while increasing efficiency is everything.CFOs should renegotiate all software supplier contracts and seek to adopt more...

By Jason Quinn • Dec. 13, 2022

76% of Executives Say Embedded Lending is Massive Growth Opportunity

As sales and customer experience continue to drive allocation requests, CFOs may be tasked with assigning capital to programs that offer financing for customers. More than three quarters (76%) of executives have gone as far as to label embedded lending products as a "massive" growth opportunity, ...

By Adam Zaki • Dec. 13, 2022

3 Ways CFOs Can Use Existing Software to Achieve Financial Goals

Over the last decade, many corporations adopted new technologies as part of overall digital transformation strategies that allowed them to remain competitive in rapidly changing markets. Now, some of the software and technology tools purchased during the digital transformation process are being u...

By Joanne Cheng • Dec. 6, 2022

IT Spending and 2023 Budgets Under Close Scrutiny

The great pandemic-related IT shopping spree may finally be over. For two years, U.S. businesses spent freely on building digital infrastructure, connecting remote workers, and turning legacy products into digital ones. The spending needed to be done quickly, as cities locked down and markets shi...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 5, 2022

4 Ways CFOs Can Mitigate Costs of Poor Data Management

As the size of our data collection grows, so too does the need to keep that information secure. We’ve seen the headlines of companies falling victim to many kinds of cyberattacks. One well-known case is that of SolarWinds, which was tricked into sending out malware to its partner network. The mis...

By Adam Moloney • Nov. 29, 2022

Financial Industry is Third-Most Targeted By Hackers

As cybersecurity concerns grow throughout corporate finance, hackers continue to target financial institutions with some success. According to a research report conducted by Proxy, modern data breaches targeting large-scale financial institutions that have underdeveloped cybersecurity protocols r...

By Adam Zaki • Nov. 23, 2022

Return on Data Assets: A New Way for CFOs to Measure the Value of Data

Data can be considered a modern business's most valuable asset, and yet it’s not treated as such. Consider Uber and Lyft. Without data from billions of historical rides, traffic patterns, and outside sources, there could be no estimated times of arrival, no shared rides, and no estimation of a ri...

By Junta Nakai • Nov. 22, 2022

How to Future-Proof and Modernize the Finance Department

Amidst economic uncertainty and rising costs, organizations are looking for effective ways to ensure their future. And if leaders have learned anything from the challenges of the past few years, it’s that agility is often the key to survival.  One of the most effective strategies for creating agi...

By Cameron White • Nov. 21, 2022

Too Many ERP Systems Are a Bad Thing: Metric of the Month

Finance shared service centers (SSCs) provide a centralized team that carries out high-volume, repeatable finance processes on behalf of business units or areas across an enterprise. Organizations commonly choose this model to achieve process standardization and improvement, reduce errors, and br...

By Perry D. Wiggins • Nov. 2, 2022