SAP Concur's CFO Insights report, based on a survey of nearly 1,000 finance leaders, reveals cybersecurity as the top external challenge (46%), with data breaches averaging $4.4 million. Leaders also struggle with AI ROI measurement, data quality, and skills gaps. Recommendations include strengthening governance, using new KPIs for AI ROI, and investing in data foundations and upskilling.
SAP Concur introduces the 'Beyond the Balance Sheet' series, a thought-leadership series for modern finance leaders. Each 20-minute episode covers trends shaping finance, including growth strategy, AI, and the evolving role of business travel. Episodes include 'Vision for Growth', 'AI — Hype or Game-Changer?', 'The Role of Business Travel', and 'Integrations: Making Every Connection Count'.
According to SAP Concur research, finance teams in 2026 face ongoing volatility, with 35% of CFOs citing poor cost management as a top internal threat. Leading organizations are shifting from reactive to proactive spend management, integrating travel, expense, and accounts payable, and leveraging automation and AI for efficiency. Adopting SAP Concur can reduce business travel and expense costs by 23%, increase policy compliance by 28%, and enhance forecasting confidence.
SAP Concur released its third CFO Insights report, based on a survey of 350 CFOs and senior finance leaders across eight countries from December 2024 to January 2025. 69% of finance leaders cite optimizing costs and efficiency as the top goal for growth, with 58% turning to automation and AI. 94% say AI has helped improve decision-making, and 73% say AI has positively impacted cost and risk reduction. Top external challenges cited are worsening economic conditions (41%), geopolitical tensions (37%), and supply chain constraints (32%).
SAP Concur's blog offers budget management advice, including keeping expense data handy, educating and training employees, verifying spending aligns with budget, maximizing the value of a single platform, and ensuring spending aligns with goals. Citing a poll of 500 finance leaders, it notes 75% say their business often exceeds expense, travel, and invoice budgets, and even more agree these systems need to be better connected for a single view of spend.
SAP Concur explores the evolving role of CFOs, emphasizing the importance of tech skills, multitasking, strategic advisory skills, and soft skills. Finance leaders will be more involved in company strategy and data analysis, leveraging technologies such as cloud computing, big data, machine learning, and AI.
A SAP Concur blog post provides a 90-day action plan for new finance leaders, divided into three months: month one focuses on information gathering and learning, month two on evaluating learnings and identifying improvement opportunities, and month three on collaborating and creating a plan. The article emphasizes building relationships, understanding systems and data, and using technology to optimize expense and accounts payable processes.
This SAP Concur blog post offers advice for new finance leaders on building relationships, understanding company culture and politics, and managing up and down in their first 90 days. It emphasizes establishing strong working relationships through frequent two-way communication, one-on-one meetings, understanding company mission and decision-makers, and exploring cross-functional teams' finance needs.
A global survey of 1,500 finance executives by Oxford Economics reveals that over 90% of finance leaders consider big data, cloud, and security platforms essential for meeting their goals. The report emphasizes collaboration and automation for improving financial performance.