The Changing CFO Role Requires Greater Collaboration with HR and IT

Key points

• SAP Concur research shows finance leaders are getting involved in areas where they traditionally had a lighter touch, and the strategic nature and crossover of C-level roles has increased.
• CFOs must ensure financial accountability and ROI across the organization, leading to collaboration with HR, IT, and other departments on initiatives and spending.
• In the 2023 CFO Insights research, 87% of finance leaders said their crossover with HR is more significant than ever.
• In the 2024 survey, virtually every finance leader regarded the HR relationship as important, with top collaboration priorities including incentivizing high performers, diversity, and addressing the gender pay gap.
• Amid talent shortages, CFO-CHRO collaboration is seen as necessary to facilitate stronger employee experiences and better attract and retain employees.
• Finance and HR departments often rely on different metrics to evaluate business value and results; marrying data from solutions like Concur Expense and Concur Travel can facilitate collaborative decision-making across teams.
• The most cited initiatives CFOs feel they must collaborate on with IT heads are cost control (58%), AI (53%), and digital transformation strategy (49%), while cybersecurity was selected by only 24%.
• 51% of CFOs say they are investing in AI for bookkeeping, financial planning, risk scenario planning, and fraud monitoring, but 58% say they understand very little about the technology and 46% say they urgently need training.