Horváth CFO Study 2025 – Gen(AI) offers New Paths

Authors of this issue: Achim Wenning and Patrick Noseck

Good Morning, Finance & Controlling Community!

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies face continuous competitive pressure, rising customer expectations, and increasing complexity in value creation. These challenges demand innovative approaches to Performance Management. Access to high-quality, timely, and comprehensive management information is now a decisive competitive advantage. Identifying vulnerabilities and opportunities has become critical for navigating an unpredictable world, especially as new technologies unlock unprecedented possibilities.

With the release of our new Horváth CFO-Study 2025: “Embark on the Journey into Next-Gen Performance Management”, we invite you to explore the future of Performance Management. Over 150 top Finance executives from various industries and countries shared their expectations for 2025 and their most pressing challenges.

A key priority on the CFO agenda 2025 focuses on achieving long-term efficiency gains by harmonizing and optimizing financial processes. Simultaneously, fostering employee competencies takes center stage as an essential response to the challenges of a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

In this newsletter, we’re highlighting our five most important findings from the current study.

Let’s dive in!

1. CFOs look optimistically into the future

Despite prevailing economic uncertainty, the majority of CFOs (65%) see light at the end of the tunnel and express optimism about the months ahead. Among them, 32% anticipate stable growth, while another 33% foresee significant growth by the end of 2025. Interestingly, the recent U.S. election outcome – Donald Trump's re-election – does not appear to worry most Finance executives. Only 17% expressed concern about its potential impact, while half believe it will have no negative effects on their businesses at all.

2. High-quality insights, but manual effort remains the norm

While optimism about growth increases, many Finance organizations continue to face internal challenges. 83% of the surveyed Finance organizations are able to provide valuable, business-relevant insights to stakeholders, but these insights are often generated through manual and resource-intensive processes. 60% of the CFOs complain about insufficient digitization of Performance Management processes. Therefore, shifting toward greater digitization and automation holds significant potential to improve information quality, predictive capabilities, and resource efficiency.

3. Finance organizations are currently focusing on (Gen)AI topics

To enhance Performance Management, Finance organizations are increasingly turning to (Gen)AI solutions. Short-term initiatives emphasize exploring (Gen)AI’s potential, particularly in automating and standardizing workflows to reduce the manual workload. Especially, in Reporting disciplines, excessive effort is often invested without achieving proportionate results. Less than half of CFOs state that Reporting fully meets state-of-the-art requirements, with integrated platforms providing dashboards, navigation tracks, and flexible drill-down options. Forecasting also shows a lack of automation, with predictive (rolling) forecasts rarely implemented to derive timely measures. This should, however, define modern Performance Management and highlights the urgent need for further digitization in this area. A shortage of skilled data specialists capable of designing advanced algorithms and forecasting models remains a major barrier to progress. In particular for (Gen)AI solutions, overcoming the shortage of skilled professionals will be critical to successfully embedding (Gen)AI into financial operations. Furthermore, organizations will need to continuously adapt their strategies and invest in training to fully capitalize on the evolving capabilities of new (Gen)AI tools. To stay competitive, organizations must prioritize these digital advancements and ensure their workforce is prepared for the future of Performance Management.

4. (Gen)AI potentials not leveraged yet

Building on these insights, it is not surprising that CFOs, in their search for suitable (Gen)AI use cases, identify the greatest optimization potential in the areas of Forecasting, Reporting, and Analytics. In fact, 53% of CFOs consider applications such as automated report generation and evaluation particularly advantageous. However, other use cases, such as (Gen)AI-driven comment creation or consolidation in reports and answering questions via chatbot, are considered useful by only 32% of respondents. As CFOs continue to explore viable use cases, it seems that skepticism about the maturity of (Gen)AI tools still prevails. Despite its potential, the application of (Gen)AI in Performance Management remains limited. Only 3% of Finance organizations have fully integrated (Gen)AI solutions into their workflows. Furthermore, 55% of CFOs have not yet incorporated (Gen)AI projects into their long-term strategic plans, and implementation efforts remain minimal.

5. (Gen)AI will complement, not replace Controllers

The fear of many Controllers that they will be replaced by an intelligent algorithm in the future appears to be unfounded. 62% of CFOs believe it will not replace Controllers in their essential role as strategic Business Partners. Instead, it will enhance their capabilities, reshaping their responsibilities and requiring new skills to navigate the evolving landscape. Therefore, Controlling will not lose significance in the future; rather, additional workload will be added to the Finance organization until the transformation to a modern, (Gen)AI-supported organization is fully implemented.

Summary

The new Horváth CFO-Study 2025 reveals a cautiously optimistic outlook among CFOs, even in the face of economic uncertainty. Their focus is on implementing short-term measures with long-term impact, particularly through the adoption of (Gen)AI. While Performance Management processes currently meet basic requirements, significant opportunities for optimization through digitization and automation remain untapped. The study highlights the need for Finance organizations to prioritize skill development and innovation to harness the transformative potential of (Gen)AI.

Enjoy exploring the detailed insights, and let’s shape the future of Performance Management together! Click here to receive the complete study report.

Best regards, your Horváth CFO-Study Team

Event Highlights 2025

February 20th: Modernes Performance Management - Smart zu mehr Transparenz und Effizienz/ Hannover, Germany (free of charge, held in German)

March 12th: Moderne Planung in der Praxis - Schneller – effizienter – flexibler planen/ Zurich, Switzerland (free of charge, held in German)

March 25th: Intelligente Optimierung des Abschlussprozesses – Voraussetzungen und Potentiale von KI im Abschluss/ Zurich, Switzerland (free of charge, held in German)

April 3rd: Horváth AI and Data Convention/ Dusseldorf, Germany (held in English)

May 21st-22nd: Fachkonferenz Reporting & Konsolidierung/ Hamburg, Germany (held in German)

May 25th-27th: TECH by Handelsblatt/ Heilbronn, Germany (held in English)

What's next on issue #07?

In our February edition, we take a look at how the introduction of the reporting standard IFRS 18, which primarily focuses on statutory reporting, can impact internal management reporting and the work of Controlling departments. We explore how IFRS 18 affects companies in aligning statutory and management reporting, the influence of the new mandatory subtotals in the profit and loss statement on key performance indicators (KPIs) for management, and how specific offerings and assets that generate returns in addition to the main business are considered.