Deloitte’s recent 2025 Tech Trends report identifies several disruptive forces that will require the attention of finance leaders during the coming two years. These include the further evolution of AI — especially its increasing role in the IT function and other key areas — and sharper attention to hardware rather than software, Deloitte said.
As such, today’s CFOs are being tasked with developing strategies for integrating new technologies like generative artificial intelligence into their organizations — an ask which requires a closer relationship with their technology counterparts, as well as a deeper understanding of the tools themselves.
Even before the current explosion of interest in generative AI, there was a growing need for CFOs to “become far more fluent in technology and work with their technology partners in a more constructive way than historically they may have thought their role was aligned,” said James Glover, principal, finance & enterprise performance for Big Four accounting and consulting firm Deloitte.
That’s only become more important over the past decade, as technology has become both increasingly powerful and a greater growth driver for businesses, Glover said in an interview.
“If you're going to be a finance leader in the next decade, you need to understand enough about how the technologies work and how they can be deployed to generate outcomes and benefits for your organization,” he said.
‘Think big, act small’
Keeping pace with ongoing technology developments is crucial for finance chiefs who, as stewards of risk and investment, place a high priority on the technology’s return on investment. “As a CFO, though, you're not really buying technology for technology’s sake, so what you really care about is largely the application of that technology,” Glover said.
“The biggest question, and I think the biggest thing that CFOs are working through, is how do they apply that technology or deploy that technology into their organization?” he said.
Deloitte’s advice is to “think big, act small,” he said.
“You have to find the intersection of your strategy and what the technology is capable of doing, and then think more broadly than the narrow use cases,” Glover said of how finance chiefs should be thinking of integrating new technologies. The need to have that understanding has put a rising premium on finance leaders with strong data skills, especially as CFOs are being asked to take on more strategic and operational responsibilities, CFO Dive previously reported.
However, it’s also important for finance leaders to have a strong relationship with other executives such as the chief information or chief technology officer, especially as the integration of new technologies in key functions leads to changing workflows and talent requirements. As AI seeps into the IT function, for example, “new roles and responsibilities will emerge,” and where the function sits inside of the business may shift, Deloitte’s report found.
“In all circumstances, the need to partner with technology and technology practitioners and CIO, CTO organizations is going to be paramount to their success,” Glover said. “In my mind, finance can only enable so much on its own.”
The new and the familiar
Having that understanding is especially critical as the marketplace of AI-enabled tools grows increasingly crowded: a wash of new vendors have flooded into the office of the CFO, looking to entice finance chiefs to choose their solutions for key processes, CFO Dive previously reported.
Gaining investment into back-office functions such as the office of the CFO has “different challenges” than finalizing investments for front-office functions such as customer-facing products or services, Glover said. However, it’s likely back-office processes will grow more automated as time goes on.
“Generally, a lot of forecasts out there…suggest there's going to be way more technology and way less manpower in the future,” Glover said. Future finance professionals are likely going to turn towards digital tools and software to solve their problems, as opposed to adding headcount — making tech fluency all the more critical for CFOs today, he said.
That includes remaining familiar with the technologies finance teams use today, however, as well as keeping pace with emerging tools.
The traditional ERP systems and other planning tools are here to stay, and “they perform a lot of valuable activities for an organization,” Glover said. “What we're going to start to do is layer on AI capabilities on top of those environments, on top of those platforms, to essentially liberate hours from the employee base.”
