Dive Brief:

• CFOs are still largely viewed among their executive team partners as “Department of No” leaders, according to survey results released Wednesday by finance software provider Datarails.
• The vast majority (97%) of executives responding to the poll said they believe the finance department’s main focus is limiting spending, as many CFOs are pushing to be viewed as collaborative business partners, according to a report on the findings. Only 18% of business partners said they strongly feel the finance department has their strategic needs in mind when making decisions. One in four strongly disagreed with that view.
• “Finance business partnering has long been hailed as the path to transforming the CFO’s office from a cost center to a profit center,” Datarails CEO Didi Gurfinkel said in a press release. “In this scenario, the CFO should be every department’s strategic co-pilot … However, the reality is more often marked by lack of communication, ineffective insight and lack of strategic alignment.”

Dive Insight:

Gartner survey findings released early this year showed that CFOs were under pressure to perform beyond the traditional scope of leading the finance function.

“For most CFOs, the responsibilities they carry beyond finance include a mix of enterprise data and analytics (D&A), enterprise risk, corporate strategy, M&A, and procurement,” Mallory Bulman, CFO advisory leader in Gartner’s finance practice, said in a press release at the time. “This expanded role will require CFOs to make decisive trade-offs in their own time and prioritization decisions.”

Gartner said CFOs were also increasingly overseeing matters related to artificial intelligence, information technology, real estate, cybersecurity and environmental social governance, requiring them to “make better use of their time and to rely on more help from their leadership teams.”

Three forces are accelerating the transformation of the CFO role: technology, turbulence and new stakeholder demands, according to Anders Liu-Lindberg, a partner at the Denmark-based Business Partnering Institute, a management consulting firm.

The rise of technologies such as AI is forcing CFOs to become “tech translators,” requiring them to collaborate with chief information officers, chief operating officers and even chief marketing officers to ensure technology investments align with business outcomes, Liu-Lindberg said in a recent blog post.

Meanwhile, geopolitical instability, trade fragmentation and policy shifts are forcing CFOs into strategic risk roles, as they also grapple with expectations from investors and regulators in areas such as ESG performance, according to Liu-Lindberg.

“Once the stalwart guardian of the numbers and steward of the balance sheet, today’s finance chief is expected to hold the enterprise compass in one hand while navigating disruption with the other,” he said.

In the Datarails study, 54% of executives said they receive only “small” or “moderate” insights from a CFO to support their decisions or spending. The departments that were least satisfied with the CFO office were human resources and R&D, “where half of all executives encounter average or poor collaboration to meet critical business targets,” according to the research.

IT executives had the best relationship with the CFO’s office, registering a 66% satisfaction level, Datarails found. The second most satisfied were sales executives at 63%.

“This makes sense, given that finance typically regards Sales as a profit center rather than a cost center, and may therefore make a more concerted effort to collaborate effectively,” the report said.