CFOs and finance leaders are orchestrating change centered on stakeholder value

Respondents’ top priorities to help drive the organization’s success through fiscal year 2027 reflect this broad, strategic view: embedding AI and advanced technology to automate operations (43%), driving enterprise cost efficiency (34%), optimizing capital allocation and investment decisions (33%), and strengthening finance’s strategic influence across the enterprise (32%).

An expanding mandate: Tech investment and deployment strategies can place finance leaders at the center of enterprise decision-making

As AI expands across the enterprise, finance leaders are taking on a broader integrator role—connecting strategy, investment, risk, and performance. To activate this mandate, many are strengthening data and technology foundations, redesigning finance work, and building more AI-ready talent models.

Human-led, AI-powered: Finance as the hub of responsive, trusted intelligence

As agentic AI becomes part of finance workflows, the focus is shifting from adoption to responsible scale. Most surveyed leaders are comfortable with agentic workflows in some capacity, but meaningful human oversight remains essential—putting trusted data, change management, AI-ready talent, and safe experimentation at the center of value creation.

Finance’s next AI challenge: Managing AI cost complexity at scale

As AI costs and complexity rise, finance leaders may need more sophisticated ways to forecast, allocate, and govern spending. Leaders expecting higher AI costs tend to be further along in AI maturity, making clear experimentation guardrails, vendor cost modeling, and potential revenue scenarios critical to building a fuller view of value.

The geographic complexities of investment strategies: How tech sovereignty may drive new choices across the globe

Technology sovereignty is emerging as a strategic differentiator for trust, resilience, and long-term value. Most surveyed leaders expect it to reshape technology-related capital allocation through 2027, influencing platform investment choices, where physical assets are located, and potential structural moves such as partnerships, M&A, or legal entity changes.

Rethinking the funding playbook: The fragmented process of deciding what to fund and how to fund it

As technology budgets rise, surveyed leaders have not converged on a single model for approving major AI and technology investments. Alongside internal capex and external funding, many are exploring alternative funding pathways, including managed services arrangements with shared efficiency targets and co-investment vehicles with outside partners.