Future of finance: How you can lead with insight, not just oversight

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  • May 22, 2025

Beyond managing ongoing cost pressures, the finance function increasingly has opportunities to provide deeper insights as a strategic advisor for businesses. But evolution often isn’t easy. To take decisive action, CFOs and their teams need to leverage vast amounts of data to keep up with changes in regulatory reporting requirements and find new ways of creating value.

Without dedicated investment in enterprise data models and digital capabilities, many finance leaders will likely be challenged to deliver difference makers for their organizations. These include detailed analysis driven by new tech capabilities, advice on capital allocation, and centralized and integrated regulatory reporting. In addition, the competition for skilled talent remains tough, putting the onus on your organization to offer a culture and climate of innovation that appeals to skilled workers.

As a finance leader, you should carefully consider and clearly understand these shifting responsibilities and goals. Finance for finance — increasing efficiency in traditional finance functions and acting as your company’s scorekeeper — is still important. But finance for business — increasing insight throughout the organization and acting as strategic value creator — can be your key to future growth and success. To help achieve that, consider these four critical elements of the future of finance.

Digital finance with AI and analytics
Finance teams are focusing more on providing insight to businesses but may not know how to leverage leading technology for transformation.

Integrating technology into regulatory reporting
Many companies have limited data infrastructure and resources to react to and anticipate regulatory requirements, and their lack of integrated solutions results in wasted time and resources.

Capital and cash flow for growth
Rising interest rates and an uncertain business environment have increased the focus on cash collection and working capital — especially as M&A and other deals activity could increase — as well as automation in the order to cash and revenue processes.

Finance operating model
With an ongoing focus on containing costs while adding resources, many organizations are seeking third-party services to deliver non-core capabilities at a lower cost and often higher quality, while also addressing staff shortages by adding skills and expertise.

AI and analytics to drive profitability and efficiency

After decades of targeting costs, many finance leaders are reaching the limits of reductions and increasing their focus on new tech capabilities that provide deeper insights. That has intensified the competition for talent, prompting companies to automate manual processes and transform the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) function with predictive analytics and AI tools. The resulting organizational and operational models often include outsourcing and managed services.

If you think of finance activity as a triangle, transactional processes traditionally formed the large base. Tech advances such as AI and machine learning are inverting that triangle, enabling finance teams to offer actionable business intelligence. More and more, businesses count on finance to help provide better forecasting, profitability analysis and capital allocation insights.

As this transition from scorekeeper to strategic partner continues, CFOs should prioritize data fluency and pull from various business areas — from operations to risk to marketing — to drive operational decisions. In a successful data strategy, data cleanup and use case development occur concurrently, and AI will be integral to enabling faster execution.

What you can do

Prioritize data strategy as you plan your finance transformation. Take a hard look at how data is managed, cleaned and used across your organization to help drive operational decisions and insights. Data cleanup and use case development should occur concurrently to capture immediate value.

Reassess and evolve your finance operating model to leverage digital tools — such as AI and low-code automation — and support your business growth strategy. Evaluate organizational structures, delivery models and the integration of new roles such as data scientists and predictive analytics specialists.

As demand for digital expertise increases, focus on upskilling your current workforce and consider incorporating AI agents and alternative sourcing of talent, such as the use of third-party providers to accelerate access to new capabilities.

Foster collaboration with IT and other departments to create a cohesive approach to digital finance transformation. Manage interdependencies and align finance initiatives with broader enterprise goals to achieve end-to-end digital processes.

Increasing cash flow, capital and liquidity

With a growing focus on cash collection and working capital, many companies are prioritizing the transformation of the order to cash process. CFOs and their teams are exploring how tech investments to increase automation and control can accelerate finance transformation. This includes rapid assessments for order to cash and working capital, revenue leakage analysis, digital automation and process improvement.

Cash and capital positions are becoming more important as acquisitions, divestitures and other deals are expected to ramp up in 2025. Declining interest rates, the need to reinvent business models and shifting regulatory priorities all could drive transactions. Although there’s still a valuation gap between buyers and sellers, acquisitions can help provide cost synergies that make companies more efficient. Meanwhile, divestitures can help rebalance underperforming portfolios and generate capital that can be reinvested in core business offerings.

In this landscape, you should reevaluate your ability to consistently convert earnings to cash flow. Does your financial structure provide sufficient flexibility and reduce your cost of capital? Do you have sufficient visibility into cash drivers and levers you can pull to increase cash flow? With interest rates remaining low, you should determine how you can better put cash to work instead of simply holding on to it.

What you can do

Collaborate with the COO, CIO and other C-suite leaders to identify underperforming assets for possible divestiture. Advise where capital generated can be reinvested in core offerings to enable focused value creation and improved cash flow management.

Reassess and evolve your financial models to provide real-time insights tailored to the characteristics of your different businesses. Confirm your scenario planning is adequate to anticipate new market shifts and adjust strategies so you can maintain stable cash flow amid economic volatility.

Shift from retaining cash through traditional banking or returning it to shareholders, instead deploying capital through investments that can provide higher returns or increase liquidity. Explore synergies from technology investments, such as AI and cybersecurity, to help reduce long-term operational costs.

Why CFOs are hitting pause on investment decisions


Interest rates
%
Balance sheet and cash flow management
%

Source: PwC Pulse Survey, October 9, 2024

Meeting multiple regulatory reporting requirements

Led by OECD Pillar Two, sustainability and FASB DISE, emerging regulatory reporting requirements are increasing the need for transparency. Many finance teams are seeking more visibility into financial operational performance at a granular level and with more governance and control. Many companies record financials at a group level and use informal means to back into their legal entity reporting. They may also have multiple teams across the company developing disparate new tools, processes and policies for obtaining data.

Tackling these challenges requires greater functional collaboration, including accounting, tax, finance, financial technology, legal and others at a corporate and local level. A centralized approach to managing the systems, processes and policies for sourcing and reporting data through a common data model can improve accuracy and consistency. That creates a better experience for both internal users and customers.

Companies can use a common data model to:

  • Clearly define data requirements across uses
  • Provide ongoing governance for monitoring and adapting to new requirements
  • Improve legal entity mapping
  • Standardize master data usage, policies and processes
  • Proactively collaborate across all functional teams

Without an integrated technical solution supported by robust policies and processes, many organizations could be left to collect manual offline schedules, absorbing time and effort in an overused control operating model.

What you can do

Evaluate current and emerging regulations to identify the data you’ll need to succeed. Reassess internal reporting requirements to determine if new capabilities are needed now and review existing tools through the lens of future data demands.

Use these findings to implement a solution that addresses the impact your people, processes and technology have on financial performance. Test and refine your solution to confirm reports are complete and accurate.

Build flexible contingency plans that include key areas like diversifying supply chains, exploring alternative markets and investing in compliance readiness.

Identify opportunities to meet new regulatory requirements and reevaluate your system landscape to prioritize them. Consider leveraging high-value, third-party services to meet compliance needs and gain access to policy experts.

70%

of finance leaders said the US regulatory environment poses a moderate or serious risk to their companies.

61%

said the global regulatory environment does.

Source: PwC Pulse Survey, October 9, 2024

Evolve your finance operating model to get more value from managed services

Succeeding in the future of finance can hinge on reinventing your finance operating model. The need to reduce costs and risk; improve quality; attract, retain and develop the necessary talent; and make significant investments in technology is leading many finance functions to reconsider their operating and service delivery models, seek automation opportunities and refocus on value-added activities.

Transforming finance is often resource intensive, leading some companies to turn to shared or managed services for non-core processes. By freeing up management and staff resources in those areas, finance leaders can dedicate teams to more forward-looking work that can help increase the finance function’s value.

The key is to focus on outcomes. What opportunities do you see to centralize or standardize your service delivery? If you’re already outsourcing business processes in finance, what’s working well that could further reduce costs or fill skills gaps? How can different contract structures and pricing models in managed services help your finance teams provide more specialized finance expertise at scale and less cost?

What you can do

Consider how outsourcing routine financial processes, such as accounts payable/receivable, payroll and financial reporting, can reduce operational costs. Many companies are also exploring outsourcing in more specialized areas like FP&A, treasury, hedge accounting and lease accounting, among other areas.

Evaluate which service providers offer the financial technologies you need for the years ahead but haven’t fully built. Consider AI-driven analytics and cloud-based ERP systems. Your finance teams could benefit from these capabilities without large upfront investments, improving financial forecasting and compliance.

With access to functional, technical and regulatory industry specialists, you can help decrease financial and operational risks while maintaining transparency and accuracy in reporting. Enhanced guidance and controls also can address growing risks in cybersecurity and data integrity.

What finance leaders can prioritize over the next year

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Mark Poulson

Finance Transformation Leader, PwC US

Tabitha DeFrancisco

Finance Transformation Partner, PwC US

Peter Frank

Finance Transformation, Consumer Markets Industry Leader, PwC US

Adam Kennedy

Finance Transformation Partner, PwC US

Ed Ponagai

Finance Transformation Partner, PwC US

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