CFO’s Autonomous Future, The Gartner Finance Podcast: Recent Episodes

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What CFOs need to know about the latest innovations impacting Finance and digital business. Each month, your host, Alexander Bant, Gartner Chief of Research for CFOs brings on world leading experts in a fast-paced dialogue solely focused on helping CFOs drive innovation in Corporate Finance and fund the right digital enterprise growth bets.

Episode highlights:

What trends are top of mind for CFOs now? (0:57)
Why are CFOs deprioritizing finance transformation for 2025? (2:06)
What growth pressures do CFOs face? (5:16)
How will AI affect finance in 2025? (9:02)
Why will data strategy be critical for finance teams next year? (11:23)

Dennis Gannon is a vice president analyst for Gartner. As a CFO advisory leader, he works with research teams to address the shared challenges of CFOs and other finance leaders by bringing that research to life in interactions with Gartner clients. Dennis is a regular presenter and keynote speaker at Gartner conferences and facilitates dozens of executive roundtables with CFOs and other finance leaders every year.

Mallory Barg Bulman is a CFO advisory leader at Gartner, where she serves as a featured speaker, client advisor and researcher. Mallory guides research teams that cover transformation, CFO personal effectiveness, finance processes, talent and technology. Mallory’s insights are relied on by more than 10,000 CFO and finance executives and their teams across industries and sectors. Mallory also leads the Gartner Finance Transformation Awards and is instrumental in driving Gartner’s strategic research agenda, expanding its capabilities to deliver actionable insights to global finance leaders.

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By 2025, CFOs without a finance transformation strategy will be three times less likely to meet their objectives. To help your finance transformation avoid these risks, listen to this conversation with Gartner expert Peter Brannigan.

Episode highlights:

How do CFOs get started with finance transformation? (2:27)
What are the four phases of building a finance transformation roadmap? (3:07)
What are the common pitfalls of creating a finance transformation roadmap? (7:01)
What use cases should finance transformation roadmaps include? (13:05)
How can CFOs ensure effective transformation governance? (16:08)

Peter Brannigan is a senior director analyst in the Gartner finance research and advisory practice. He supports CFOs and their teams with actionable, objective insights on leading enterprise wide finance and compliance transformation initiatives and leveraging digital platforms with standard processes and sustainable operating models.

“CFOs can’t just view FP&A as a team in finance. They need to turn FP&A strengths into an enterprise capability.” (4:58) — Randeep Rathindran, Gartner Distinguished VP

Episode highlights:

The current state of FP&A, according to CFOs (1:07)
What’s driving the extremely high demand for FP&A? (2:11)
Why automation has been a disappointment for creating capacity for FP&A (3:12)
Three actions that turn FP&A into an enterprise capability (6:05)
FP&A hasn’t learned how to optimize AI. Here’s why. (13:34)

Gartner Distinguished VP Randeep Rathindran has a primary research focus on the CFO and FP&A leader roles, covering the key initiatives of Enterprise Growth and Cost, Financial Data and Analytics, and Finance Organization Transformation. He led syndicated research in a number of practice areas, including research and technology, corporate strategy, operations, and shared services, prior to joining Gartner’s finance research and advisory practice in 2014. He has extensive experience in quantitative research and econometric modeling.

“We should never start by looking at what data we have. But we should always start by asking ourselves one question … .” (7:03 in this podcast)

— Valeria Di Maso, director analyst, Gartner finance research and advisory

Episode highlights:

What does finance D&A governance involve? (0:50)
Why CFOs often find D&A governance intimidating (2:23)
AI and the consequences of bad data quality for finance (4:21)
The top three challenges of D&A governance for finance (6:02)
The CFO’s crucial role in D&A governance (8:16)

Valeria Di Maso is a director analyst in Gartner’s finance research and advisory practice. Based in the U.K., Valeria supports CFOs and finance teams in addressing their key priorities in the finance data and analytics space. Her focus areas include finance data and analytics (D&A), management reporting optimization, dashboarding and visualization, global metrics and KPIs, and the invoice-to-cash process.

Valeria is a senior finance professional with 15 years’ experience in financial services, shared services and the energy industry at General Electric (GE). She held a number of progressive leadership positions in Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K., and she has a diverse background in financial planning and analysis (FP&A), pricing, finance transformation, analytics and reporting, and treasury and order-to-cash management. In her last assignment at GE Gas Power, Valeria led global initiatives to drive data visibility and actions around past due, billing and collections on a more than $3 billion account receivables balance portfolio.

“To get this off the ground, we’re going to have some spend that doesn't actually materialize into impact on the top or bottom line.” — Alexander Bant, Gartner Chief of Finance Research

Episode highlights:

Stall 1: Cost overruns — Why CFOs need to think differently about AI cost (5:35)
Stall 2: AI misuse in decision making — How to ensure automated decisions drive profitability (7:48)
Stall 3: External (dis)trust — Protecting trust with customers, regulators and investors (9:53)
Stall 4: Rigid mindset — Workflow transformation requires the right mental approach (11:39)
The organizational risks of ignoring the four AI stalls (14:13)

Nearly every CFO will spend more on AI in 2024. But for many organizations, this gold rush for new revenue and efficiency will have unintended consequences that extend well beyond operations. Alexander Bant, Chief of Finance Research at Gartner, breaks down how CFOs can manage and even control the four AI stalls putting enterprise growth at risk.

Registration is now open for the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference, Gartner’s flagship CFO event, on 20-21 May 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland. Reserve your space today.

Listen to this exclusive preview of the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference, which helps organizations unlock enterprise value by transforming finance’s top roles:

CFO: Mastering digital transformation. Measuring AI initiative risks and opportunities.
Financial planning and analysis (FP&A): Modernizing data architecture. Creating business partnership influences.
Controllers: Revamping governance models. Discovering the future of blockchain and accounting.
VP of Finance Transformation: Building future organizational models. Evaluating consulting firms and business process outsourcing (BPOs).

Episode highlights:

The urgency behind the conference’s autonomous finance theme (1:25)
The CFO role is expanding to AI initiatives and cybersecurity (6:29)
FP&A skill sets for modernizing data architecture (9:25)
Controllers are under serious pressure with governance models and automation (11:24)
VPs of financial transformation must build future organizational models (13:02)
Cutting through the AI hype with expert interactions (15:37)

Seventy-eight percent of CFOs ranked finance organization structure as one of their top priorities for 2024. However,r most CFOs find this a daunting task, given there is not single “correct” organization design and stakeholders often resist change. In this episode of the Gartner CFO Podcast, we talk to senior director of research Emily Connelly about how to effectively lead a finance org restructuring.

Reduced profitability is quickly becoming the new reality for CFOs. Moreover, the key areas where costs are rising most, such as digital transformation, are the same areas CEOs need financial leaders to prioritize investments and drive growth. Gartner VP of Research Dennis Gannon offers CFOs four critical trends and actions to successfully address these cost pressures and accurately forecast the approaching impacts on their organizations.

Gartner VP of Research Dennis Gannon works with research teams to address the shared challenges of CFOs and other finance leaders by bringing that research to life in one-on-one and group interactions with Gartner clients. Dennis is a regular presenter and keynote speaker at Gartner conferences and facilitates dozens of executive roundtables with CFOs and other finance leaders every year.

CFOs of top-performing enterprises exhibit specific traits — agreeableness, empowerment, accountability — and take specific actions, such as tying learning and development to strategic objectives. Listen now to discover how you can use these critical traits and actions to achieve positive business outcomes and growth.

In 2024, CFOs will be inundated by difficult challenges that determine success. As guest Marko Horvat explains, “CFOs are being tugged from a million different directions. So how do you allocate your time to make sure you're spending it on the right thing?”

Listen now to discover how you can improve the financial function, boost growth through productivity and enhance CFO effectiveness across the enterprise as well as additional key priorities in this critical episode of the CFO Podcast.

Marko Horvat is a vice president in Gartner’s Research and Advisory practice, specializing in topics most relevant to CFOs and finance transformation leaders. Marko has been a CFO, controller and head of financial planning and analysis, and led several transformation efforts in many industries, including public, private and nonprofit entities. Marko is a licensed CPA in California, where he resides.

Employees with high levels of digital dexterity are 3.3 times more likely to deliver digital business outcomes than those with moderate digital dexterity. Learn the 5 competencies that matter most for achieving high digital dexterity and the building blocks that form a future-ready culture.

Eighty-eight percent of boards now consider cybersecurity a business issue, not a technology one. To treat cybersecurity as a business investment, CFOs need to know the business value of cybersecurity. Using outcome-driven metrics and the Gartner Cybersecurity Business Value Benchmark, CFOs can make informed investments that balance the need to protect with the need to run their business.

Alexander Bant is the chief of research for CFOs at Gartner, where his business insights are used by 45,000 leaders at a majority of the S&P Global 500. His research teams quantify and share what the top companies and their leaders do differently to maximize their people, processes and technology.

Alex has interviewed more than 3,300 C-level executives and led strategy sessions at more than 250 companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Boeing, Salesforce, General Motors, The Walt Disney Company, Starbucks, Heineken, Deere & Company, Gilead Sciences, BMW, United Airlines, UPS, Philips, American Express, Verizon, Fidelity, McDonald’s, Allstate and L’Oreal. Alex’s data and findings have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, Reuters, The Economist, Businessweek, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, USA Today and more than 75 other media outlets.

Alex holds a degree from the London School of Economics (LSE) and is an adjunct professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C.

Learn what organizations are currently doing with AI in finance, how it’s unique and plays out differently within the finance function, and its impact on people and skills.

July is the perfect time for CFOs to pause, critically evaluate how the first half of the year went and refocus moving into the rest of the year.

CFOs can no longer treat finance transformations as a side gig. This episode explains why full-time, dedicated finance transformation leaders and teams are necessary for the transformations to succeed.

Geraldine Garaud is a director analyst in Gartner’s finance practice, providing guidance in key areas such as finance strategy, organization design, change management. She also advises clients on effective finance transformation programs. Prior to joining Gartner, she spent 17 years in various finance roles for complex matrix organizations. Outside the U.S., she led finance groups in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. More recently, she advised CFO and finance leadership teams on finance transformation and lean initiatives.

As business leaders look for cuts when trying to contain costs in an uncertain business environment, ensure your organization is not making reflexive labor force reductions that will have detrimental implications in the long run.

Learn four of the biggest topics CFOs are grappling with that Gartner’s CFO & Finance Executive Conference will address on 31 May and 1 June 2023.

Marko Horvat is a vice president in Gartner’s research and advisory practice, specializing in topics most relevant to CFOs and finance transformation leaders. Marko has been a CFO, controller, head of financial planning and analysis and led several transformation efforts in many industries, including public, private and nonprofit entities. Marko is a licensed CPA in California, where he resides.

Learn how high-performing leaders are creating government finance offices of the future.

Farrah Watson, director analyst at Gartner, advises executive and senior finance leaders in the government and nonprofit sectors looking to enhance efficiency, create transparency and meaningfully communicate information to stakeholders. She brings 20 years of leadership and management experience in the areas of budgeting, planning and forecasting, including expert-level knowledge in Oracle Hyperion.

In this episode of Gartner’s CFO Podcast, Nisha Bhandare, VP analyst at Gartner, breaks down what is a finance technology roadmap. She explains why this is something a CFO must sit down and think about, the benefits of a well-drawn roadmap, as well as the drawbacks if CFOs don’t get it right.

Nisha Bhandare is a Vice President, Analyst, in Gartner’s Finance Research and Advisory Practice. She advises clients who are in the midst or embarking on a finance transformation journey, primarily in the areas of finance technology strategy and implementation, ERP deployment, and invoice-to-cash processes. Nisha previously worked in progressive leadership roles in financial planning and analysis, controllership, and finance transformation and operations. She built world-class solutions to increase analytical and forecast accuracy, productivity and efficiencies through automation, shared services, legal entity and ERP simplification.

In this episode, Gartner Managing Vice President Craig Risberg recommends five resolutions for CFOs:

Stop using spreadsheets for budgets,
Make job descriptions actually stand out to digital talent,
Create a sense of belonging for your growing finance IT community,
Try (and likely fail at) more finance AI projects,
Personally invest in developing finance’s target operating model.

Persistent inflation, scarce and expensive talent, and global supply constraints have created a seemingly unpredictable operating environment. In this episode, Regina Crowder, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, shares key considerations and things to avoid when making effective forecasts.

Regina Crowder is a Senior Director Analyst in Gartner’s finance practice. She engages with senior finance leaders to identify areas of opportunity and helps implement best practice solutions that improve functional effectiveness and enhance business performance. Regina’s primary areas of focus are financial planning and analysis, budgeting and forecasting. Before Gartner, Regina served as a vice president of corporate finance at Tech Data, and was responsible for the company's global financial transformation initiative, which included worldwide financial planning and forecasting processes.

As a Vice President of Research at Gartner, Dennis Gannon fields inquiries every day from CFOs and other senior finance leaders for his perspective on how to best run their functions and help the organization maximize returns on capital. His areas of expertise include capital allocation, cost optimization, finance business partnership, and CFO personal effectiveness. Dennis works with Gartner research teams to address the shared challenges of finance leaders and brings that research to life in one-on-one and group interactions with Gartner clients.

In this episode, we share Gartner’s latest insights from our Supply Chain Symposium Keynote and Monthly Supply Chain Alert for September 2022. We discuss how CFOs can support and drive changes related to labor, materials, logistics, and inventories and set their business up to navigate continued pressures.

Thomas O’Connor is a vice president team manager in the Gartner Supply Chain Group. His team researches and advises clients on a wide range of supply chain focused topics, including supply chain strategy, industry trends, digital commerce, sustainability, packaging, returns and more. Thomas also leads and hosts The Gartner Supply Chain Podcast, while his data and findings have been featured in Bloomberg, CNBC, The Economist, The Financial Times, Fortune, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and more than 30 other media outlets. He is based out of Sydney, Australia.

Listen to this episode to learn how CFOs and C-suite leaders should be addressing four key challenges in today’s labor market:

Strong demand for talent, increasing compensation expectations, and difficulty recruiting and hiring
Return to the office and hybrid work
The “Great Resignation” and shifting employee values
Diversity, equity and inclusion, and defining the value your organization provides to employees and the world

We share the latest costs that companies are cutting, digital investments they are making, and how we see the best CFOs setting up for success during the recession. We then drill into nine specific actions related to resource allocation, securing talent, and driving digital acceleration during the recession.

Finance functions have an opportunity to move from automated to autonomous, and shifting mindsets is the hardest barrier to overcome in that journey. CFOs must shift their thinking in three ways to lead their functions into the future.

Emily Connelly is a research director in Gartner’s finance practice. She led research for the 2022 Gartner CFO and Finance Executive Conference Keynote Address, “The Path to Autonomous Finance.” Emily also leads research on finance transformation and shared services.

David Furlonger is a Distinguished Vice President and Gartner Fellow in Gartner’s CEO and Digital Business Leaders research group. David is responsible for conducting research and developing publications aimed at helping CEOs and other executive leaders better understand how long-term societal, business and technology trends impact industries and their enterprise, in particular due to digital innovations.

Additional research areas include: blockchain business cases and strategy, digital assets/tokenization/DeFi, decentralization and ecosystems and the evolution of the programmable economy.

In October 2019, David published a Harvard book: “The Real Business of Blockchain: How Leaders Can Create Value in a New Digital Age.”

In this episode, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Avivah Litan shares the current state of corporate adoption of digital currencies, what could accelerate acceptance, and key risks on the horizon. We outline key indicators CFOs should be watching and important steps they can take now to prepare. This episode helps equip CFOs to be proactive and well-informed on this critical topic for the future of autonomous finance.

In the rapidly evolving world of data and analytics, exclusively commiting to relational databases and query will leave your company and your team shackled and wanting for answers. Today’s organizations require more flexible means to manage and analyze their data to produce innovative and intuitive insights at or near real-time. In this podcast, Alexander Bant and Grant Nelson review the often new-to-finance graph databases, graph theory and graph analytics and explore the advantages of adopting non-relational data and analytics in finance.

Grant Nelson partners with finance leaders to understand and address their most pressing data and analytics challenges and opportunities. He provides guidance and research derived from Gartner’s cross-functional data and analytics quantitative and top-practice research into critical decision areas for finance and accounting.

Hear which innovations finance leaders are investing in and finding value with as they drive digital acceleration in finance. We dig into what CFOs should consider about cloud analytics, predictive analytics, machine learning, process mining and digital twins.

Wonder what other CFOs are prioritizing for 2022? In this episode, we cover the top five areas where CFOs will spend time in 2022 and the top five challenges they hope to solve.