Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference, London 2025: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference, taking place this week in London. Below is a collection of key announcements and insights coming out of the conference.

On Day 1 of the conference we are highlighting sessions on creating long-term value with strategic cost optimization, finance leaders’ role in AI initiatives, and key steps in creating a compelling finance technology road map. Be sure to check this page throughout the day for updates.

Gartner Hype Cycle for AI in Finance Identifies Three Near-Term Focus Areas for CFOs

Presented by Michelle Carlsen, Director Analyst, Gartner

CFOs are very focused on optimizing costs in today’s volatile operating environment, but kneejerk, reactive cuts can harm an organization’s long term growth. In this session, Michelle Carlsen, Director Analyst at Gartner, shared a sustainable approach to cost optimization that can drive a six-point premium over peers in long–term value realization. 

• Traditional cost structure models don’t always help organizations drive long-term value creation. 

• The long-term value creation of cost optimization initiatives can be greatly improved by focusing efforts in a way that prioritizes and protects spending towards factors intrinsic to the organization, aka differentiating costs.

• Cost optimization and efficiency improvement strategies should be targeted towards enabling costs that directly support mission-critical operational outcomes, and the optimization goal in this area should be to achieve a satisfactory level of performance with the minimum viable spend.

• The bulk of cost cutting should be aimed towards commoditizing costs.  

• Commoditizing costs are those that any competitor can incur. The goal here should always be to minimize spend to as little as possible because any spend here creates no market differentiation for an organization.

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Rob van der Meulen at rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com

Presented by Marco Steecker, Senior Director, Research, Gartner

As investment in AI accelerates, the question of who should be responsible and accountable for AI initiatives remains unanswered at most organizations.  In this session, Marco Steecker, Senior Director, Research at Gartner, shared how finance leaders can clarify their roles as they relate to AI.

• CEOs expect finance leaders to deliver on many facets of AI including collaborating with vendors, leading in-house AI initiatives, and providing strategic guidance to IT. 

• When implementing finance AI initiatives, finance leaders should choose the most suitable role for each project: end-user advocate, co-developer, or pioneer.

• The end-user advocate role mostly applies to AI solutions bought “off-the-shelf” where finance leaders’ domain knowledge enables them to outline processes and preferences, get involved in testing, and troubleshooting solutions while understanding and documenting how to operate the AI solution.

• The co-developer and pioneer roles relate to bespoke built AI solutions where finance will facilitate or carry out coding, modeling, and implementation work, potentially expanding to areas not in finance’s traditional remit, such as data engineering, data science, and AI modeling and development.

• At the enterprise level, finance leaders must step into the role of AI champion, supporting the business case creation and ensuring proper governance. To effectively step into this role, they must first establish a track record of AI success in their own function.

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Rob van der Meulen at rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com

Presented by Nisha Bhandare, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner 

In the current climate of economic volatility, crafting a robust finance technology roadmap is crucial to meeting business objectives while navigating economic uncertainty. In this session,  Nisha Bhandare, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, explained how to plan a technology roadmap in finance.

• “Typical finance technology roadmaps make the mistake of starting with a technology first mindset without a clear link to the business strategy.”

• “Finance technology roadmaps should start with the business strategy , identify the capabilities needed in finance to support the strategy, and then decide the technology to support it.” 

• “A common business strategy is to increase operating efficiency, a potential driver of that might be to improve employee efficiency, and this can point to a finance capability: digitize the billing process.” 

• Repeating this process will identify a range of finance capabilities needed to deliver business strategy. Now it’s time to prioritise these finance capabilities, mapping them into three categories: Core, Differentiated and Innovative."

• “Finance capabilities may map differently for distinct organizations, but the majority of finance capabilities (around 60-65%) should be made up of core capabilities, with about 20-25% differentiated, and 10-15% innovative."

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Rob van der Meulen at rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com