CFOs are uniquely qualified among cross-functional partners to see the bigger picture, understand the challenges and opportunities facing their organization and map the best path to success. A good thing, too, knowing CEOs and boards are increasingly expecting us to successfully take on broader and non-traditional responsibilities. Now that the holiday season has ended and 2024 has drawn to a close, our focus should be on setting the stage for a successful new year. But what actions should CFOs be taking in 2025? The following are a few to consider prioritizing.

Expect and navigate uncertainty

CFOs have faced volatility and uncertainty since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, including a rollercoaster economy, supply chain disruption, political division and ongoing geopolitical turmoil. We should expect more of the same in 2025. Inflation has been moderating but remains sticky, and the incoming administration’s proposed tariffs could reignite it. The Federal Reserve has been taking interest rates down, but yield curves remain inverted, a potential harbinger of recession. Tight labor markets have eased, slightly, but new restrictions on immigration could reverse the trend. And the U.S. regulatory environment will surely change, but how is anyone’s guess. 

To navigate this constant uncertainty:

• Intimately understand your financials and underlying business fundamentals, identifying, analyzing and trending key metrics and indicators
• Closely monitor and tightly manage cash flows
• Aggressively challenge discretionary spending
• Prepare “what if” scenarios and contingency plans
• Proactively manage risks and seize opportunities

Grow sales, profitably 

When I first became a sales finance director at Campbell Soup, I learned our sales company’s mantra “volume, volume, volume.” Although driving sales is critical to a company’s long-term success, the sales must be profitable (i.e., margin matters). This nuance became highly relevant when I became the CFO of a private recycling company in 2018. 

Specifically, the CEO and Board Chair noted the company’s sales had been trending up, but income and cash were both trending down. The company only had two products, food grade and non-food grade recycled PET resin, and management priced the food grade resin higher, knowing it was more costly to produce. 

After we prepared a detailed analysis of the production process and related costs, we discovered the cost differential was nearly three times their “gut” estimate. As a result, they were losing several pennies on every pound of food-grade resin sold (i.e., on the product experiencing recent sales growth). 

To profitably grow sales:

• Establish an effective sales team with a proven chief sales officer (CSO) and qualified, passionate business development managers
• Collaborate with the CSO in defining sales strategies, setting goals and objectives, implementing appropriate incentives, and monitoring the sales team’s progress
• Validate customer pricing by carefully analyzing the cost of delivering your products and services and benchmarking competitors
• Consistently review profitability and utilization reporting with the CSO and other partners, identifying profitable business classes or customers to push and highlighting ones where course correction may be needed

Embrace technology

AI, blockchain, hyper-automation and other developing technologies could benefit, even revolutionize, every part of an organization. Automating workflows, within finance, operations or otherwise, can increase efficiency and productivity, enhance data analysis and reporting, improve accuracy and compliance, and increase satisfaction. 

Harnessing advanced data analytics can provide deeper insights into customer behavior, market trends, and financial performance, enabling CFOs and their cross-functional partners to make more informed decisions. However, leveraging such technologies requires more than simply deciding to adopt them. 

In the spirit of effectively embracing technology:

• Cultivate a digital-savvy mindset and culture (e.g., build your personal awareness of emerging technologies, experiment with ChatGPT and similar tools as part of your daily routine, and invest in developing your team’s tech skills)  
• Play an active role in your organization’s adoption, use and governance of new technologies, closely partnering with the CIO and other cross-functional partners on such initiatives
• Define the organization’s overall digital philosophy and strategy to upgrade processes and harness the benefits of AI and other emerging technologies, considering scalability from the start
• When contemplating additions to your tech stack, verify the purpose, need, strategic objective and problem to be solved of a potential investment to ensure consistency with your strategy
• Use new and existing tools to their fullest, investing in training and reassessing their use vs. capability on an ongoing basis.

Respect technology

As CFO, a data security breach or the unintended consequence of using AI are two of my biggest nightmares. Each day, cybercriminals are trying new and clever ways to access our data, and the bad actors are becoming experts at their trade. 

One small company I knew, already tight on cash, fell victim to a cyber fraud that nearly resulted in its insolvency. As CFOs, we must be vigilant and proactive regarding cyber risk. 

In the spirit of respecting technology:

• Know the risks of AI, including data bias, privacy, security, data accuracy and authenticity concerns as well as regulatory compliance challenges.
• Adopt cybersecurity, AI and related policies, then provide company-wide training  
• Require multifactor authentication, encrypt email and secure email attachments
• Conduct all-employee phishing campaigns to build awareness of cyber threats
• Develop disaster recovery and business continuity plans
• Know and mitigate your cyber risks, including investment in cyber insurance
• Leverage a cybersecurity framework like NIST CSF 2.0 to assess your current approach vs. best practices, identifying and addressing gaps accordingly

Try a new hat

Being CFO, especially the CFO of a small- to medium-sized business, is dynamic, challenging and exciting. The skills required of today’s CFO are broad, expanding and increasingly overlap with those of our cross-functional business partners. We must adapt to the nature and size of our respective organizations. Of course, we must wear the traditional CFO hat, encompassing financial reporting, cost accounting, cash management, capital investment, compliance activities, and so on. 

Increasingly, though, we are expected to wear additional hats such as strategist and risk manager, business transformation leader, CIO, M&A lead, procurement officer, ESG champion and others. My favorite hat, though, is that of a business partner and right hand to the CEO. During 2025, I encourage you to try a few new hats on for size to drive your organization to even greater success.