New data from the latest annual SAP Concur CFO Insights Survey* reveals the evolution of top priorities for Canadian finance leaders amid challenging economic conditions and geopolitical tensions – from AI to cybersecurity. The 2025 research highlights the opportunities and barriers finance leaders face today, while also providing comparisons with previous years’ results.
Economic conditions are the greatest external challenge
External factors are playing a big role in the decision-making of Canadian finance leaders. The following highlights demonstrate the uphill battle finance leaders now face:
- The highest ranked external challenge is worsening economic conditions, with 50% placing the concern in their top 3
- However, geopolitical tensions soared this year (30%) as a concern for finance leaders when compared with 2024 results (15%)
- Regulatory compliance related to climate change is no longer as much of a worry in 2025, remaining in the top three for just 30% of respondents – compared with 83% in 2024
Though the challenges businesses face externally are outside of the finance leaders’ control, being able to mitigate their impact is within their remit – and it comes down to the software solutions and tools they have available. Yet, a lack of data visibility is impacting 53% of Canadian finance leaders – with problems with ease-of-use and adoption (43%), and limited reporting and analytics (47%) next in line.
Unlocking AI & Cybersecurity
Manual processes are a top internal challenge for more than a third of Canadian finance leaders (43%). This has risen significantly in the past few years, with just 1% ranking manual processes as the top challenge in 2023.
However, finance departments are embracing AI today, with over half (63%) highly automating general office tasks – a significant increase on 2024’s results with just 7% reporting this level of automation in their organisation. That’s a significant uptick in usage in the space of a year.
- Other top AI automation use cases include journal entries and bookkeeping (63%), monitoring for fraud (47%) and financial planning (33%).
- Finance leaders report AI is having a positive impact on various areas of their organisation including decision-making (97%), risk reduction (83%) or achieving ESG goals (40%).
When it comes to cybersecurity, more than half of finance leaders (63%) plan to increase their cybersecurity budget. Only 17% plan to enhance collaboration with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and across the IT department though.
In fact, finance leaders today are split about who in the C-Suite should be responsible for driving progress on the increasing cybersecurity threat: 47% of finance leaders believe that driving progress on cybersecurity should be the reserve of IT leaders only, while 53% report it should be finance and IT leaders.
This sentiment comes at a time where the evolving cybersecurity landscape has the potential to influence organisation’s ability to pursue upcoming growth initiatives.
- A third (43%) of finance leaders report that their growth plans will proceed as planned, while half (47%) say they will adapt growth initiatives to align with the cybersecurity landscape.
- Just 10% say they will slow down growth initiatives to focus on cybersecurity.
Growth in 2025
For Canadian finance departments in 2025, optimising costs and efficiency is a key priority to drive growth (80%) – with investments in AI technology (70%) and focusing on sustainability and ESG (60%) next in line.
But they know they can’t do it alone – ensuring cross-functional collaboration is vital for driving growth.
- All respondents (100%) rate themselves as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ at communicating to get buy-in from the wider business on new growth initiatives – and 83% of HR leaders and 67% of IT leaders agree.
- Yet, there’s controversy among those working in finance over who should be responsible for this growth – with 81% of CFOs believing the CFO is the primary driver of growth despite only 52% of finance Senior Vice Presidents (SVPs) agreeing.
- Finance SVPs are more likely to think CFOs should support – but not lead – growth initiatives (20%) or that growth leadership should be shared across the c-suite (28%). While just 9% of CFOs agree that growth leadership should be shared.
*SAP Concur surveyed 350 chief financial officers and senior finance leaders, 115 HR leaders and 115 IT leaders for its latest CFO Insights report.
The research, conducted between December 2024 and January 2025, covered Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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Over a third of finance leaders fear geopolitical tensions and economic conditions in 2025, SAP Concur find
New data from the latest annual SAP Concur CFO Insights Survey* reveals the evolution of top priorities for Canadian finance leaders amid challenging economic conditions and geopolitical tensions – from AI to cybersecurity. The 2025 research highlights the opportunities and barriers finance leaders face today, while also providing comparisons with previous years’ results.
Economic conditions are the greatest external challenge
External factors are playing a big role in the decision-making of Canadian finance leaders. The following highlights demonstrate the uphill battle finance leaders now face:
Though the challenges businesses face externally are outside of the finance leaders’ control, being able to mitigate their impact is within their remit – and it comes down to the software solutions and tools they have available. Yet, a lack of data visibility is impacting 53% of Canadian finance leaders – with problems with ease-of-use and adoption (43%), and limited reporting and analytics (47%) next in line.
Unlocking AI & Cybersecurity
Manual processes are a top internal challenge for more than a third of Canadian finance leaders (43%). This has risen significantly in the past few years, with just 1% ranking manual processes as the top challenge in 2023.
However, finance departments are embracing AI today, with over half (63%) highly automating general office tasks – a significant increase on 2024’s results with just 7% reporting this level of automation in their organisation. That’s a significant uptick in usage in the space of a year.
When it comes to cybersecurity, more than half of finance leaders (63%) plan to increase their cybersecurity budget. Only 17% plan to enhance collaboration with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and across the IT department though.
In fact, finance leaders today are split about who in the C-Suite should be responsible for driving progress on the increasing cybersecurity threat: 47% of finance leaders believe that driving progress on cybersecurity should be the reserve of IT leaders only, while 53% report it should be finance and IT leaders.
This sentiment comes at a time where the evolving cybersecurity landscape has the potential to influence organisation’s ability to pursue upcoming growth initiatives.
Growth in 2025
For Canadian finance departments in 2025, optimising costs and efficiency is a key priority to drive growth (80%) – with investments in AI technology (70%) and focusing on sustainability and ESG (60%) next in line.
But they know they can’t do it alone – ensuring cross-functional collaboration is vital for driving growth.
*SAP Concur surveyed 350 chief financial officers and senior finance leaders, 115 HR leaders and 115 IT leaders for its latest CFO Insights report.
The research, conducted between December 2024 and January 2025, covered Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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This entry was posted on April 16, 2025 at 8:59 am and is filed under Commentary with tags SAP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.