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.