How forward-thinking businesses are preparing their finance teams for the future

The best finance teams have solidified themselves as strategic resources for the entire business. But to get to that point, leaders have to totally rethink what a finance team does. That means: More automation, better insights, sharper talent, and smarter spend.

As many companies look for ways to remake the finance function, technology sits at the forefront. In fact, digital transformation ranked as the top priority for CFOs in a 2024 Gartner survey. Leaders from Ramp, AirCFO, and Puzzle explored the trends changing finance in a recent workshop, How to Build a Modern Back Office.

Key takeaways

• There’s a gap between automation ambition and reality. While nearly all CFOs have invested in automation, they’re still leaving major efficiency gains on the table.
• AI is already reshaping finance. Almost half of finance teams are using AI to automate tasks and uncover insights, freeing up time for more strategic work.
• Talent crunch demands new strategies. Automating routine work and investing in employee growth can make the workplace more appealing to strategic talent.
• Cost optimization remains mission-critical. Top CFOs use technology to monitor results in real time and proactively stay ahead.

Here’s how the best midsize companies are evolving their finance teams to lead in 2025 and beyond:

1. Double down on automation

Increased automation continues to be a major priority for midsize companies as they look to improve back-office efficiency. Though 98% of CFOs report they have invested in digitization and automation in a recent McKinsey survey, 41% of respondents said they’ve only automated less than 25% of their finance processes. Only 1% of finance heads have automated more than three-quarters of processes, indicating there’s plenty of room for progress.

Underpinning any automation effort is a foundation of comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date data. This means integrating disconnected data sources—and reducing reliance on spreadsheets, which 90% of companies still rely on.

“I think finance or accounting professionals should be spending very little time month to month moving numbers around inside of spreadsheets and keying things in manually, and they should be reallocating that time toward helping company leadership understand that financial picture and then making decisions that improve business performance,” AirCFO CEO Alex Wittenberg said during the workshop.

2. Unlock intelligent AI

AI is a top priority for CFOs today because it opens the door to intelligent automation and has the potential to boost productivity in a big way. Adoption is rising quickly—Ramp’s Spring 2025 Business Spending Report showed 35% of all U.S. businesses using AI, with the technology and finance sectors leading the way.

The top use cases include process automation, error and anomaly detection, and analytics such as forecasts and budget vs. actual reports, per Gartner. Many finance tools now include embedded AI to help automate:

• Invoice processing and AP—Extract and validate data from invoices, automatically match them to purchase orders and receipts, and route them for approval.
• Expense report reviews—Flag duplicate expenses, detect policy violations, and identify anomalies in employee spending patterns before releasing funds.
• Reconciliations—Match transactions from bank statements with your accounting system, speeding up the month-end close and reducing errors.
• Financial forecasting and scenario modeling—Analyze historical and real-time data

“Now we're getting to a point where we can encode much more complex rules and sets of guidelines to hand over to these AI agents,” Wittenberg said, with GAAP accounting standards and internal process documentation being examples of the guidelines AI can understand. “So if you think about any given role as a bundle of tasks, I do think that a large percentage of that bundle will be performed by an AI agent in the not-too-distant future.”

3. Address the talent crunch through creativity

Automating much of the mundane, transactional work will help finance leaders determine what roles and skillsets will remain critical in the future.

But finding talented finance professionals is increasingly difficult, and competition will be especially fierce for those with strategic finance experience. Almost 85% of CFOs struggle with significant talent shortages, particularly in accounting and financial planning roles, according to Avalara. What’s drained the talent pool? Retirements, fewer accounting graduates, and an industry exodus—more than 300,000 individuals left the accounting field from 2019 to 2021.

Know that embracing technology makes your workplace more appealing to the top candidates. The best candidates are looking for the most innovative cultures. Environments that will help them regularly add new skills.

"I think that folks who are earlier in their career are in a fantastic position to be able to rise really quickly in this space because of how important the tech adoption piece is going to be to the future success of accounting professionals,” Wittenberg said.

If your business needs help with more clerical work, consider outsourcing or cosourcing specific finance functions. Among midsize companies, 45% now outsource accounting work to some degree.

4. Prioritize cost optimization and efficiency

CFOs who take the previous steps are well-positioned to deliver on companywide mandates to do more with less. Cost optimization remains a top goal for CFOs, and tariffs and recession fears mean this will continue to be an area of focus.

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t optimize what you don’t control."
—Dave Wieseneck, Ramp

Technology is an essential tool in helping you reduce expenses across major categories such as vendor spend, SaaS, and T&E. Look for solutions that have real evidence of helping businesses:

• Reduce operational spend—Closely monitor real-time AP, T&E, and procurement data to catch or quickly respond to unnecessary or out-of-policy spend.
• Optimize cash flow—Track the movement of cash in and out of your business and project future cash positions to proactively avoid cash shortfalls.
• Rationalize the tech stack—Audit all software subscriptions to spot overlapping functionality and unused seats to generate immediate savings.
• Centralize procure-to-pay—Put all POs, invoices, vendors, and contracts in one place to gain complete visibility into spend and tighten cost controls.

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t optimize what you don’t control,” Ramp Expert-in-Residence Dave Wieseneck said. “The best finance teams aren’t just tracking spend—they’re putting the right systems and guardrails in place so they can actually do something with that data and drive smarter decisions.”

Getting started checklist

1. Identify top three repeatable tasks that can be automated
2. Run a two-week AI tool pilot on one of those tasks
3. Launch a talent development initiative aligned with your must-have skills
4. Schedule a cost optimization review for Q3

CFOs at midsize businesses who modernize their back offices now can enhance their financial resilience, drive operational efficiency, and position themselves for sustainable growth. Through proactive leadership and technology that supports the mandate for finance to be a strategic partner, senior leaders can significantly elevate the value of their teams.

Looking for more on how AI is reshaping finance? Check out the new Ramp AI Index.