New York, NY – September 10, 2025 – Nearly all business executives (97%) view their chief financial officer (CFO’s) primary role as “limiting spending”, despite years of efforts to transform finance teams into strategic business partners, new research reveals. Now, as artificial intelligence reshapes every department, most executives also say CFOs are the least trusted to lead AI strategy in a company— reinforcing the perception that the finance office is behind the curve.
Unconscious Uncoupling: CFO Business Partnering Survey 2025 commissioned by Datarails, the AI-powered Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) platform for Excel users surveyed 240 US heads of Sales, Marketing, HR, IT, Customer Service, and R&D departments, lifting the lid on their real relationship with their CFOs.
The report analyzes the reality of “finance businesses partnering” – where the CFOs Office supports and challenges other departments ensuring strategic paths are chosen. The analysis finds that despite long-held promises for finance business partnering, partner departments still consider the main function of the CFOs Office as “limiting spending” and as reactive “scorekeepers” or a “Department of No”.
Overall, 51% of executives rank poor communication as the biggest complaint in their relationship – rising to nearly two-thirds (64%) of Customer Success Executives and 54% of marketing leaders. Furthermore, 58% of executives only feel “somewhat comfortable” approaching the CFO or finance department, while 23% are outright uncomfortable knocking on the CFO’s door. Despite the gold standard for CFO business to provide “data-driven decision support”, 54% of executives say they receive only “small” or “moderate” insights to support their decisions or spending. The majority (51%) of executives also complain the CFO’s Office has a basic or poor understanding of their strategic needs, rising to 61% of Customer Success and 59% of marketing executives.
Other Executives: Don’t put CFOs in charge of AI
On the future of AI stewardship, less than one in five business executives (19%) think that the CFO is the right person to lead the Al revolution at their company. Instead, 44% of executives believe that responsibility for AI strategy should lie with the CIO or CTO, followed by the CEO (22%) and, finally, the CFO (19%). However 54% of respondents believe CFOs are investing sufficiently in AI across the organization, including providing necessary resources for transformation.
IT have the best CFO relationships; HR and CS the worst
Overall, IT executives have the best “business partner” relationship with the CFO’s Office, registering a 66% satisfaction level, based on the average sum of positive and negative responses based on questions on topics ranging from communication to strategic alignment with the CFOs. Second most satisfied are sales executives, with 63% satisfaction. By contrast, only a little over half (56%) of CS and HR executives are satisfied.
Didi Gurfinkel CEO and Co-Founder, Datarails says: “Finance business partnering has long been hailed as the path to transforming the CFO’s Office from a cost center to a profit center. In this scenario, the CFO should be every department’s strategic co-pilot—helping navigate complex decisions, through finance-backed insights helping to ramp up sales, improve margins or better understand customer trends. However, the reality is more often marked by lack of communication, ineffective insight, and lack of strategic alignment. Without finance partnership, businesses will continue to lose significant opportunities to drive growth.”
Methodology
This report was administered online by Global Surveyz Research, an independent global research firm. It surveyed 240 US executives in 6 different departments across Sales, HR, IT, Customer Service, Marketing and R&D departments to give a scorecard for their true business partnership relationships with the CFO’s Office. It assesses CFO touchpoints including communication, budgeting, technology and AI, alignment of strategy, to insights.
There was equal representation from companies of varying sizes from 250-2,000 employees. The respondents were recruited through a global B2B research panel and invited via email to complete the survey, with all responses collected during May 2025.
About Datarails
Datarails is the AI-powered Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) for Excel users. Datarails allows companies to keep their Excel financial models and spreadsheets and benefit from AI for data consolidation, reporting and planning.–
