Finance wants to do more, but the daily work gets in the way. A checklist to see where 

Finance carries more than it used to. New expectations, new technology, more to deliver, and the same hours to do it in. Before any team or leader can change how they work, they need a clear read on where the finance function stands today and where its day-to-day work is losing time.

Finance teams set the bar high for themselves too. Asked about their priorities for 2026, CFOs point to several demanding fronts at once:

• Planning for external challenges such as new regulations (48%) 
• Adopting new technological capabilities, including AI (48%) 
• Developing new products or services to grow revenue (46%) 
• Protecting current resources by cutting costs (44%)¹ 

Any one of these would stretch a finance team. Pursued together, they compound. 

What's holding finance back...

Half of CFOs admit they cannot measure the value created by new technology, new roles, and new ways of working. The reason they cite most often is straightforward: the return is hard to define or prove up front.

In practice, finance leaders are navigating real change mainly without the evidence to feel confident in any given decision. 

That's why, although 55% of finance leaders agree that finance should accelerate value creation, only 25%² actually own the investment decisions where returns are uncertain, indirect, or long term.

Capacity as another pressure

When leaders cannot be sure a decision will pay off, the whole team feels it. Improvement work waits, and the daily process comes first.

Finance teams spend over 50% of their time on transaction processing³. That much of a team’s time goes to running the process rather than improving it. It leaves little room to deliver insight while it still counts, and it raises the odds that the decisions that matter get shaped somewhere other than finance. 

Finance teams spend over 50% of their time on transaction processing.

 ...and what moves it forward

Ask any CFO what would shift the picture, and the answer is consistent. They need faster access to data they can trust to navigate change with confidence. 

"The top priority is the access to real-time information (in practical terms, this translates to D+1 reporting)," says Magdalena Ociepka, CFO. "Automating and digitizing key processes related to cost and revenue management are crucial for efficiently obtaining and processing this data."⁴ 

Her point translates into two practical moves. Research on finance transformations adds a third:

• Automating the processes that feed reporting, so data is captured once and reused rather than rekeyed 
• Digitizing the work that still runs on paper and email, so it produces structured data by default 
• Building an environment where teams work across functions, supported by shared metrics, active management of change, and modern technology behind them⁵

Each of these rests on the same foundation, an IT environment where processes connect and adapt quickly, as the need arises. That is exactly what the next step puts to the test.

Evaluate with the checklist

Plenty of finance work can run faster with the right tools or automation. Download the checklist and see how it breaks the work into areas and shows where the time goes. Go through it, mark what already works, and see where there is still room to automate. That is how you free up operational time and make room for the work that moves your organization forward. 

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Sources: 

1. https://www.cfo.com/news/cfos-grapple-with-an-expanding-priority-list-deloitte-survey-/802612/ 
2. https://www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-unified-site/ey-com/en-gl/insights/finance/documents/ey-gl-dna-of-the-cfo-report-06-2026.pdf  
3. https://www.apqc.org/resources/blog/maximize-efficiency-your-finance-ftes-save-time-and-money
4. https://webcon.com/blog/cfos-perspective-an-interview-with-magdalena-ociepka/ 
5. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/four-dos-and-donts-for-cfos-leading-transformations