Firmbase’s Post

Helping CFOs scale their businesses from $10M to $500M+ has taught me this: Your finance team either drives growth - or blocks it. Heading into 2025, here are 6 crucial barriers every CFO must remove: 1. Drowning in manual processes Automation in finance isn’t a nice-to-have anymore, it’s a non-negotiable. Every hour spent fixing broken spreadsheets is an hour NOT spent driving strategic decisions. To build an effective strategic finance function, you need to start with freeing up time to focus on insights. 2. Operating in silos Finance can no longer live in isolation. You need to ensure your team is embedded across the organization - partnering with sales, marketing, product, and ops. If your team isn’t talking enough with budget owners, you can't maximize value. 3. Reporting without impact Delivering a report every month is not enough. Numbers don’t speak for themselves. You need to translate financial data into actionable insights to help business partners across the org (and your own finance team) make decisions with confidence. 4. Prioritizing complexity over clarity I see this all the time - many CFOs overwhelm leaders with detailed dashboards, metrics and technical jargon. But here’s the thing: no one cares about your pivot tables. Simplify the story and explain the “so what.” Clarity > Complexity. THAT’S how you get buy-in. 5. Staying on defense Some CFOs spend most of their time focused on controlling costs and minimizing risk. While it's certainly important, the best CFOs also play offense. Make sure to have the processes in place that enable you to run multiple scenarios at a click of a button and explore growth opportunities in real-time. 6. Ignoring AI and automation Manual finance processes just can’t keep up as your business scales. Invest in automation and AI-powered tools to streamline operations and eliminate inefficiencies. Modernizing the CFO tech stack enables your finance team to provide continuous insights rather than just static reports. TAKEAWAY The role of the CFO has never been more challenging - or more impactful. The best CFOs don’t just react to events. They drive what happens next. Make 2025 count.