From compliance to confidence: Insights from the Gartner CFO Conference 2025

At this year’s Gartner CFO Conference in September, one message came through loud and clear: finance leaders are entering a new era defined by disruption, complexity, and opportunity.

CFOs are being asked to do more than manage numbers. They are expected to lead transformation across technology, regulation, and talent — all while keeping organisations agile in a volatile global economy.

Gartner framed this year’s theme, Autonomous Finance – Resetting Financial Leadership in a Changing Economy, around the tension CFOs face: how to deliver efficiency today while preparing for an uncertain tomorrow.

The conversations at the event revealed clear shifts in how leading CFOs are approaching their work. These are no longer optional ‘best practices’ but habits defining tomorrow’s leaders.

• Talk differently about ourselves: Finance has outgrown its ‘back office’ label. The modern CFO is a strategic partner to the CEO and the board, using data and compliance insights to unlock enterprise value.  
• Embrace complexity: Whether it’s global expansion, new business models, or ever-changing regulations, complexity isn’t going away. The leaders who thrive don’t wait for simplicity — they design agility into their teams and systems. 
• Deploy business tools, not just partners: In the past, finance relied on consultants or manual interventions to solve problems. Today, automation and AI offer scalable, always-on capabilities that allow teams to focus on strategy instead of firefighting. 
• Focus on products, not processes: Winning CFOs are enabling innovation across the enterprise. That means replacing manual tax calculations, reconciliations, and reporting with automated workflows — so finance can fuel product launches and market entry, not slow them down.

So what does it take to steer an organisation through disruption? The conference highlighted how leaders can navigate through uncertainty: 

Prioritise financial flexibility  
Finance leaders need the right solutions to enable them to respond to disruption in real-time. 

Engineer change 
Transformation isn’t about bolting on new systems. It’s about weaving automation and analytics into daily decisions and workflows. 

Provide strategic clarity 
With uncertainty high, boards want transparency. CFOs must deliver timely, accurate insights to prove that compliance and control are not slowing growth but enabling resilience. 

Attendees heard about key forces that will reshape finance over the next decade, including:

The rise of AI agents  
Finance decisions will increasingly be made with the assistance of machine intelligence.

The crash in finance talent  
Scarcity of skilled professionals will push automation adoption faster than expected.

Continuous regulatory change 
From global e-invoicing mandates to ESG disclosures, rules will evolve constantly, demanding agility.

The message: the future of finance is not just digital, it’s autonomous. 

The Avalara perspective: Compliance at scale

In Avalara’s session, Automated Compliance at Scale: How AI and Finance Transformation Are Reshaping Tax Strategy, we explored what these trends mean for tax and compliance. 

Too often, compliance is seen as a resource drain. But with the right technology, it can become a strategic advantage:

AI-driven monitoring 
Machine learning can flag anomalies and risks before they escalate into penalties, giving CFOs predictive visibility rather than reactive headaches.

Automated e-invoicing and reporting 
As e-invoicing mandates expand rapidly across the world, automation delivers cross-border scalability, reducing the burden on local teams.

Real-time compliance 
Continuous compliance data feeds into decision-making, allowing CFOs to advise boards with confidence and precision.

This is not just about keeping up with mandates. It’s about freeing finance teams to focus on growth, resilience, and competitive advantage. 

As regulatory pressure intensifies and talent gaps widen, CFOs face a choice: wait for disruption to force change, or proactively reshape finance into a more agile, intelligent function.

The question we left attendees with was simple: Will you be the leader who turns compliance into your company’s advantage?

Avalara can help finance leaders make compliance not just easier, but smarter. Speak with Avalara today to explore how automated compliance can scale with your business.

Managing exemption certificates manually can be time-consuming — and even small mistakes can result in costly penalties. Avalara Exemption Certificate Management takes the complexity out of the process by automating the way you request, validate, store, and track certificates. Whether you’re a U.S. business or a European company navigating the complexities of U.S. sales tax, Avalara can help make compliance simpler.