2025 Economic Outlook Playbook: A CFO's Guide to Global Uncertainty
Introduction
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Let’s Level Set: CFOs are Taking Center Stage in 2025.
Our recent Finance 2035 report found that:
Growth Slowdown & Policy Shifts
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Inflation & Interest Rates: Higher for Longer
Industrial Policies
& Infrastructure Investments
Workforce & Talent Strategies
PRIORITY 01
PRIORITY 02
PRIORITY 03
PRIORITY 04
WhAT’s happening?
The global economy is projected to grow at ~3%, but US growth is expected to slow in 2026.
The new US administration may introduce corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and aggressive trade policies.
India and ASEAN economies present strong investment opportunities.
Europe faces economic stagnation due to inflation and labor shortages.
Deploy AI-driven cost control measures, renegotiate vendor contracts, and enhance procurement efficiencies.
Establish tiered liquidity reserves for various inflation scenarios, ensuring financial flexibility.
Evaluate existing loan structures and lock in fixed-rate agreements to minimize interest expense volatility.
Debt Refinancing Strategy
Work with product teams to introduce dynamic pricing structures that mitigate margin erosion.
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View our “2025 Economic Outlook for CFOs: Navigating Change and Driving Growth” webinar
Cash Flow Contingency Plans
Cost Efficiency Programs
Inflation-Linked Pricing Models
2nd
Investors rank CFO competence as the
most important factor in their investment decisions — above CEO competence!
Investors increased their average initial investment in an organization where the CFO was the main strategic growth driver
BY 2.6%
The economic landscape in 2025 is defined by uncertainty — new policies, inflation, supply chain volatility, and shifting global markets.
Where should Finance leaders be looking? What should global businesses prioritize as we get into a year of tariff battles and global uncertainty?
We welcomed Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board to give us an Economic Outlook report and what it means for Finance leaders for a virtual dialogue. Below, we expanded on her insights and suggested actionable takeaways so Finance leaders can best steer their organizations from 2025 into 2026.
READ ON.
The evolving economic landscape will require CFOs to adapt their financial strategies with greater agility. Slowing growth in key regions, shifting government policies, and new trade regulations will impact capital allocation, taxation, and operational costs. Businesses must be prepared to mitigate risks, optimize financial structures, and identify opportunities to drive resilience and profitability.
What It Means for Businesses:
Actions Finance Leaders Can Take:
rising to 3.6% among the world’s largest asset managers.
WhAT’s happening?
Interest rates are unlikely to drop until late 2025 or beyond, keeping debt expensive.
Inflation remains sticky, driven by labor shortages, housing costs, and supply chain disruptions.
What It Means for Businesses:
The economic slowdown and shifting policies mean CFOs must be proactive in capital allocation, tax strategy, and regulatory compliance. Slower GDP growth, trade restrictions, and evolving fiscal policies will impact profitability and financial planning, requiring businesses to remain agile and anticipate potential disruptions.
Actions Finance Leaders Can Take:
Preemptively negotiate logistics contracts to avoid inflation-driven cost spikes in distribution and fulfillment.
Supply Chain Resilience
WhAT’s happening?
of CFOs identify skills gaps in the finance department as a significant barrier to performing their role effectively — demand for FP&A, risk management, and AI-driven finance skills are growing in particular.
AI and machine learning enhance the month-end close process by identifying patterns such as the same data types recurring, detecting anomalies, and predicting potential issues.
Because these technologies can analyze large volumes of real-time financial data, both AI and machine learning provide insights and recommendations to improve accuracy and efficiency.
With modern finance platforms like OneStream, AI and machine learning are finance-focused, built directly in the platform as a core service, and work across all processes.
These features eliminate the need and complexity of moving data and removing it from the context of the process.
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In any EPM solution, comprehensive logging for compliance and audits is essential. Every metadata and data value added, changed, or deleted should be tracked and logged.
Through this information, users can know the who, what, when, where, and values before and after the change. Users should not, however, have the option to disable audit logs.
The system must also be architected in a way that doesn’t compromise performance when all audit controls are running.
Overall, the EPM solution should provide robust security features, including role-based access controls and data encryption. This robustness ensures data integrity and compliance with regulatory requirements.
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A unified EPM system should include an automated transaction-matching capability to help resolve differences and accelerate the account reconciliation process by providing the ability to quickly match transactional data from multiple sources. Because such matching uses a rule-based approach, users can focus only on exceptions and drive process efficiencies.
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Manual account reconciliation can be an extremely time-consuming activity, one with all-too-often frustrating results. In fact, many finance teams have lost countless hours and even days attempting to reconcile balances — often resorting to Excel when transactional detail is required to make sense of differences.
Automating this process can, in and of itself, thus be transformational for many finance teams and save significant amounts of time.
Effective account reconciliations require a process that is not only automated but also fully unified with the financial close. If GL trial balances are loaded into a single system for financial consolidation, reporting, and account reconciliations, then the data will always be synchronized. The close process will then be faster and more efficient.
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Through a broad range of reporting and analytics capabilities, a unified solution helps reduce reliance on spreadsheets and fragmented reporting tools to increase the speed, scope, and accuracy of reporting across the organization.
The most advanced EPM software offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing CFOs to generate detailed financial reports, dashboards, and forecasts. With that level of detail, decision-making and strategic planning are both improved.
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The solution must also include guided workflows to protect business users from complexity by guiding them uniquely through all data management, verification, analysis, certification, and locking processes.
By standardizing tasks, approvals, and notifications, automated workflows streamline the month-end close process. This streamlining reduces bottlenecks and ensures timely completion of the close process
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EPM software integrates data from various sources, including ERP systems, CRM systems, and other financial tools. This integration ensures a single source of truth for financial data. Automation can reduce manual time-consuming data loading and manipulation and provide faster access to data.
Financial data quality management (FDQM) lies at the core of a unified solution. For organizations, FDQM is crucial to driving effective transformation across finance and lines of business. A key requirement is 100% visibility from reports to sources—all financial and operational data must be clearly visible and easily accessible.
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With a unified, cloud-based platform like OneStream, all capabilities for the close are in a single solution. This unified approach reduces the complexity of multiple applications or instances and streamlines all month-end close data and processes in one place.
OneStream’s Digital Finance Cloud is unique because it is powered by a true platform - unifying all financial consolidation, close (account reconciliations, transaction matching, ESG, and tax), financial and non-financial/operational planning, reporting, and analysis processes in a single solution and data model.
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78%
The finance talent crunch continues
Companies are shifting toward hybrid finance models that integrate automation and outsourced services.
What It Means for Businesses:
The finance talent shortage is forcing CFOs to rethink workforce strategies as automation, AI, and digital finance skills become critical to maintaining competitiveness. Businesses that fail to adapt risk falling behind as manual processes become unsustainable, and finance teams struggle with growing complexity. To mitigate these challenges, organizations must invest in AI-powered automation, targeted upskilling, and flexible workforce models that balance in-house expertise with outsourced capabilities.
Actions Finance Leaders Can Take:
Expand finance shared service centers and nearshoring hubs to optimize costs and access specialized talent.
Redesign bonus structures, RSUs, and inflation-adjusted salaries to attract and retain top finance talent.
Implement AI, automation, and data analytics training for finance teams to build a future-proof workforce.
Deploy Applied AI chatbots in finance that allow teams to interact with their own data models to automate routine FP&A tasks, freeing their time to focus on strategic insights.
Hybrid & Outsourced
Talent Models
Compensation Model Evolution
Targeted Upskilling
AI-Powered Workforce to Reduce Workloads
Introduce automated performance analytics to measure and optimize finance team efficiency.
Workforce
Productivity Metrics
WhAT’s happening?
US industrial policies have boosted growth, but potential policy rollbacks could shift the landscape.
Infrastructure investments and digital transformation incentives are shaping the future of business investment.
What It Means for Businesses:
Evolving U.S. industrial policies mean navigating a landscape where financial planning must account for both growth opportunities and potential uncertainties due to policy rollbacks. Infrastructure investments present significant opportunities to leverage tax incentives and optimize operational costs, enhancing competitiveness.
Digital transformation incentives push businesses to prioritize technology investments that drive innovation and efficiency. These factors collectively shape financial strategies and decision-making processes, emphasizing the need for agility and foresight in a dynamic business environment.
Actions Finance Leaders Can Take:
Seek opportunities in infrastructure, green energy, and advanced manufacturing. Incentives can include tax credits, grants, and subsidies, which can lower your costs and increase your return on investment.
Align Corporate Investments with Government Priorities
If industrial policies are rolled back, adjust CapEx and investment strategies accordingly. Developing flexible plans allows you to mitigate these risks by having alternative strategies ready to implement.
Scenario-Plan for
Policy Reversals
Ensure your company maximizes available government-backed innovation incentives. By staying informed about these opportunities, you can ensure your business takes full advantage of available financial benefits.
Monitor R&D Incentives & Tax Credits
Adapting to the evolving landscape of industrial policies and infrastructure investments requires a strategic approach. To effectively navigate these complexities, leveraging advanced scenario planning can provide the agility and foresight needed to make informed decisions.
Our eBook, “AI-Powered Scenario Planning,” explores how AI and machine learning can enhance your scenario planning processes, helping you anticipate and prepare for a variety of potential scenarios.
VIEW EBOOK
Invest in Finance Automation
The economic outlook for 2025 presents a landscape of both challenges and opportunities for finance leaders. Downside risks such as inflationary pressures, supply chain disruptions, rising interest rates, and market volatility will require CFOs to strengthen forecasting scenarios to avoid surprises, enhance risk management strategies, and optimize operational efficiencies. Additionally, uncertainty around trade policies, corporate tax shifts, and potential spending cuts means businesses
must remain agile and adaptable.
Follow the Finance 2035 conversation. Visit Finance2035.com for more insights.
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Looking for more insights into what’s driving these economic trends for 2025? Gain a more thorough understanding of the global economic outlook and strategic priorities for finance leaders underpinning this report by watching the full webinar, “2025 Economic Outlook for CFOs: Navigating Change and Driving Growth.” The webinar is available for replay until May 5, 2025.
On the upside, opportunities such as expanded trade, deregulation, lower taxes, and potential geopolitical stability could unlock new avenues for growth. Businesses that invest in AI-driven finance automation, strategic workforce planning, and resilient capital allocation strategies will be better positioned to capture market advantages and drive long-term value creation.
Learn how AI-powered scenario planning provides the agility and foresight needed to make informed decisions in this rapidly changing environment. This approach helps finance leaders stay ahead of economic fluctuations, geopolitical tensions, evolving trade policies, and shifting tax regulations.
Dana Peterson
Chief Economist, Conference Board
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Quarterly Tax Impact Reviews
Consider conducting routine audits of tax policy changes and reassess capital allocation based on new corporate tax structures.
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Regulatory Readiness
Engage with policy advisors and industry associations to track upcoming tax and trade reforms and adjust financial strategies accordingly.
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Tariff Sensitivity Analysis
Analyze the impact of potential US tariffs on major trading partners and create a forecasting strategy to quantify additional costs and preemptively adjust pricing strategies.
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Diversified Sourcing & Procurement
Map supply chain risks, consider exploring friend-shoring in Vietnam, Mexico, or LATAM, and lock in long-term supplier contracts to stabilize costs.
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Rolling Forecasts & Stress Testing
Update financial projections quarterly based on GDP shifts, interest rate changes, and market indicators. Run liquidity stress tests under multiple scenarios to safeguard cash flow.
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