Volatility, regulatory pressure, and the growing demand for real-time decisions are fundamentally reshaping the role of the CFO Office.
We spoke with Ulrich Pilsl, our COO/CFO and Executive Board member about why finance organizations still struggle with fragmented data and slow decision-making, where AI can create real value, and what modern Enterprise Performance Management must deliver to support resilient business steering.
From your perspective, what is currently putting the most pressure on today’s CFO Office— where are finance teams spending most time and energy?
Many of today‘s challenges in the CFO Office today are only partly industry specific. In manufacturing companies, for example, energy costs are a major focus; in other industries, trade restrictions, tariffs, or regulatory intervention are more prominent.
From my perspective, however, industry-agnostic challenges predominate. We are operating in a period of unprecedented uncertainty and volatility—not only in stock prices or interest rates, but across almost all value drivers: cost structures, supply chains, demand forecasts, and regulatory frameworks. For the CFO Office, the key challenge is making fast, well-informed decisions with confidence.
Two areas in particular are consuming time and energy today:
• Speed: ensuring relevant financial and operational data is available in real time—often across fragmented systems.
• Data quality and consistency: making sure decision-makers work from aligned, reliable, and trusted numbers.
As a result, a considerable share of CFO capacity flows not into analysis and steering, but into data sourcing, reconciliation, validation, and explanation. This is where I currently see the biggest transformation opportunity for the CFO function.
What capabilities are critical for modern Enterprise Performance Management today?
Modern Enterprise Performance Management only works when several elements come together seamlessly.
First, data speed and quality are critical. Decisions must be based on up-to-date, consistent, and robust information.
Second, organizations need integrated interplay of accounting, regulatory requirements, and controlling, bringing external and internal reporting into alignment in a timely manner.
Financial reporting, regulatory requirements, and internal management reporting must not be created in silos; they need to be built on a shared, aligned data foundation.
Third, companies need clearly defined, steering-relevant KPIs that are available and current at any time.
What matters is not the number of KPIs, but their consistency, transparency, and direct usefulness for decision-making. Ultimately, modern EPM means moving from producing numbers to actively steering the business based on facts.
How close are companies to working with near-real-time—figures, especially in planning and forecasting?
Most companies are somewhere in the middle of the journey. The technology is largely in place, but organizational structures and processes often lag behind.
The biggest bottleneck is usually not data availability but forecast and budgeting processes themselves: too many alignment rounds, too many meetings—and in the end, too few clear decisions. Where companies consistently automate forecasting and budgeting using modern SAP-based applications, processes can be made significantly more time- and outcome-efficient. Planning becomes faster, more repeatable, and more transparent.
At the same time, faster data availability also increases the importance of governance and data quality. The real maturity lies not only in having current figures, but in turning highly up-to-date data into robust decisions.
Where do you see the biggest impact of automation in the CFO area?
From my perspective, the most immediate impact of automation lies in efficiency gains.
AI-enabled solutions can significantly accelerate reporting, forecasting, and management information processes. Faster reporting cycles and more up-to-date figures are increasingly achievable.
However, when it comes to better decisions, things become significantly more complex. The prerequisite is reliable, consistent, and high-quality data. Especially in an age of data overload and AI, this becomes more challenging: more data does not automatically lead to more clarity—often, it is the opposite. In core CFO decisions—such as investments in new software, market expansion, or new business areas— remain interpretive, risk-based, and ultimately human decisions.
In my view, truly strong leadership remains highly visible today. Despite growing complexity and increasing reliance on data and models there are still many CFOs and leaders who make bold decisions, take responsibility, and do not hide behind processes, committees, or seemingly objective models.
Where can AI create real value in finance—and where are human decisions still irreplaceable?
AI can create significant value in finance, particularly to automate standardized processes and increase efficiency. This includes reporting, data preparation, forecast simulations, or continuously updating management information systems. These efficiency gains are sometimes accompanied by a shift in existing roles and task profiles, which companies need to actively manage.
The real challenge, however, lies less in processing information than in selecting and classifying it correctly. With the growing volume of data, there is a risk of being “overwhelmed” by information rather than supported by it. This is why one area clearly remains a human responsibility evaluating the results, interpreting them in a business context, and above all verifying AI-generated analyses.
At the end, automation creates speed and transparency. Judgment, accountability, business context, and the courage to act on insights remain uniquely human.
How important is traceability in highly automated finance environments?
For me, traceability in the age of AI and highly automated finance processes is one of the core responsibilities of the CFO Office. As organizations increasingly rely on automated analyses and AI-enabled models, it must always be clearly explainable how results were derived and which data and assumptions they are based on. The CFO Office therefore plays a critical role as a reliable control instance and single source of truth for decision-relevant financial information.
Trust in automated processes is not created by technology alone, but by the ability to explain, challenge, and take responsibility for decisions at any time.
If profitability can be managed much more granularly today than in the past, what does that mean for the CFO’s role in day-to-day business?
Granular profitability insights fundamentally shift the CFO’s role—from a financial steward to an active business partner and shaper. With greater transparency across products, customers, and processes, CFOs can identify weaknesses, profitability gaps, and trade-offs earlier and support faster operational and strategic decisions.
This gives the CFO Office a central role: it must act as a reliable, central instance for finance and steering data and ensure a consistent, traceable data foundation, as the basis for fast and well-founded decisions.
How are increasing regulatory complexity and global conditions changing the requirements for CFO systems?
Modern CFO systems today need to be significantly more flexible and dynamic. Rigid, purely transactional applications increasingly struggle to adapt quickly to regulatory changes, new business models, or markets with substantial manual effort.
What organizations need are solutions that enable virtual data models, versioning, simulations, and what-if analyses, without constantly rebuilding operational systems.
Solutions such as SAP PaPM help create this flexibility by mapping regulatory, steering-relevant, and operational requirements in modular models. This allows CFO organizations to respond faster to new regulatory requirements, transparently simulate impacts, and make well-founded decisions under uncertainty.
The CFO systems of the future will not just look backward. They will help businesses anticipate what may come next, simulate different possibilities, and understand the factors driving results.
In your opinion, why do some transformation initiatives succeed while others fail to gain traction?
From my perspective, several factors are decisive for the success of transformation projects—and they must work together consistently.
First and foremost is a clear and understandable description of the transformation goals—including the concrete benefits for the company and the individual organizational units. Without a shared target picture, such initiatives quickly lose direction.
Equally important is complete and visible management buy-in. Transformation must not be an IT or functional project; it needs to be actively modeled and supported by leadership.
The third—and often underestimated—success factor is the consistent involvement of employees through solid change management. Especially in the AI era, this means not only communication, but above all targeted qualification and development so that employees understand the change, can apply it, and actively help shape it.
Transformation can truly take hold in a company when people understand it, master it, and experience it as an improvement to their everyday work.
Finally, what role does a partner like msg global solutions play in the further development of the CFO?
In our experience, most CFO organizations are not struggling because they lack technology. The real challenge is connecting processes, data, and decision-making in a way that works reliably in day-to-day operations. This is where msg global solutions bring value, combining functional, methodological, and technological expertise.
Against the backdrop of the challenges described, msg global solutions supports the sustainable optimization and industrialization of complex CFO processes, for example in profitability management, planning and forecasting, cost allocations, transfer pricing, tax calculations, reporting, and BEPS requirements.
Based on SAP PaPM, these processes can be mapped in a model-driven, flexible, and audit-proof way. This often reduces cycle times from weeks to hours, while increasing transparency and traceability. In addition, msg global solutions supports the implementation of SAP S/4HANA, backed by proven accelerators and support tools such as msg.fit. This is not just about introducing technology, but about implementing a future-proof target picture for the CFO Office.
This is why msg global solutions’ approach goes beyond pure system implementation - helping CFO organizations turn strategy into scalable processes, embed change into everyday work, and create a finance function that is faster, more transparent, and better equipped to support business decisions.
