The rise of searching for hard ROI in the CFO role

The adoption race is over. The ROI race just started. In a June 2025 survey of 183 CFOs, Gartner reported that 84% of finance organisations had deployed AI or planned to, but only 7% reported a high impact. Most AI spend results in increased productivity, efficiency and time back, rather than hard ROI. Gartner surveyed 204 finance leaders in March 2026 and found 45% of finance AI investment leans toward productivity, and 20% toward decision quality. Shankar Keshav, the analyst who conducted the survey, called this result a perception gap, where ' finance leaders report progress on AI adoption, but boards see limited strategic impact. ' Hard ROI must be grounded in cash, whether that is revenue growth, cost savings, or more cash on hand faster. Saving time is meaningful to a degree, but finance leaders must stop mistaking AI deployment for business value creation, and find solutions that can... Copyright of this story solely belongs to thenextweb.com. To see the full text click HERE