New data from Lucanet, the leading global provider of end-to-end software solutions for the office of the CFO, reveals that a lack of automation is now the biggest challenge facing finance leaders today.
The findings, based on a survey of senior finance and tax professionals at Lucanet World 2025 - Lucanet’s flagship summit - – show that 32% cite a lack of automation as their top operational challenge, with one in five (22%) identifying it as their leading investment priority over the next 12–18 months.
This suggests that in today’s uncertain economic climate, the limitations of manual processes have become increasingly clear – sharpening the focus on automation and AI-driven tools as critical enablers of efficiency, agility, and resilience.
Despite the clear need for agile digital systems to mitigate the impact of uncertainty, over a quarter of finance and tax teams (28%) still rely heavily on manual processes. Likewise, only 10% are fully confident in the accuracy of their financial data – highlighting the need for precise, real-time visibility to effectively model the impact of shifting tariffs and macroeconomic changes on both top- and bottom-line performance.
As a result, it’s unsurprising that scenario planning and forecasting remains a serious challenge for finance teams, with over a third (34%) citing it as their biggest concern when it comes to financial planning and analysis.
Competitive edge
During its flagship event, Lucanet announced the release of all its solutions on the company’s unique CFO Solution Platform. The platform now encompasses:
- Consolidation and Financial Planning – automating consolidation processes across different group structures and accounting standards
- Extended Planning and Analysis – enabling intuitive collaborative, cross-department operational planning
- ESG Reporting – simplifying ESG compliance while supporting the new VSME framework
- Disclosure Management – simplifying the creation of disclosure reports
- XBRL – simplifying machine-readable disclosures
- Lease Accounting – providing a seamless solution for IFRS 16 compliance
- Tax Compliance and Reporting – streamlining tax preparation
- Banking and Cash Management – providing visibility into cash flow and liquidity
Enabling limitless scalability, the AI-infused platform offers modular, out-of-the-box functionalities to suit the individual needs of finance teams, providing easy-to-use interfaces and fast-time-to-value implementations. In addition to this release, the company announced a new data lake, fed by 300+ ETL adapters and operating as the single source of truth for the integrated platform, enabling finance teams to receive valuable insights, crucial for them to make well-informed decisions.
"The real challenge isn’t just about adapting to any specific issue, like tariffs, but it’s a lack of timely and accurate information that makes it difficult to take corrective actions or to plan with confidence. Outdated systems, fragmented data, and manual-heavy workflows make it extremely challenging for finance teams to provide valuable insights, so the business is left flying blind, or worse, paralysed by indecision. We need to be on the front foot when it comes to scenario planning, and focus on building agility into our strategies now. That means leveraging technology to access timely data and real-time visibility into our operations and macroeconomic dependencies, so we can model the potential impact on performance."
Alistair Gurney – Chief Financial Officer at Lucanet
Looking ahead
Tax and finance professionals overwhelmingly see artificial intelligence (AI) as an opportunity rather than a threat. Over two thirds (68%) do not believe that AI will replace their roles – compared to just 8% who think it will – suggesting that finance teams see AI as a tool to elevate their function, freeing them from manual tasks and enabling them to play a more strategic role in driving business growth.
Gurney adds: "While corporates are certainly feeling the pressure of ongoing macro uncertainty, the overall mood is pragmatic rather than panicked. Finance leaders recognise that volatility is expected, and we’re seeing firms take sensible, forward-looking steps to build resilience and future-proof their operations."
The focus on technology investment echoes the findings of Lucanet’s 2025 Finance Leadership Panel Report, which revealed that two-thirds of CFOs are prioritizing digital transformation to future-proof operations
