The role of the CFO has fundamentally changed. No longer focused solely on historical reporting and cost control, today’s finance leaders are expected to guide enterprise strategy in real time, anticipating risk, identifying growth opportunities, and enabling faster, smarter decisions across the business.
At the center of this shift is real-time data, but access alone is not enough. As organizations expand data sources, adopt multi-cloud environments, and democratize analytics, CFOs are increasingly turning to DataOps-driven strategies to ensure data is accurate, secure, governed, and actionable at speed. Recent findings from the State of DataOps report underscore how finance leaders are leveraging real-time data, and why disciplined data operations are now a strategic imperative.
Real-Time Data Is Expanding the CFO’s Strategic Influence
An overwhelming majority of organizations (84%) report a recent increase in the number of end-users accessing data and analytics. This surge is especially pronounced in organizations where data strategies are driven by social analytics, regulatory compliance, and pricing optimization, all core CFO concerns. For finance leaders, this expansion represents both opportunity and risk.
On one hand, real-time visibility into financial and operational performance enables faster response to market shifts, more dynamic pricing and forecasting models, and tighter alignment between finance, operations, and strategy. On the other hand, rising data access introduces challenges that directly affect CFO accountability, including metadata management, data discovery, and moving data securely to the teams that need it.
The modern CFO’s role is no longer just interpreting data, but ensuring the organization can trust and operationalize it at scale.
Why DataOps Matters for Finance-Led Decision Making
The presence of data does not automatically lead to data-driven decisions. According to the report, nearly half (49%) of organizations plan to significantly increase spending on data-centric technologies tied to DataOps initiatives, reflecting a growing recognition that process, governance, and reliability are as critical as data volume.
For CFOs, DataOps provides the operating framework that makes real-time finance possible by ensuring data is accurate and up to date for forecasting and scenario planning, governed and compliant to reduce regulatory and audit risk, and accessible across functions without sacrificing control. Without DataOps, real-time data can quickly become fragmented, inconsistent, or unreliable, undermining executive confidence and slowing strategic decisions.
Security, Quality, and Privacy: Non-Negotiables for CFOs
As data becomes more central to enterprise strategy, CFOs are prioritizing technology investments around three foundational requirements: security, quality, and privacy. Among the most important capabilities supporting data initiatives are data security, data quality, data privacy, and data availability and discoverability.
These priorities reflect the CFO’s dual mandate, enabling agility while safeguarding the business. Real-time data is only valuable if it is trusted, and trust depends on strong governance, consistent quality, and clear ownership. This is especially critical in multi-cloud environments, where financial and operational data often spans cloud platforms, on-premises systems, and third-party applications.
Turning Real-Time Data Into Better Strategic Decisions
Organizations seeking more effective use of data are focusing on improving data quality, analytics, and availability. For CFOs, these improvements translate directly into strategic advantage. High-quality, real-time data enables rolling forecasts instead of static budgets, scenario modeling based on live inputs, faster identification of margin pressure or revenue opportunities, and more confident board-level decision making. To achieve this, many organizations are prioritizing investments in automation, self-service analytics, improved metadata management, and data cataloging, reducing dependency on manual processes that slow finance teams down.
Building a Data-Driven Culture to Maximize CFO Impact
Beyond technology, CFOs recognize that a data-driven culture is essential to fully leverage real-time analytics. Establishing this culture requires training teams to trust and use data in decision-making, fostering collaboration across finance, operations, and strategy, and promoting the adoption of self-service analytics tools that empower non-technical stakeholders.
Organizations that successfully embed these practices see higher engagement with analytics, faster problem-solving, and more consistent alignment between business units and finance. DataOps supports this cultural transformation by ensuring that data pipelines are reliable, processes are transparent, and information is both accurate and accessible. For CFOs, driving a data-driven culture is not only about improving reporting but about enabling strategic foresight, operational agility, and enterprise-wide accountability.
Business Impact: Faster Insights, Better Governance
The benefits of DataOps-driven, real-time data strategies are already evident. Organizations report that DataOps most commonly delivers improved access to data for business users (54%), higher data quality and accuracy (52%), faster time to insights (38%), greater agility and responsiveness (42%), and improved compliance and governance (39%). For CFOs, these outcomes directly support enterprise performance. Faster insights mean faster decisions. Better governance reduces risk. Broader access to trusted data empowers leaders beyond finance to act with confidence.
Enabling Developers to Accelerate Finance Outcomes
While CFOs may not work directly in data pipelines, developers play a critical role in delivering real-time financial capabilities. DataOps helps organizations improve developer productivity through improved data quality and reliability, greater agility and flexibility, and faster development and deployment cycles. As developers deliver applications and analytics faster, CFOs gain quicker access to insights that inform pricing, investment, and risk management decisions, accelerating the pace of the business as a whole.
Challenges CFOs Must Navigate
Despite progress, organizations still struggle to keep pace with rapid data and technology innovation. Key challenges include integrating data from disparate sources, supporting real-time data synchronization across cloud and on-premises systems, keeping up with evolving tools and platforms, and addressing limited governance frameworks and skills gaps. For CFOs, these challenges reinforce the need for a clear data strategy aligned with business priorities, not just technology adoption for its own sake.
The Strategic CFO Advantage
Real-time data has become a cornerstone of modern finance leadership. But the CFOs gaining the most value are supporting DataOps strategies that ensure data is reliable, governed, and actionable across the enterprise. As data ecosystems grow more complex, the CFO’s role as a steward of data-driven strategy will only intensify. Those who pair real-time insight with disciplined data operations and a strong data-driven culture will be best positioned to drive resilient, informed, and competitive decision making.
