Trend 3 – Focus. Precision. Discipline: How finance-led cost management helps drive measurable value
When finance leaders own cost and expense management, what can set them apart are the tools they bring to cost discipline along with a focus on accountability. Just over a third (36%) of finance leaders surveyed (and 42% of CFOs surveyed) are primarily responsible for cost and expense management for their organizations. Yet these leaders are more likely to consistently meet, or exceed, their cost-savings goals compared to respondents who say they play a supporting role in enterprise cost management (47% versus 39%).
Respondents who are taking greater ownership of cost management often bring together cloud infrastructure, intelligent automation, and specialized in-house expertise to help strike a balance between growth and cost control.
Finding flexibility in the cloud
Organizations require greater flexibility in their digital structures. In Deloitte’s 2025 MarginPlus survey, the top two internal barriers to organizational success are the “inability to enable digital infrastructure to meet new external business conditions and scale” (49%) and a “lack of flexibility in existing assets and infrastructure to respond to external demand” (45%).
At its core, the cloud can offer financial and operational flexibility; companies can scale resources up or down without necessarily locking in fixed infrastructure costs. Cloud-based solutions can minimize up-front expenditures for hardware and provide more scalable infrastructure to conduct analysis for identifying cost-saving opportunities.3
Leveraging AI to improve efficiency
Many companies are turning to AI to help cut operational expenses while increasing speed and accuracy.
Finance leaders can use AI to streamline certain repetitive processes or eliminate manual verification in certain transactions. For example, a few of our interviewees say they are using AI to scan their accounts receivables and proactively analyze transactions to identify potential errors and identify which accounts have a higher potential for delinquency.
Other Deloitte Global research also highlights how AI can be especially helpful in the realm of tax. Specifically, some tax leaders are using AI to help identify efficiencies in transfer-pricing documentation and corporate income tax returns and payments.4
Using dedicated teams to take a disciplined, proactive approach
Another way many finance leaders excel at cost management is by treating it as a continuous, strategic discipline, not a one-off initiative. They invest in dedicated expense management teams, which help find opportunities through cross-functional collaboration and process improvement.