Hey there, CFOs! 💼

Welcome, and thanks for reading this week.

Gartner’s guidance for finance leaders comes as many teams face tough headcount decisions, with U.S. layoffs reaching 806,383 through July, a 75% increase year over year.

We highlight four takeaways: pursue non-personnel savings first, avoid blanket targets that penalize efficient teams, equip budget owners with forward-looking data, and communicate clearly to keep critical talent engaged.

Let’s get started.

📰 Upcoming in this issue

• 🧭 5 CFO Tips to Avoid Layoff Mistakes

• 🤖 Agentic AI Rushes to the Leading Edge

• 📉 One in Four Misses AI Budgets by 50%+

📈 Trending news

• CFO Playbook for R and D Tax Reform

• Why Your Seat at the Brand Table Matters

• Rates Down, Fundamentals Still Rule

🧭 5 CFO Tips to Avoid Layoff Mistakes

Layoffs can backfire when cost cuts erode customer relationships or critical skills. Gartner outlines five CFO moves to avoid missteps and preserve long-term performance.

Read the full article here »

Key Takeaways:

• 📊 Model Beyond Headcount: Stress-test cost scenarios, including productivity, attrition risk, and customer impact, so cuts do not destroy revenue engines.

• 🤝 Partner With HR: Co-design criteria with CHRO and legal, ensure fairness, documentation, and manager readiness for humane, consistent conversations.

• 🧩 Protect Critical Capabilities: Identify roles and skills core to strategy, favor redeployment and reskilling over broad cuts that hollow out expertise.

• 💬 Over-Communicate: Explain the why, the plan, and what changes now, then re-recruit remaining teams, rebalance workloads, and monitor burnout and morale.

🤖 Agentic AI Rushes to the Leading Edge

AA's new Google Cloud survey shows agents entering the mainstream, with 52% of AI-using firms deploying near-autonomous systems.

Read the full article here »

Key Takeaways:

• 🧪 Adoption Tipping Point: 52% of leaders using gen AI also deploy agents that plan, reason, and execute tasks with minimal oversight.

• 🌍 Regional Variation: Adoption ranges from 64% in Japan and the Pacific to 46% in North America, with customer service the top use case.

• 🚀 Scale and ROI: 39% report more than 10 agents live, rising to 82% among early adopters who dedicate half of their future AI budgets.

• 📈 Value Realized: Early adopters report ROI on at least one gen AI use case at 88%, versus 74% across all organizations.

📉 One in Four Misses AI Budgets by 50%+

A new survey finds 25% of organizations overshoot AI cost forecasts by half or more. Unforeseen compute demands, data preparation, and change management drive overruns.

Read the full article here »

Key Takeaways:

• 📊 Forecasting Gaps: Teams underestimate variable GPU and cloud costs, including surges from pilots scaling to production.

• 🔒 Governance Costs: Security reviews, compliance, and data governance add unplanned expenses, especially where shadow AI and vendor sprawl appear.

• 🎯 Value Discipline: Leaders tie spend to measurable use cases, sunset experiments quickly, and require unit economics before scale.

• 🧮 FinOps Maturity: CFOs adopt FinOps, chargebacks, and procurement guardrails, improving visibility into model, storage, and inference costs.

Why It Matters

Cutting evenly across functions wastes time and money, and increases risk when essential capacity is reduced. Hidden costs, rising contractor spend, and overtime can create unsustainable creep and damage reputation with both clients and employees.

Segmenting roles by future impact, tracking for cost reemergence, and transparent communication help protect budgets and retention, so decisions made under pressure do not undercut performance in the next cycle.

Wishing you continued success,

Vanessa Carter
Editor-in-Chief
CFO Executive Insights

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