How to enhance financial forecasting and leverage finance automation to navigate turbulent times

Economic volatility can be hard to predict, but finance leaders can improve financial forecasting, cost control, and agility by combining a clear spend strategy with finance automation and AI-fueled solutions. The goal is better visibility into spend—early enough to act—so forecasts can keep pace with changing conditions.

Why finance leaders are prioritising forecasting and spend control in 2025

Uncertainty in 2025 is pushing finance teams to strengthen forecasting and spend management rather than pause transformation efforts. With better spending visibility and insights, leaders can identify cost-saving opportunities and adjust faster—advantages regardless of the economic outlook.

You may not need statistics to recognise the economic shifts since the start of 2025, but they show the scope of the challenge and why action is urgent:

• As of early 2025: 41% of finance leaders told SAP Concur that worsening economic conditions were their top external challenge.
• In the second week of April: Amid U.S. trade tariffs, countermoves by countries, and concerns about supply chains and inflation, the Wall Street Journal found 57% of small business CEOs expect the economy to worsen in the next 12 months—a 43-percentage-point increase since January.

Instead of reflexively cutting costs and pausing efforts to overhaul and fine-tune processes and technology, it can be more important to continue initiatives that strengthen forecasting and other spend capabilities. Better spend data helps leaders maintain tighter control and respond quickly.

If the pandemic had one unexpected benefit, it’s that organisations became more practiced at adapting. You can’t control the economy, but you can take practical steps to improve resilience:

• Collaborate cross-functionally to strengthen forecasting and navigate volatility (spend management, metrics, and aligned goals).
• Leverage AI in finance for efficiency and insights across travel, receipts, invoices, and auditing.
• Consider SAP Concur solutions and services for spend requests, budgets, and data insights to support forecasting.

What strategies strengthen financial forecasting?

Stronger forecasting typically comes from combining strategic spend management, finance automation, risk management, invoice management, and AI to improve operations and agility. The strategies below—many informed by CFO Insights research—are practical levers you can apply during volatility.

For more context on managing inflation and economic disruption, see: help navigate economic change.

How can you hone your spend management strategy?

A consistent, flexible spend approach supports timely forecasting and decision-making. The key question is whether your spend strategy can adapt quickly as conditions change—especially policies and communication to employees.

Instituting a strategic spend management strategy and using integrated travel, expense, and invoice solutions can:

• Streamline the employee experience
• Raise compliance and productivity
• Enable better budget management
• Strengthen financial predictions

How do you get an early grip on costs?

The most effective time to control spending is before it happens. A pre-spend request tool for travel and other expenses can improve cost control and forecasting accuracy.

Advanced solutions use AI to estimate costs and check policy compliance. This saves employees time and gives management broader visibility. Embedding pre-spend approvals into workflows also supports more accurate forecasts than updating them only after expense reports arrive.

Which metrics should you refine to improve forecasting accuracy?

Metrics become more useful when they quantify time, leakage, and avoidable manual work. Establishing a baseline helps you identify savings opportunities and improve budget and forecasting precision.

Examples raised in the content include:

• Time spent auditing expense reports each year
• Time spent tracking, inputting, and chasing manual receipts (travellers and auditors)
• Mileage overpayment risk when tracking manually (noting that manual tracking typically adds 15% extra miles vs. GPS-powered mobile apps)

To pressure-test your baseline, see: run the numbers.

How do you align spend policies with long-term goals?

Economic disruption can force quick adjustments, but agility shouldn’t block long-term priorities like growth and innovation. The objective is not necessarily to eliminate travel and spend, but to guide employees toward choices that fit both current constraints and longer-term business needs.

Why does cross-functional collaboration matter for forecasting?

Forecasting, cost management, and technology decisions benefit from shared ownership across leadership. In an Insights survey, just 9% of CFOs thought driving growth was a responsibility they should share—suggesting room for broader collaboration across the C-suite.

Managing costs, improving spend controls, and strengthening forecasting are timely areas for teamwork, particularly during turbulence.

How can AI and finance automation improve financial forecasting?

AI supports forecasting by automating manual work, increasing data quality, and expanding the scale and speed of controls like auditing and risk checks. In practice, AI can help finance teams improve both efficiency and insight across travel, expenses, and invoices.

Finance leaders have high expectations for AI: 67% envision more accurate forecasting, while 65% and 61% hope for improved efficiency. This section summarises how AI-fueled solutions are fulfilling those expectations in spend management workflows.

Key AI-supported capabilities described include:

• Trip cost estimates compiled from simple employee inputs, reducing booking and approval time and improving compliance—while giving organisations earlier visibility for cost control and forecasting.
• Paper receipts captured via a mobile photo; essential details are extracted and routed into an expense report, reducing rejections. Faster approvals can support faster forecasting.
• Invoices scanned across multiple formats; OCR extracts key data and populates fields, improving visibility for forecasting and cash flow management.
• Auditing, risk management, and fraud detection strengthened as AI can examine and cross-check far more expense reports, receipts, and invoices in less time than any human can—supporting more precise forecasting.

• Pattern and behaviour detection across spending and invoice management to strengthen cost control, analysis, and forecasting.

CFO Insights: How to Navigate Inflation and Other Signs of Economic Change

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Read the whitepaper

How do SAP Concur solutions improve spending certainty and forecasting?

SAP Concur solutions are designed to increase business certainty and agility in stable and unstable periods by improving visibility, compliance, and insights across spending. SAP Concur also notes it brings three-plus decades of T&E data and over 46,000 customers worldwide, and that it has incorporated AI into solutions for years.

As the market leader in T&E management, SAP Concur positions its experience to support needs like faster travel bookings and comprehensive audits. Four solutions and services are highlighted as especially relevant to forecasting and insights.

Concur Request

Concur Request uses AI to assemble trip cost estimates and automate spend requests and approvals. It simplifies the employee experience and reduces expense rejections.

Managers gain earlier visibility and a stronger ability to enforce compliance and control cash flow by seeing expenses from conception to conclusion.

Budget

Budget consolidates data from travel, request, expense, and invoice solutions into an easy-to-use dashboard. This helps organisations see spending before, during, and after it occurs.

That end-to-end view supports faster adjustments and stronger forecasting.

Intelligence

Intelligence integrates data and uses interactive dashboards with tailored insights. It monitors budgets and offers standard report templates or custom report creation.

The result is improved visibility to help organisations better forecast what’s ahead.

Consultative Intelligence

Consultative Intelligence deepens insights using SAP Concur data. SAP Concur reporting and analytics experts work with you to deliver customised reports, analytics, and insights aligned to your organisation’s needs.

Why acting now matters (even if you’re cutting costs)

In stable periods, organisations may get by with less-than-ideal spend control, analytics, or budgeting. With economic uncertainty and rising concern about recession, the content argues the time to act is now.

By applying the strategies and adopting solutions that bolster forecasting, organisations can also improve adaptability and resilience.

FAQs

1) What is the biggest external challenge finance leaders reported in early 2025?

In early 2025, 41% of finance leaders told SAP Concur that worsening economic conditions were their top external challenge.

2) How can pre-spend approvals improve financial forecasting?

Pre-spend approvals help control costs before spending occurs and give management earlier visibility into planned expenses. That earlier data supports more accurate forecasting than waiting for expense reports to be submitted and approved.

3) What finance processes does AI improve in this article?

The page describes AI improving trip cost estimates, receipt capture and data extraction, invoice OCR and field population, and faster auditing/risk management/fraud detection through high-volume cross-checking.

4) Which SAP Concur products are highlighted as strengthening forecasting?

The page highlights Concur Request, Budget, Intelligence, and Consultative Intelligence as solutions and services that strengthen financial forecasting and insights.

5) How does collaboration across the C-suite relate to forecasting?

The page cites an Insights survey where just 9% of CFOs thought driving growth was a responsibility they should share, pointing to a need for broader collaboration. It positions forecasting, spend control, and technology improvement as practical areas for cross-functional teamwork, especially during turmoil.