Salesforce conducted a global survey of 261 chief financial officers (CFOs) from 24 countries, including Korea, and revealed on 4th that 78% of CFOs worldwide are expanding their use of AI in the decision-making process. Additionally, 74% expect AI agents to contribute to not only cost reduction but also revenue growth, and 72% responded that AI agents will fundamentally innovate corporate business models.
According to the survey, CFOs are found to be investing about 25% of their AI budgets in agentic AI. This indicates that they recognize AI as a key technology supporting strategic decision-making, beyond simple repetitive task automation.
CFOs are reported to be using AI agents to enhance operational efficiency in key financial tasks such as risk assessment (74%), financial forecasting (58%), and expense management (54%). Fifty-five percent of CFOs worldwide predict that AI agents will perform more strategic tasks than simple ones.
In the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, 83% of CFOs, including those in Korea, stated they are expanding business decision-making using AI, surpassing the global average of 78%. The main areas of application are ▲risk assessment (85%) ▲financial forecasting (65%) ▲profitability assessment (58%), while 52% of APAC CFOs expressed confidence in their AI investment strategies.
Salesforce has indeed implemented the AI agent platform 'Agentforce' in its finance organization to enhance productivity and accuracy. Approximately half of procurement-related inquiries are handled automatically by AI agents, saving time equivalent to 2.2 personnel, and reducing the error margin in debt recovery forecasting by 1-2 percentage points. Additionally, the time to generate forecasts has been shortened from days to minutes, and the contract review time has been reduced by about 60%, greatly improving overall operational efficiency.
Sejin Park, the representative of Salesforce Korea, noted, "This research confirms that the utilization of AI agents directly affects corporations' revenue and operational performance," and added, "AI supports financial teams to go beyond mere management roles and perform more strategic decision-making, helping to create corporate performance and growth opportunities."