Coca-Cola has unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its operational leadership as it seeks to accelerate technology adoption. Central to the shift is the decision to remove digital strategy from CFO John Murphy’s remit — a move that runs counter to the decade-long trend in which technology oversight has increasingly been consolidated under the finance function.
As technology spending has ballooned, boards have often placed digital programmes under CFO control to strengthen governance, enforce return-on-investment discipline and better integrate technology decisions with financial planning. RSM’s 2019 Digital Transformation Survey found that nearly two-thirds of CFOs (66%) either owned or shared responsibility for digital transformation initiatives.
Yet Coca-Cola’s shift suggests a change in board priorities. As digital risk moves beyond financial reporting and cost control toward operational continuity and system-wide resilience, responsibility for technology strategy is being pulled out of the CFO remit.
As part of its reshuffle, Coca-Cola has created a new chief digital officer role to better align its technology strategy across the business. Former marketer, Sedef Salingan Sahin, currently president of the company’s Eurasia and Middle East operating unit, has been appointed to the newly established position.
The limits of finance-led digital strategy
“The traditional view was that digital strategy sat naturally with the CFO because finance has always worked in the rear-view mirror,” says Derek Perry, CTO at Sparq, an AI solutions firm. “Financial reporting, compliance and cost control are retrospective in nature. Data, in that model, is an accounting of what has already happened.”
The AI era changes that dynamic, Perry argues. Data is no longer simply a historical record but an operational input that fuels real-time decision-making, with impact measured in seconds rather than quarterly reporting cycles.
“That shift comes with trade-offs,” he adds. “When these capabilities move outside the CFO’s remit, questions of governance and oversight become sharper. Auditability and explainability matter more than ever once data and AI no longer roll up through finance.”
Why the CFO still matters
Coca-Cola’s decision does not diminish the importance of the CFO in digital transformation, but it does redefine the role.
“It would be unrealistic to expect a CFO to have a deep understanding of every technology they’re purchasing,” says Martin Greenfield, CEO at Quod Orbito, a cybersecurity firm. “A dedicated digital leader can bring focus, but we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of CFO support in these decisions.”
The super CFO era has collapsed
Close collaboration between the CFO and digital leadership will be critical, particularly around cyber risk, Greenfield adds. “Today’s CFO is accountable for cybersecurity spend and risk, yet many lack the technical grounding to fully understand the exposure they’re signing off on,” he says. “That gap becomes painfully clear when a breach occurs, as cyber incidents quickly turn into material financial events through regulatory fines, operational downtime and long-term brand damage.”
Further reconfiguration of the CFO role would not be surprising, Greenfield argues, either through adjacent finance-technology leadership positions or by appointing CFOs with stronger technical and digital fluency.
“The alternative – asking finance leaders to own cyber risk without the insight needed to challenge, prioritise or defend those investments – is untenable,” he says. “A more balanced leadership structure is a logical evolution of the CFO role.”
Is it the end of the ‘super CFO’ era?
The CFO role is not shrinking, but it is being rebalanced. Throughout the years the job has expanded far beyond balancing the books; finance leaders are now expected to weigh in on everything from climate strategy and cyber defences to supply chain resilience and AI integration. It is little wonder that burnout rates and turnover among CFOs are so high.
As boards confront the realities of AI-driven operations, cyber threats and always-on decision-making, the idea that one executive can centrally control finance, technology, risk and transformation is increasingly hard to sustain.
“Coca-Cola’s decision to remove digital strategy from the CFO’s portfolio is a definitive signal that the super CFO era has collapsed,” argues Xiao Ma, professor and director of the Centre for Business Transformation at Nottingham Business School.
A more balanced leadership structure is a logical evolution of the CFO role
In his view, this is a direct consequence of how AI is changing organisational design. Companies are no longer using AI simply to improve efficiency, but are restructuring how they work – starting by equipping employees with AI tools, then organising work around small, AI-led teams, and ultimately rebuilding organisations to be AI-native from the ground up.
As a result, traditional top-down management structures are giving way to more decentralised models, Ma explains, where employees are empowered to drive innovation themselves. Teams increasingly operate like small businesses, combining product leadership, technical design and operational expertise.
“In this model, the CFO’s role is unbundled and decentralised,” he says, “becoming a fractional, specialised component of autonomous teams rather than a central gatekeeper.”
Coca-Cola’s restructuring does not signal the end of the CFO’s influence over digital transformation, but it does mark a turning point in how that influence is exercised. The finance-led digital model that dominated the past decade was built for an era of cost control, governance and post-hoc reporting. In an AI-driven environment defined by speed, operational risk and continuous decision-making, those foundations are no longer sufficient on their own.
Coca-Cola has unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its operational leadership as it seeks to accelerate technology adoption. Central to the shift is the decision to remove digital strategy from CFO John Murphy’s remit — a move that runs counter to the decade-long trend in which technology oversight has increasingly been consolidated under the finance function.
As technology spending has ballooned, boards have often placed digital programmes under CFO control to strengthen governance, enforce return-on-investment discipline and better integrate technology decisions with financial planning. RSM’s 2019 Digital Transformation Survey found that nearly two-thirds of CFOs (66%) either owned or shared responsibility for digital transformation initiatives.
Yet Coca-Cola’s shift suggests a change in board priorities. As digital risk moves beyond financial reporting and cost control toward operational continuity and system-wide resilience, responsibility for technology strategy is being pulled out of the CFO remit.
