Thanks to advances in AI, Chief Financial Officers are increasingly finding themselves as key drivers of organisational digital transformation. It’s a shift that’s happening out of necessity: the finance function must evolve from manual, siloed processes to a connected, data-driven service that supports the business and keeps pace with today’s demands.
But true digital maturity is incredibly rare in finance departments. A recent Workday study revealed that just 4% of organisations have fully mature capabilities, and only 8% of IT leaders say their company has a unified view of operational, financial, and people data.
To break out of this cycle, CFOs need to step forward as champions of change, ensuring that technology investments serve broader business goals while freeing up their teams to focus on business partnering.
Workday as a catalyst for finance innovation
A strategic lever that many CFOs are pulling at the moment is the deployment of modern cloud enterprise platforms. Workday is a prime example with finance and HR solutions designed to give leaders real-time visibility and agility. These are features that traditional legacy ERP systems often lack. In fact, Workday’s Human Capital Management (HCM) and Financial Management suites are seen as underpinning modern organisational agility by offering real-time insights and an adaptive infrastructure for fast-moving enterprises.
For CFOs, this means having up-to-the-minute financial data at their fingertips, enabling quicker, more informed decision-making.
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Savvy CFOs, equipped with real-time dashboards and predictive analytics, can shift from being scorekeepers of past performance to strategic advisors helping steer the future of the business. By streamlining operations in this way, CFOs and their teams can focus on high-value activities such as strategic planning, analysis, and business partnering. The end result is a finance function that is not only faster and more accurate, but also more proactive.
Integration is the enabler of unified finance data
While implementing a powerful system like Workday is a great start, CFOs know that technology alone isn’t a silver bullet.
Much of the value of a new finance platform comes from how well it integrates into the organisation’s broader digital ecosystem. Finance data doesn’t live in a vacuum. It connects to HR data, operational metrics, customer and supplier systems, and more. If Workday isn’t talking to these other systems, then the CFO will still struggle to get a truly complete picture.
This is why an integration strategy is so fundamental. A unified view is achieved by connecting various business systems and consolidating management reports and dashboards. Workday already has integration capabilities built-in, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel. An effective rollout will take full advantage of these integrations. For example, Workday Financials can seamlessly connect with other enterprise systems (such as HR, payroll, or procurement), creating a cross-functional view of operations while helping to down data silos.
Achieving this often requires careful planning and technical expertise. Many CFOs partner closely with their CIOs or external experts to ensure that data flows smoothly between Workday and legacy or third-party applications. Scrumconnect, for instance, emphasises integration management as a core part of its Workday services, connecting Workday with internal systems, third-party applications, and downstream solutions so that the finance team has all the information they need in one place. This kind of systems integration is crucial for real-time reporting and analytics.
When done right, it means a CFO can trust that the figures they’re looking at on their Workday dashboard reflect everything that is happening across the business, from sales to HR to operations, without facing doubt or manual data wrangling.
Integration is not just a technical must, it’s an organisational one too. CFOs should foster close collaboration between finance, IT, and other departments to identify data sources, map out flows and agree on a single source of truth. Many forward-thinking organisations establish cross-functional teams or centres of excellence to govern these integrations. In the public sector, where data often resides in many disparate systems, integrated digital platforms are especially critical for efficient, user-centered services.
The destinationless journey to continuous improvement
Another key lesson for CFOs leading digital transformation is that going live with a new system is just the beginning of the journey, not the end. Unlike the big ERP implementations of the past which might stay static for years, cloud platforms like Workday are continually evolving with new features, process enhancements, and regulatory changes.
To truly reap the benefits, CFOs must ensure their teams and processes keep up with this pace of change. We discuss this in our ebook “The Post Implementation Challenge”, where we argue that switch-on doesn’t mean feet up. You can download the book here.
This is where Workday's Application Management Services (AMS) becomes invaluable. Rather than viewing Workday as the product of a one-off implementation, AMS sees it as an ongoing cycle of optimising, maintaining, and enhancing in line with business needs.
But we’ve taken it a step further. Driven by our specialist experience in delivering to organisations in Regulated Industries, we’ve developed a compelling AMS service with flexible commercial models that are broken into “Build, Run, and Enhance” phases of maturity.
This kind of lifecycle approach ensures that Workday doesn’t get stale or misaligned with the business over time. Instead, the system scales, grows, and adapts along with the organisation. Crucially, people are at the centre of this continuous improvement.
It means that the organisation scales as it needs to, instead of the organisation scaling around the capabilities (or limitations) of the system.
Upgrading technology and getting a phased-AMS approach is only half the battle. The other aspect of continuous improvement is governance. CFOs should establish clear ownership of the finance system roadmap. This might involve a governance committee that prioritises enhancements or a set of KPIs to measure the impact of the new system on efficiency and decision-making.
When finance and supporting stakeholders move in lockstep, the organisation stays aware of the cutting edge, ensuring that finance transformation stays tightly aligned to broader business transformation goals.
A credible path forward for CFOs
The road to a digitally transformed finance function may seem daunting, but it is clearly becoming an essential journey for survival and success.
The good news is that CFOs are uniquely positioned to lead this charge. They hold the keys to financial resources and have a comprehensive view of the business, allowing them to pinpoint exactly where technology is likely to make the biggest impact.
By leveraging platforms like Workday, CFOs can modernise organisational operations and provide levels of real-time visibility, data-driven insights, and process efficiency that are completely unimaginable with legacy systems.
At the same time, by focusing on integration and breaking down silos, CFOs can ensure that finance is not operating on an island but is fully embedded with the rest of the enterprise information flow.
Perhaps most importantly, successful finance transformation is an ongoing effort. It requires a mindset of continuous improvement, where the implementation is just phase one.
CFOs can maintain momentum by partnering with experts who bring not only technical Workday expertise but also a holistic digital transformation perspective. For example, Scrumconnect’s experience in public sector digital projects and its dedicated Workday centre of excellence illustrate how tapping into external knowledge can help maximise a Workday investment beyond go-live.
This kind of partnership approach can be invaluable for a CFO. It brings in fresh ideas and technical integration capabilities from an independent perspective, all while the CFO continues to steer the strategic wheel.
Today’s CFOs can rise to the challenge of digital transformation by embracing modern tools and practices.
Adopting Workday or similar platforms is not merely an IT upgrade, it is a once in a decade opportunity for CFOs to reimagine how finance delivers value in the organisation. Through clear vision, alignment with IT and business leaders, and support from experienced partners, CFOs can turn their finance functions into nimble, insight-generating powerhouses.
The journey involves technology, data, and people. The CFO sits at the intersection of all three. And by leading from the front, they can ensure that their organisation’s digital transformation isn’t just a buzzword, but a tangible reality that drives better decisions and sustainable growth.
Digital transformation has previously been a CIO-only affair. Now these CIOs are being joined by a bunch of new kids on the block: the CFOs. And these new kids on the block will succeed because they’re spearheading transformations that combine financial acumen with a bold embrace of innovation every step of the way.
Chief Financial Officers are increasingly driving digital transformation with platforms that align operations with broader business goals through real-time data, integration, and continuous improvement. But lasting impact depends on strong leadership and cross-functional alignment.
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