As CFO, you have a major role in your organisation's digital transformation. See how you can better engage your stakeholders, secure digital investment, and drive meaningful change for all involved, transforming customer experiences and capturing market share.
It's 2025. Your business is powered by digital tech and the cloud. You've got software for everything. That means you've been through digital transformation, and your work here is done, right? Wrong.
All too often, businesses have worked hard to transform as they've grown digitally, but in doing so, they've onboarded multiple tools and software options to fix numerous issues and ended up with a spider's web of a tech stack that doesn't connect.
The proof is in the numbers. A CFO research report we conducted with independent research house Coleman Parkes surveyed 1,000 finance leaders (non-Payhawk customers) from large and growing organisations across the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Spain, revealed the following:
Managing business finances digitally is one thing, but not all systems are created equal. It's shocking that so many CFOs out there are still asking their coworkers to keep expense receipts, attach expense documents (albeit filled in online and printed), and stuff it all in an envelope for the finance manager.
Before Payhawk, global event company GDS Group recalled a similar experience. Howard Thompson, Global Financial Controller at GDS Group, explains:
Before we used Payhawk, we had to do everything very manually using Excel spreadsheets. Somebody would send in their physical receipts in an envelope attached with a printout of a spreadsheet, leave that on their manager's desks, and then get that signed off before sharing with finance.
It was a huge amount of work for the GDS team; it was, in fact, one person's entire job. But spend management doesn't need to be so arduous; with the right spend management solution, you can find the missing piece in your fintech puzzle, reduce work, and encourage better connectivity across all your important business software. Here are just a few of the benefits:
Streamline operations; reduce manual work:
The first wave of digital transformation gave us individual tools to automate repetitive tasks for very specific functions — but disconnected systems mean inefficiencies still linger. The second wave focuses on unifying these tools, where your spend management platform seamlessly integrates with your ERP, HRIS, and other key systems. This means smoother workflows, fewer errors, and significant time savings across your team.
Full visibility and control over spend:
A patchwork of tools creates blind spots in your financial data. An integrated solution gives you a single, real-time view of spend across your organisation, eliminating waste like duplicate subscriptions and unexpected employee expenses. With everything connected, you can act with confidence and control.
Data-driven decisions made easy:
Disconnected data makes decision-making slow and reactive. Unified systems deliver actionable insights in real time, helping you spot patterns, allocate resources wisely, and plan ahead without guesswork.
Collaboration without silos:
When tools talk to each other, teams can, too. Finance, HR, and operations can work in sync, driving innovation and responding faster to changes in the business and in the market. A connected ecosystem not only boosts collaboration but also positions you ahead of the competition.
Prepare for what’s next:
The second wave of digital transformation isn’t about adding more tools — it’s about creating a smarter, connected system that delivers efficiency, visibility, and control. Building this foundation means you're not just solving today's challenges — you're ready for the future.
As CFO, your role is essential in driving proper digital transformation within your organisation and not just across finance. You need to collaborate with non-finance functions to ensure your finance tech stack works seamlessly with the other business tools.
That way, you’ll be in the best position to communicate the financial implications of ongoing strategic business decisions with stakeholders, including costs, risks, and opportunities.
Again, the second wave of digital transformation isn’t about adding more tools; it’s about connecting the right ones. By moving from disconnected finance systems to an integrated spend management solution that fits seamlessly into your tech stack, you can unlock real efficiency, visibility, and control. Here’s how to make it happen.
1. Develop a clear digital vision with a focus on integration
The first wave of digital transformation may have introduced tools to solve specific problems, but now it’s time to think bigger. Sit down with your executive team to create a vision that prioritises an all-in-one spend management solution — one that doesn’t just handle expense management and corporate cards but integrates seamlessly into your broader tech stack, including your ERP and HRIS.
Your roadmap should focus on consolidating these systems, defining key milestones, and assigning accountability to ensure progress. By creating a connected ecosystem, you’ll achieve better visibility, streamlined processes, and real value for your business.
2. Foster a mindset for collaboration, change, and urgency
Transitioning from multiple tools to an integrated system involves a cultural shift, not just a technological one. Employees who’ve been using disconnected processes for years may simply be used to them and be hesitant to adopt new ways of working. Engage them early with demos and feedback sessions — show them how an integrated system, including smarter finance software, simplifies their work and eliminates inefficiencies.
Be transparent about just how urgent it is to forge ahead. If your competitor has real-time insights thanks to a well-connected ecosystem and they can switch directions and innovate faster than you, that’s bad news. Get ahead.
3. Create a unified data strategy for complete visibility
Disconnected tools often lead to fragmented data, blind spots, and inefficiencies. A successful second wave of digital transformation depends on a comprehensive data strategy that unifies information from every corner of your operations. Think about what data you're missing and the kind of information you need to move the needle.
Integrating spend management with your ERP and HRIS eliminates gaps, enabling real-time insights, smarter decision-making, and even fraud prevention. With a single source of truth, your organisation can act with confidence and control.
4. Keep customer experience in focus
While improving internal processes is critical, your digital transformation efforts should also enhance the customer journey. Integrated systems free up time for teams to focus on delivering better experiences while providing deeper insights into customer behaviours and preferences.
A more efficient business means faster responses, personalised experiences, and happier customers.
5. Prioritise cybersecurity and data privacy in your integrations
With greater integration comes greater responsibility for securing your data and privacy. Partner only with software providers that prioritise data privacy and offer robust cybersecurity measures. For example, a secure spend management solution that integrates seamlessly with your ERP and HRIS ensures both operational efficiency and data protection — keeping your business safe while reducing risks.
Like any significant organisational change, digital transformation generates common challenges. So, it’s important to quickly identify these challenges and understand how to overcome them early to prevent unnecessary implementation delays.
With that in mind, here are six to be aware of:
1. Justifying tech investments
For many, investing in new technologies can seem like a leap of faith until the ROI starts rolling in. Tech isn’t cheap, so it’s not uncommon for CFOs to face barriers to investment. Before you pitch your bid for investment, work out the ROI you expect the new investment to generate, discuss timescales, and clearly communicate additional benefits to stakeholders.
At Payhawk, for example, our average customer reaches ROI for spend management in just ten months (according to G2 data). Plus, they can save anywhere from two hours a day to four days a week.
2. Managing resistance to change
Although resistance from stakeholders is common, employee resistance can also be significant. You're asking employees to completely change their processes and general ways of working, and an environment of continuous learning can help employees embrace these significant changes.
CFOs need to provide employees with the correct training, allowing them to seamlessly adopt new tech and achieve the best results for the organisation.
Payhawk Director of Implementation Martin Reindl describes how this looks at Payhawk:
“At Payhawk, we're built to be a very intuitive system with excellent user reviews on G2. Even so, we're always there to guide the customer, offering live training sessions to staff to help them understand how to use Payhawk with zero delays."
3. Integrating legacy systems
Legacy financial systems are typically clunky and create data silos as they don’t always have modern APIs, making it difficult to allow a seamless data flow.
CFOs need to assess their current systems and determine whether integration is feasible or whether they should choose a new system that's more flexible as the business scales.
4. Measuring success
To measure success accurately, you need to set clear KPIs and objectives before implementation so you can track progress. Progress might not be easy to quantify, but defining what success might look like can help you determine whether you're on the right path. Success might look like user adoption, customer satisfaction, talent acquisition, or retention. Define what success looks like for your specific organisation and take it from there.
5. Ensuring data privacy and compliance
Data privacy is such a massive topic that it can easily become overwhelming when you're navigating it for the first time. Data breaches can cost companies millions of pounds and irreparably damage your brand's reputation. Work alongside your IT teams to understand what resources are necessary to keep data secure, and seek out tech partners with security certificates and robust measures to keep your third-party data safe at all times.
Pre Payhawk, international live and digital events company GDS Group had a mix of paper, digital systems, and disconnected tools, and they knew there was a better way. Here's their story of digital finance transformation.
Howard Thompson, Global Financial Controller at GDS Group, says:
Before Payhawk, the finance team would have to read and decodify all the receipts to work out which buckets the spend should sit in for our general ledger… there were quite a few challenges.
Since moving to our solution, their spend management has never been easier. With a complete solution including cards, expenses management, accounts payable, procure-to-pay features, subscription management, CO2 tracking, and more, plus all their accounts across multiple entities, they've saved tonnes of time and taken a firm grip over annual budgets by setting individual card limits, controls, and more.
They've successfully digitised the entire expense process to boost efficiency across finance and non-finance departments (and lessen the administrative burden for both).
Now, when the GDS team needs to spend, it looks like this:
Hannah Dobson, VP of Sales at GDS Group, says: "Payhawk has saved me time, but more importantly, it's saved my team time. It's a dream because now I can get my team to do their own expenses, and I can approve them from afar quickly and efficiently. It's a great user experience. And it means they can focus on higher value activities."
Yep, thanks to the native ERP integrations, all of GDS' expenses appear in real time, allowing the finance team to track it instantly and seamlessly integrate spend data into their chosen ERP, NetSuite.
Howard explains: "Payhawk has done a great job of ensuring that we can get that custom field (categorisation) from NetSuite and the project code into Payhawk."
Nick Millard, VP of Finance at GDS, adds:
Before Payhawk, it used to be one person's full-time job to chase receipts, code up credit card statements to the P&L, and manage costs and credit cards…Now they have a completely different role. They can be proactive and look into future spend rather than always reporting on historic spend.
And the numbers? GDS has successfully saved time across bot finance and non-finance functions, leaving more time to focus on strategic activities, like planning, forecasting, and more.
When it comes to managing company finances, you need clarity, accountability and accuracy to make informed decisions about your business's growth and strategic direction. By embracing solutions like Payhawk and learning from successful transformations at companies like GDS, you can elevate your financial management practices, get complete visibility, seamlessly sync across systems, and pave the way for sustainable business growth.
Book a personalised demo today and see how Payhawk could help you ride the second wave of digital transformation.
Trish Toovey works across the UK and US markets to craft content at Payhawk. Covering anything from ad copy to video scripting, Trish leans on a super varied background in copy and content creation for the finance, fashion, and travel industries.
Whether you have tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees, we’re making your business spend work for you, giving you control over spending at scale with a single solution. Say goodbye to tedious finance tasks, schedule a demo with us today.
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