Ten steps to successful technology adoption for CFOs

From high-growth startups to global enterprises, adopting the right finance technology is essential to achieving your goals. You need unparalleled visibility into company spend to make smarter, faster decisions, and the right tech can give you that and more.

The problem? The marketplace is crowded. It’s full of tech solutions promising the world, starting with process innovation, efficiency, and more. It’s overwhelming and leaves finance leaders asking, How do I even begin to adopt a new technology? And how do I ensure high team adoption and a smooth transition from old legacy systems to something new?

Why should a CFO lead financial technology adoption?

No one understands the numbers — or the impact — better than you as the CFO.

As a finance leader, you know the cost of every tech investment and how to measure real ROI, making you the natural choice to lead technology adoption across your organisation.

But adopting new systems isn’t just about adding tools and measuring costs. It’s about aligning technology with business goals and using it to drive measurable change and increased efficiency. With the CFO role now expanding to include innovation and digital strategy, you’re not just a finance leader; you’re the strategic driver of transformation.

Our report, The new CFO tech gap found that 98% of finance leaders believe adopting finance technology helps them make better decisions. Yet 93% still struggle with siloed tools and disconnected data.

The need is clear. But the barrier is too. That’s where Payhawk comes in — helping you unify all your spend management under one roof. Corporate cards, payments, and real-time spend data — all connected in a single, transparent platform built for modern finance.

Four technology adoption challenges

You already know technology adoption is essential. But let’s be honest — it’s not always straightforward. Here are four common barriers most finance teams face. How many ring true for your organisation?

1. Overwhelming choice of technology

The market is saturated with platforms claiming to offer major efficiency gains. But knowing which ones deliver tangible ROI requires some strategic analysis.
You need to identify the value-driving tools that are trending in your sector, look at their use cases, and analyse customer success stories.

Doing your research will help you make informed choices when cherry-picking the tech you’ll benefit from the most.

2. Inadequate training

At Payhawk, AI lays the foundation for efficient spend management. But AI in finance can be a confusing concept, particularly when your team is used to legacy systems, which rely on manual data entry and worry about implementation headaches.

The CFO Agenda revealed that a huge 55% of CFOs say inadequate training (in new technologies like AI) is the main barrier to adoption.

The good news? Payhawk’s AI agents are built right into the intuitive tools finance teams and end-users already love. That means nothing extra to learn, just more efficiency and a better experience.

Outside of AI, we also prioritise exceptional human customer support and even offer live training sessions throughout implementation, so your team is ready to hit the ground running.

In short, you can wipe out inadequate training as a barrier to adoption with the right solution.

3. Cultural resistance

Over 44% of CFOs say cultural resistance slows down AI adoption. But the real issue isn’t the tech — it’s fear and misunderstanding.

To lead change, you need to know where your team stands. Every organisation follows the same pattern: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

When you know which group your people fall into, you can tailor how you introduce AI — turning hesitation into buy-in, and resistance into momentum.

4. Cost

The real cost of new software isn’t just the licence fee. It’s the disruption that comes with change — training, setup, and the time your team spends getting up to speed.

Nearly 39% of CFOs agree say cost is the biggest barrier to adopting new tech. But it doesn’t have to be.

Choose software that’s fast to implement, simple to learn, and built for efficiency from day one. That’s how you protect productivity while still modernising your finance stack.

Ten steps to successful technology adoption for CFOs

Breaking tech adoption into manageable steps makes it less overwhelming.

Here are ten proven steps that CFOs can use to ensure success. With a platform like Payhawk, each of these steps becomes more streamlined, integrated, and impactful, making it easier to turn strategy into operational results.

Step one: Prioritise vision and strategy

Everyone in the organisation needs to share a vision, which means ensuring everyone understands the purpose and benefits of technology adoption. This approach offers you a chance to understand your team’s worries, too, and identify how best tech can support them while still aligning with corporate goals.

Step two: Find tech that supports scalability

Only 35% of CFOs say their current tech meets their needs. The rest are stuck with tools that slow growth instead of driving it.

To scale effectively, you need systems that work together. That means seamless integrations across your ERP, accounting software, travel tools, and every other finance workflow.
• Data should flow automatically — no manual entry, no gaps
• Reconciliation should happen in real time
• And onboarding or offboarding staff should take minutes, not days
The right platform will not just support your growth. It accelerates it

Step three: Work on culture and mindset

For your employees to embrace tech adoption, you need to build a culture that fosters experimentation and learning. By encouraging leaders to model curiosity and upskilling, you effectively lead by example, making it second nature for every member of your team.

Working with a tech partner that offers intuitive interfaces and user-centric design (like Payhawk’s mobile app and web portal), you make adoption less intimidating for everyone involved.

Step four: Focus on upskilling and filling knowledge gaps

Aside from building a tech-focused mindset, it’s essential to ensure you have the skills needed to make the best use of your new technology. That means you should upskill staff where possible or hire new talent to plug knowledge gaps.

Invest in continuous staff training and development, whether that’s providing in-house training utilising the training provided by the software company or purchasing a training subscription.

Step five: Ensure robust data security

Data security breaches can be catastrophic, not just for brand reputation, but also for financial health overall. Always consider the data security credentials of the technology you’re implementing. How do they ensure secure data transmission? What security measures do they have in place to protect your financial data once implemented?

Financial data is sensitive, so finding software that prioritises protecting it is indispensable.

Read all about Payhawk’s security measures.

Step six: Improve governance and decision-making

Adopting new technology impacts every part of the business — not just finance. That’s why building a cross-functional steering committee is one of the smartest moves you can make.

Bring together voices from every department early. When each function has a seat at the table, you’ll spot friction points faster, secure buy-in sooner, and make better long-term decisions about how AI and automation fit into existing workflows.

Even forming the committee drives value. It breaks down silos, builds trust, and gets teams speaking the same language before transformation begins.

The result? A smoother rollout, stronger adoption, and technology that serves the entire organisation — not just one department.

Step seven: Plan for operational disruption

Implementing new tech is always going to come with a degree of disruption, but it’s how you manage the transition that can make all the difference. Consider both short and long-term disruptions and always communicate all the changes you expect to happen clearly (and with everyone). Keeping comms transparent keeps everyone in the loop, which means no surprises.

Note: Payhawk’s modular approach to setup means we phase your integration, which minimises operational disruptions.

Step eight: Define what success looks like

Your definition of success will change over time. For example, success at the beginning of your digital transformation might look like completing a skill audit to understand what skills you need to hire out for. But as the journey develops, success might look different, i.e. a smooth implementation (and how you measure “smooth”).

It’s important not only to outline your success metrics but to celebrate achieving even the smallest milestones. Share all successes with the wider team to build positive momentum.

Step nine: Engage everyone during digital transformation and beyond

Digital transformation only works when everyone’s on the same page. Keeping teams aligned and engaged takes more than updates — it takes clear, consistent communication through the right channels.

Use your existing project tools, like Slack or Teams, to set up structured feedback loops and shared spaces for updates. This keeps leadership, finance, and operations aligned as changes roll out.

And don’t stop once the system goes live. Communication should stay central even after adoption.

At Payhawk, we’ve built this into our platform itself — you can tag colleagues directly in expenses, invoices, or purchase requests. No endless message threads, no siloed chats. Just one place where every conversation links to real data, keeping everyone accountable and informed.

That’s how you maintain momentum long after go-live.

Step ten: Continue to measure success and course correct when necessary

Tech advances rapidly, which means your team needs to be in a position to adapt to those changes quickly. The only way to do this is to continuously measure success and make improvements where necessary.
That might involve using a new software feature to further improve efficiency or reduce manual workload.

Track both leading and lagging KPIs and sunset tools that fail to deliver value and use accurate data to support your decisions. With Payhawk’s subscription management features, for example, you can quickly identify tools that are underutilised and track pricing history to make informed decisions on budget-aligned spending.

Technology adoption done the right way

Adopting new technology isn’t a checkbox exercise — it’s a strategic shift. As CFO, your job is to balance ROI with operational impact, making sure every investment improves both efficiency and experience.

The good news? Platforms like Payhawk make that balance easier.

Payhawk was built for fast, frustration-free adoption. Its intuitive, mobile-first design removes the usual barriers that slow teams down.

Just ask Cristina Fuentes, Treasury Manager at Wallapop:

One of the reasons we chose Payhawk was its accessibility and ease of use for the entire team. Being so intuitive, it allows any employee — even those who travel only occasionally — to manage their travel expenses on the go. The process is very simple: they pay, take a photo, and can forget about paperwork.

That’s the difference between adoption and transformation — software your people want to use.

Our onboarding process is structured in three simple phases — Kick-off, Implementation, and Go-live — so finance teams can move quickly without disruption.

Ready to simplify your financial operations, reduce manual work, and build a data-driven finance function? Request a personalised product demo and see how effortless adoption can be.