The 'do-less' finance transformation: Why the smartest CFOs are shrinking their tech stacks, not adding to them

Here's a surprising fact: Finance teams often use just 20-30% of their software's capabilities, all while dealing with disconnected and fragmented technology.

According to our research report The new CFO tech gap, nearly two-thirds of CFOs find their current tech stack fails to meet their needs, with 51% citing limited visibility and 37% reporting inaccurate data as key challenges. This technological sprawl isn't just frustrating; it's expensive.

Finance professionals spend countless hours missing the benefits of integrated spend management and instead switching between incompatible tools, reconciling discrepancies, and building manual workarounds — time they could instead spend on strategic analysis and decision support.

The math doesn't add up. We're paying 100% of the price for technology while capturing a fraction of its value.

The hidden costs of a 'bloated' finance tech stack

The CFO Alliance's 2025 Global Mid-Market CFO Sentiment Report further illustrates the issue, revealing how finance teams are drowning in complexity, managing an average of 24 different FP&A tools and over 30 accounting platforms.

As Benjamin Lehrer, CEO of First Water Finance, notes in the report, today's finance leaders must "be more technical to spend less time being technical."

This paradox captures the biggest challenge in a nutshell: CFOs aren't just wasting money on licenses; they're losing strategic focus amid the technical noise, forgetting what these tools were supposed to accomplish in the first place.

This hidden toll extends beyond mere inefficiency; the biggest pain points include:

• Data fragmentation: According to our research, 51% of finance leaders cited limited visibility as their biggest pain point when managing multiple tools. When financial information lives in disconnected databases, getting a single source of truth is almost impossible.
• Process friction: Every additional system creates another potential break point in your workflows. Finance teams become system integrators rather than strategic advisors, manually bridging gaps between tools rather than analysing business performance.
• Security vulnerabilities: Each additional application is also another potential security risk. A sprawling tech ecosystem creates blind spots that are difficult to monitor and secure.

The "a-ha" moment: Calculate your process unit cost

Here's where smart CFOs are flipping the script: Instead of evaluating technology in isolation, they measure the total cost of key finance processes.

Andrew Rudchuk, Head of Finance Transformation at Starship, advocates calculating the "cost to process one object," whether an invoice, a reimbursement, or a payment. This simple metric reveals the true efficiency of your systems.

Many companies are shocked to discover that seemingly mundane processes like expense reimbursements can cost upwards of €100 each (!) when accounting for software fees and labour. This realisation often triggers the first stage of a major tech detox.

Rethink processes, then technology

The second "a-ha" moment comes when finance leaders realise that layering new technology on broken processes only amplifies inefficiency.

As Tsvetina Yancheva, Director of Product Marketing at Payhawk, notes:

Digitising an inefficient process just means you'll do the wrong thing faster.

Smart CFOs are now approaching technology with this hierarchy:

1. Streamline the process first
2. Consolidate onto integrated platforms
3. Fully leverage core capabilities through training
4. Only then consider additional tools that fill genuine gaps

This process-first approach delivers measurable business impact. According to the CFO Alliance report, 53% of incremental finance budgets are now directed toward automation and technology consolidation. The strategic shift is clear:

• 28% of CFOs prioritise workflow automation and AI
• While another 24% focus on improving existing technology platforms

By centralising data through what the report calls "structured replication" — mirroring information from multiple systems into a single repository — finance teams eliminate the scattered data problem that plagues most departments. This streamlined approach means less time hunting for information and more time using it strategically.

Integration: The new mark of sophistication

Today's most sophisticated finance organisations aren't those with the most tools, but those with the most integrated spend management environment. When your expense management, accounting system, and analytics tools seamlessly share data, you lay the foundation for true intelligence.

Think of it like Formula 1 racing: Cars win by shedding unnecessary weight, not by adding more parts. Every component must serve a clear purpose and work in harmony with the whole.

David Watson, Group Financial Controller at the growing, international experiential company State of Play Hospitality, recalls the major impact of smarter spend integrations:

Pre-switching [to Payhawk], we used credit cards and Bill.com for the accounts payable (AP) fulfilment system. It didn't integrate with NetSuite or combine cards and AP fulfilment, so there was some switching between tools. One of the biggest advantages of Payhawk is the integrations between our accounting software and the ability to put payments in the hands of the actual users and operators (venues)... Now we save time and make better decisions thanks to complete visibility over our multi-entity spend.

The path forward: Strategic minimalism

For CFOs looking to embrace the "do-less" transformation, start with these steps:

1. Audit your current stack for utilisation. If you're using less than 50% of a system's capabilities, it's a prime candidate for replacement or consolidation.
2. Map your core financial processes end-to-end. Identify where handoffs between systems create friction, manual work, or data inconsistencies.
3. Consolidate around platforms that handle end-to-end workflows. Unified systems for procure-to-pay or spend management eliminate integration headaches while improving visibility.
4. Invest in mastery, not breadth. Direct resources toward fully leveraging your core systems rather than adding new ones.

The finance leaders who will thrive in this next era aren't those with the most impressive tech portfolio, but those who've mastered the art of doing more with less. They're building finance functions that are less about complexity and more about simplicity and integration, focusing their teams on decision support rather than data reconciliation.

In a world obsessed with more, less might be your most powerful strategy.

Find out more about State of Play Hospitality's journey to complete spend visibility and control, including how they reduced complexity with a lighter tech stack, integrated smarter tools, and gained better control over their spend.