From strengthening CIO partnerships to integrating AI workflows, explore five practical steps to modernise your financial operations and retire rigid, cycle-centered processes.
Patrick Evenden
Head of Thought Leadership, EMEA
Workday
There is a quiet comfort in an old ledger book. The numbers sit in neat, tidy rows, and every column balances at the bottom.
But real life—and certainly modern enterprise—refuses to sit still long enough to be recorded in fountain pen. While traditional finance teams were busy closing the books at the end of the month, the rest of the business was already three miles down the road facing new decisions.
The CFO’s mandate has undergone a quiet revolution. Today’s finance leaders are tasked with orchestrating company strategy. Stepping into that role means stepping away from sluggish, batch-processed cycles and building a flexible, tech-driven operation aligned with IT—one that turns daily financial signals into immediate, confident action.
With the shift to modern finance already underway, the challenge for CFOs is now operationalising it. These steps outline how to lay a foundation for modern finance operations that support financial planning while expanding finance’s role as a strategic leader across the business.
Here are the five steps you need to follow to build a modern finance operation:
The connection between the CFO and CIO underpins some of the most essential parts of the modern financial operation. In particular, the digital transformation that's needed to modernise requires high IT alignment facilitated at the executive level.
Workday research found that organisations with high finance and IT alignment are definitively ahead on digital finance transformation and are thus better equipped to guide and lead at the level enterprises now expect from their finance function.
To create a durable operating partnership with your CIO, establish a shared ownership model across these core decisions:
Data architecture: Align on how financial and non-financial data is connected and governed across platforms.
Platform strategy: Evaluate systems together so finance requirements around planning and insight are reflected early.
Governance and controls: Agree on access models, approval workflows, and data quality standards that scale with the business.
Reinforce this alignment through regular joint reviews of system changes and roadmap priorities. Over time, a frequent review cadence keeps finance and accounting platforms adaptable while preserving control and confidence in the numbers.
The majority (57%) of CFOs say they’re among the top leaders influencing strategy across their organizations.
CFOs are prioritising tools that support holistic finance for the future across areas like cloud ERP, financial management systems, and CRM integration.
The key is to build a finance tech stack that serves as a connected foundation for:
A single financial system of record that feeds planning, so forecasts and scenarios reflect current actuals without manual reconciliation
Planning workflows that stay active during execution, allowing assumptions to update as demand, costs, or headcount change
Direct integration with operational and workforce systems, giving finance visibility into the drivers behind performance
When finance systems are built this way, operations teams maintain visibility as conditions shift and can adjust plans without breaking alignment. That allows finance to stay embedded in decisions as they move from strategy into execution.
The business world operates on big data—perhaps finance more than any other function. The ability to translate the meaning behind data insights to key stakeholders is now one of the core responsibilities finance teams hold. In other words, finance helps build data fluency across teams so they can independently use financial insights in their decision-making processes.
At the same time, non-finance teams become data stewards in their own right, which allows finance to incorporate non-financial data into their processes.
Develop data fluency by focusing on how teams work with information:
Train finance partners to explain what is changing and why, using data to surface drivers instead of reporting outcomes
Standardise definitions and metrics used in planning, so leaders see the same numbers and assumptions across conversations
Make data walkthroughs part of decision discussions, with finance clearly explaining implications before choices are made
Done well, data fluency changes the role finance plays in meetings. Instead of reconciling numbers or answering follow-up questions, finance sets the financial context that shapes which options are considered viable in the first place.
Today 99% of finance and other executive leaders say AI delivers important business benefits.
AI has become the standard for modern finance—99% of finance and executive leaders say it delivers important business benefits. That means simply having AI systems is no longer a differentiator.
From AI agents in finance executing workflows autonomously to AI predictive analytics that make planning more accurate and sophisticated, AI is redefining all aspects of the function. CFOs must be proactive in taking advantage of the competitive gains AI offers.
AI in corporate finance is most effective when it is embedded directly into a platform-based financial management system. With the right platform in place, finance teams can use AI capabilities that are well-governed and designed to work with their existing data and workflows, without needing to build them from scratch or maintain them independently.
As finance becomes a company-wide partner in strategic planning and decision making, leaders must nurture soft skills that make team members good collaborators and communicators.
Workday research shows that as modern technologies like AI become more embedded into the work, "soft" human-centered skills are becoming even more important and irreplaceable.
Skills like relationship-building, ethical judgement, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and empathy are some of the top areas to focus. Build soft skills development into professional development offerings and recognise employees who show strengths in these areas.
The scope of finance’s role has changed, and finance operating models have to change with it.
As CFOs take ownership across strategy, data, and enterprise technology, finance can no longer rely on operating models built for periodic oversight of the company’s financial health. The scope of the role has changed, and the way finance functions run day-to-day has to change with it.
The organisations that succeed here invest in platforms that keep data aligned across finance and operations. They design planning processes that stay active as conditions change. They develop teams that can explain financial implications in the moments where direction is being set, rather than looking backwards at outdated financial reports.
When operating models match the role finance is being asked to play in today’s business environment, finance truly earns its seat at the centre of decision-making—and is positioned to keep it as expectations continue to evolve.
More and more, CFOs are required to be strategic figureheads for their organisations. Learn how the FAME framework can help you achieve your business goals, with case studies from two enterprise-level organisations.
Report
In the past decade HR has undergone a major evoluton from a supportive role to a strategic one. However, as this report finds, HR teams are more conservative on AI than finance and IT. That makes the potential competitive advantage even greater—learn more below.