Finance Chiefs Struggle to Extract Value from Technology Investments as Implementation Gaps Widen

Finance Chiefs Struggle to Extract Value from Technology Investments as Implementation Gaps Widen

The finance function's technology problem isn't a shortage of tools—it's figuring out what to do with them once they're installed.

That's the central tension emerging from finance leadership discussions, as CFOs grapple with a familiar pattern: promising software purchases followed by underwhelming returns. The issue has become acute enough that industry groups are now organizing events specifically focused on "realizing" technology opportunities rather than simply acquiring them, a subtle acknowledgment that the purchase order was the easy part.

The CFO Leadership Council, a membership organization of finance executives, has made technology implementation a focal point of its programming this year. The group's Finance & Accounting Technology Expo and various leadership summits are positioning themselves as forums where finance leaders can move beyond vendor pitches to discuss what actually happens after the contract is signed. It's a shift that reflects a broader maturation in how finance functions approach their tech stacks—less "what should we buy" and more "how do we make this thing work."

The challenge is particularly acute for controllers and finance operations teams, who typically inherit the implementation burden after the C-suite approves the budget. The CFO Leadership Council has established a separate Controller Network alongside its broader CFO membership base, recognizing that the people responsible for making technology actually function often have different concerns than the executives who approved it.

What's interesting here is the framing. When an industry organization titles programming around "realizing opportunities" rather than "implementing solutions," it's usually code for "everyone bought this stuff and now nobody knows what to do with it." It's the corporate equivalent of buying an expensive gym membership and then needing a separate coach to explain how the machines work.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who's watched finance transformation projects: a vendor demo shows seamless automation, the business case projects dramatic efficiency gains, the purchase gets approved, and then reality intrudes. The system needs configuration. It doesn't talk to the ERP. The team needs training. The processes need redesigning. Six months later, you're still manually reconciling spreadsheets, just with more expensive software sitting unused in the background.

The CFO Leadership Council's approach—creating dedicated networks, hosting technology-specific conferences, offering continuing education credits for implementation-focused sessions—suggests the industry has recognized this gap. These aren't events about discovering new technology. They're about figuring out why the technology you already bought isn't delivering what the sales deck promised.

For finance leaders, the implication is clear: the hard part isn't the purchase decision anymore. It's the months of unglamorous work that follow—the process mapping, the change management, the training sessions, the integration headaches. The technology can deliver value, but only if someone does the decidedly non-technological work of making it fit into how the business actually operates.

The question finance chiefs should be asking isn't "what technology should we buy next?" It's "do we have the capacity to actually implement what we already own?" Because the most expensive technology investment isn't the one that fails—it's the one that succeeds at installation but never gets used.