Finance & IT: The Strategic Partnership Too Many Companies Still Get Wrong

Too many organisations still treat Finance and IT like distant neighbours. They might meet for annual budget cycles or system approvals, but for the rest of the year, they run in parallel. This approach no longer works.

Over the last two decades leading finance teams, driving cost transformation, and supporting growth agendas, I have repeatedly seen this disconnect undermine performance. But when CFOs and CIOs work as strategic partners, not functional counterparts, the business impact is profound.

A Persistent Disconnect

The issue is not new, but it remains unresolved. Finance focuses on capital discipline, risk management, and shareholder value. IT is consumed by innovation, agility, and enabling the business through technology. Both critical. But too often, they operate with entirely different mental models of what success looks like.

Finance leaders still view IT spend through a cost lens, often sceptical of its strategic value. IT leaders, on the other hand, sometimes struggle to translate technical outcomes into financial terms that matter at the executive table. The result? Fragmented conversations, missed opportunities, and suboptimal decisions about where to invest and where to hold the line.

This is not a soft issue of communication style. It is a structural gap in how organisations connect technology strategy to financial outcomes.

Technology Is the Business

IT is no longer just a service function or back-office enabler. It drives how we engage customers, how we operate efficiently, and how we compete. It shapes cost structures, margin profiles, and entire business models.

CFOs who lack visibility into the organisation’s major technology bets are missing critical context for capital allocation. Equally, CIOs who cannot articulate the financial impact of their initiatives will struggle to secure investment and sustain momentum.

Take Artificial Intelligence. The financial conversation is not whether AI algorithms are sophisticated. It is whether AI can automate transactional processes, drive intelligent pricing models, and create new revenue streams through data. The CIO must frame this opportunity in terms of financial returns, risk mitigation, and competitive advantage. The CFO must evaluate not just the upfront cost, but the full lifecycle impact on the P&L and balance sheet.

Without this shared understanding, technology investments are reduced to budget items rather than strategic growth levers.

Where It Breaks Down

I have seen well-intentioned IT projects fail because they lacked a compelling financial case. They started with technical ambition but ended as underused platforms that delivered little business value.

I have also seen finance functions, in an effort to control costs, block essential technology investments. Often, these were the very upgrades needed to protect long-term competitiveness, improve resilience, or mitigate significant cyber risks.

These failures are no longer tolerable inefficiencies. They are direct threats to profitability, market agility, and long-term sustainability.

What Leading Organisations Are Doing

The most forward-thinking companies are dismantling these silos. Finance and IT are no longer adjacent teams. They are integrated drivers of a shared value agenda. Here is what I have seen work in practice:

Establish a Digital Value Office

A dedicated function jointly led by senior finance and IT leaders. Its role is to own the digital investment strategy, oversee the full investment lifecycle, and drive accountability for value creation.

Adopt FinOps Across the Enterprise

FinOps is not just for cloud cost management. It is a way of working that drives transparency, accountability, and optimisation of all IT spend through collaboration between Finance, IT, and business units.

Use a Unified Transformation Scorecard

Track financial and technology metrics together. ROI, margin impact, and cost savings should sit alongside platform stability, innovation velocity, and security posture to give a complete view of digital transformation progress.

Embed Finance in IT and IT in Finance

Finance business partners should work inside IT teams, not alongside them. Likewise, IT analysts should sit with finance, helping to shape technology investment decisions through a financial lens.

Run Post-Investment Value Reviews

Major technology investments should not end with go-live. Joint post-implementation reviews, owned by Finance and IT, measure what value was actually delivered against what was promised.

Create a Technology Innovation Fund with Clear Governance

Establish a fund for exploring emerging technologies, jointly governed by Finance and IT. Focus on experimentation with clear financial guardrails, decision rights, and a bias towards learning fast and reallocating capital when needed.

Build a Shared Language Through Joint Learning

Finance leaders should deepen their understanding of core technology trends. IT leaders should learn the financial principles that drive business performance. Ongoing cross-functional learning builds mutual respect and better decision-making.

A Broader Role for the CFO

The CFO’s role is expanding. Financial stewardship remains essential, but technology fluency is now equally important. Growth, cost transformation, and risk mitigation are all technology-enabled. CFOs who are not actively shaping the technology agenda are leaving value on the table.

The best CFOs I know do not wait for IT to bring them business cases. They co-create the strategy. They challenge assumptions, help prioritise investments, and ensure that technology bets are aligned with financial outcomes. They also help translate financial constraints into innovation opportunities.

This is not about becoming a technology expert. It is about being a better business leader.

The Way Forward

The future belongs to companies where the CFO and CIO work in true partnership. Not occasional allies. Co-leaders of a shared growth and risk management agenda.

If you are still running Finance and IT on separate tracks, the market will move faster than you can react. This is not a nice-to-have alignment. It is a fundamental leadership shift.

The CFO and CIO who face the digital future together, with a shared understanding of value and risk, will be the ones who navigate disruption and build lasting advantage.

About the Author

Ben Dodds is a senior finance leader with CFO and executive leadership experience, helping complex organisations accelerate growth, improve profitability, and deliver enterprise-wide transformation. In senior roles at Tabcorp, DXC Technology, and Hewlett Packard, Ben has shaped finance into a strategic business partner, driving commercial performance, optimising cost structures, and enabling better decision-making.

Ben is known for building leadership teams that deliver results, creating clarity in complexity, and working directly with executive teams to unlock sustainable performance. He shares his perspectives on financial leadership and transformation as a contributor to CFO Magazine A/NZ.

Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedIn.com/in/benrdodds