Successful digital transformation is only feasible when there’s a strong working relationship between IT and finance. If the CIO and CFO are not aligned, even the best digital strategy will fail.
CFOs are playing an increasingly prominent role in setting technology budgets and contributing to decisions on how that budget is spent. This means your influence as CIO hinges on collaborating with the CFO to shape strategy, prove ROI, and lead change.
The goal: A strategic partnership
On the surface, your roles might appear very different. You hold the long-term, big picture vision for modernizing the enterprise through technology advancements. The CFO is focused on the nitty-gritty of financial performance.
But the ultimate priority is one you have in common: everything you do must support the company's broader business objectives.
Close alignment between the CIO and CFO is vital to ensure that technology investments achieve organizational goals and deliver measurable ROI. This requires clear and open communication, transparency around key metrics, mutual understanding, and trust. But individual leaders often lack visibility, limiting their line of sight across the business and ultimately impeding growth.
The consequences of the CIO/CFO gap were highlighted in KPMG’s 2025 CFO & CIO Collaboration Survey. Half of CIOs (49%) feel there are disconnects between the two roles on the assessment of technology ROI, and one third (35%) noted that there was a misalignment on budget allocations for technology.
The sources of division
CIOs and CFOs can struggle to work as a team owing to barriers such as:
- Clashing or divergent priorities, for example between controlling costs and the urge to innovate.
- Fragmented data spread across ERP, CRM, and HCM systems.
- Disconnected operations creating silos, with both parties exclusively pursuing their own needs and goals.
The result is that you both make decisions in isolation, based on data that only tells part of the story. A lack of coordination between efforts leads to inefficiencies, squandered resources, and increased risk.
The CFO also lacks an understanding of how technology solutions contribute to overall business performance. Without tangible evidence that investments will deliver measurable value, the progress of initiatives such as AI adoption could come under threat.
Overcoming these barriers requires the ability to centralize planning and unify disparate data sources.
Aligning priorities
When CIOs and CFOs share a single planning environment, the impact is immediate and enterprise wide. Centralized planning provides data transparency and faster, easier analysis of the business. Working in this shared environment helps to break down communication barriers between the CIO and CFO, allowing them to collaborate more closely and effectively around driving business outcomes.
Unified planning platforms enable teams to make more confident decisions by bringing together insights from across the business. Everyone works from the same trusted numbers, so planning becomes faster, more aligned, and easier to scale.
And when digital initiatives are clearly tied to financial outcomes, it’s easier to justify spend and demonstrate financial ROI to see how tech investments are driving strategic objectives.
Transforming perceptions
A strong partnership between the CIO and CFO will elevate the influence and impact of both leaders. Instead of being perceived as a cost center, the CIO is recognized as a growth partner. Rather than a blocker of innovation, the CFO is seen as an enabler.
Together, you become strategic leaders who drive measurable enterprise value, and secure long-term success for your organization.
Anaplan: Built for CIO/CFO leadership
Anaplan delivers the foundation of a more collaborative mindset between IT and finance. A cloud-native, AI-driven SaaS platform, it connects data and decisions across the whole enterprise.
Unlike tools developed specifically for finance or IT functions, Anaplan connects business strategy with operational execution, ensuring that what gets planned drives business outcomes, not just team-specific metrics.
With Anaplan, CIOs and CFOs can:
- Embed AI directly into planning, with transparency and governance.
- Foster a more agile and responsive organization through running real-time modeling and collaborative scenarios.
- Achieve data accuracy and consistency, filling in gaps between systems to facilitate better decision-making.
- Prove the ROI and long-term value of technology investments.
By aligning your priorities with finance, you will be empowered to accelerate innovation, drive agility, and optimize IT spend. Collaborative planning with the CFO will ensure that the technology investments you make deliver real, measurable business growth.
