Optimizing Your Tech Stack: 3 Tips for the Modern CFO

Updated April 2025

There’s a hidden cost hiding in plain sight, and it’s living in your tech stack. 

Many mid-sized and enterprise organizations rely on dozens, sometimes hundreds, of software tools to run their operations. But when those systems don’t connect or overlap in functionality, it creates more problems than it solves. Instead of making work easier, disconnected technology leads to bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and wasted spend. 

For CFOs tasked with cutting costs, improving operational efficiency, and navigating economic uncertainty, a bloated or disjointed tech stack can quietly chip away at the bottom line. Missed payments, duplicate invoices, data silos, and frustrated employees become daily obstacles. And when it comes to AP? These issues don’t just slow you down, they compound fast. 

In many finance departments, it’s not unusual for teams to juggle five or more systems just to process a single invoice; scanning paper documents, emailing for approvals, tracking statuses in spreadsheets, manually entering data into the ERP, and initiating payments through a separate banking portal. It’s a fragile process that breaks easily, especially when key people are out or when workflows aren’t clearly defined. 

Let’s look at the risks of a fragmented AP tech stack, and how modern finance leaders are regaining control by consolidating and optimizing. 

The Cost of Complexity: What a Fragmented Stack Is Really Doing to Your Business 

Modern finance departments run on tech. But when that tech doesn’t work together, neither does your team.

It Silently Drains Your Budget 

Every redundant system and manual workaround functions as an invisible tax on your business. Systems adopted piecemeal over time create costly overlap; you are paying multiple times for similar functionality.  

If your AP team uses separate platforms for invoice intake, approvals, and payments that do not connect to your ERP. Employees waste hours toggling between screens, duplicating data entry, and correcting human errors. This inefficiency drives up costs dramatically. According to Ardent Partners, manually processing a single invoice costs $9.40; multiplied across thousands of monthly invoices, this quickly erodes profitability.  

The upside? Even incremental improvements deliver substantial ROI. Organizations implementing comprehensive automation typically reduce invoice processing costs by 50 to 80 percent, releasing capital for strategic investments in growth, talent development, and truly valuable technology.

It Puts You at Risk

When systems are disconnected, so is your visibility. And that’s exactly when fraud, compliance issues, and payment errors slip through the cracks. 

Without centralized controls, finance teams struggle to enforce approvals, detect anomalies, and flag duplicate payments. And with phishing scams and vendor fraud on the rise, especially during economic instability, this is a risk no CFO can afford. 

The 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey states that 79% of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud last year. 

Fragmented tech means fragmented oversight, and that’s a wide-open door for financial threats. 

And it’s not just external threats you need to worry about. Internal fraud, often caused by lack of oversight, duplicate vendor entries, or unchecked payment approvals, is also easier to commit when finance systems operate in silos.

It Slows Down the People Who Keep the Lights On

Tech is supposed to make work easier. But if your AP team has to manage five logins, re-enter vendor data, or chase down invoice approvals across MS Teams, email, and a clunky legacy platform? That’s more of a frustration than a transformation. 

Employees spend more time managing systems than doing strategic work. They burn out faster. And they’re less likely to embrace new tools when every rollout feels like another disruption. 

Your best talent didn’t sign up to be system administrators. They signed up to help your business grow. But without streamlined, integrated tools, they’re stuck in the weeds. 

Research confirms that employees lacking clear expectations and effective tools experience significant declines in engagement. In accounts payable, this doesn’t just affect output, it drives up burnout, turnover, and hiring costs at a time when experienced finance talent is already in short supply. 

Why CFOs Are Taking the Lead on Tech Consolidation 

CFOs aren’t just financial stewards anymore, they’re technology decision-makers. According to Gartner, 82% of CFOs say their digital investments are accelerating. 

Why? Because tech consolidation isn’t just IT’s problem. It’s a financial strategy. 

When finance leaders streamline the tools powering their back office, especially AP, they don’t just reduce spend. They unlock faster approvals, real-time reporting, and better business decisions. 

And during economic slowdowns, consolidation becomes a competitive advantage. Companies that trim the fat from their processes and redirect budget toward scalable, automated infrastructure are better equipped to navigate uncertainty without compromising performance. 

Here’s how to start. 

3 Steps to Regain Control of Your AP Tech Stack 

Step 1: Conduct a Comprehensive Tech Audit 

Start by taking inventory of your current technology ecosystem. Identify which tools your team uses daily, which are underutilized, and which create functionality overlap. Most critically, determine which systems fail to communicate with each other, creating manual processes and data silos. 

Get input from the people who use these tools every day. You’ll often uncover hidden pain points: 

“We still manually key in payment data from one system to another.” 
“We need to use Excel to track what the platform should already show us.” 

This is where you identify inefficiencies, spot shadow IT, and open the door for real improvement. 

Don’t forget to include integrations, or the lack thereof, in your audit. A tool might be excellent in isolation, but if it doesn’t connect cleanly to your ERP or accounting system, it’s a liability, not an asset. 

Step 2: Look for Integrated, End-to-End Solutions 

Modern AP platforms don’t just handle one slice of the process. The best ones capture invoices, route them for approval, sync with your ERP, and manage payments, all in one place. 

Consolidating to an end-to-end platform doesn’t just reduce spend, it improves security, shortens cycle times, and gives leadership the real-time visibility they’ve been craving. 

You’re not just replacing software, you’re removing bottlenecks. And that’s the kind of upgrade that resonates across the business. 

Plus, fewer systems mean fewer vendors to manage, fewer compliance audits to juggle, and less training time for new hires. It’s operational simplicity that scales. 

Step 3: Build the Business Case Through the Lens of Your Stakeholders 

Once you’ve identified the right solution, it’s time to build buy-in. Different stakeholders care about different outcomes: 

• Your AP Manager wants less manual work and faster approvals 

• Your Controller needs accurate, auditable records 

• Your IT team wants security and seamless integration 

• Your CFO wants ROI, fast 

Frame your case accordingly and lean on data. Show the true cost of your current stack. Highlight the risks. Then show how a unified platform reduces time, cost, and compliance headaches across the board. 

Use real-life scenarios to drive the point home: “Right now, it takes us 10 days to process an invoice. With automation, we can cut that down to 2.” Numbers resonate, but stories make the case memorable. 

Tech Consolidation Isn’t Just About Cost-Cutting. It’s About Control. 

When finance leaders take ownership of the back-office tech stack, specifically in AP, they shift from reacting to issues to preventing them. 

They go from chasing paper to owning their process. From fragmented tools to one source of truth. From financial uncertainty to clear, actionable insight. 

The onPhase Advantage: One Platform. Zero Exceptions. 

onPhase empowers finance leaders to regain control through our AI powered automation platform that seamlessly integrates with your ERP. We consolidate the entire process from invoice capture through approvals to payments and real time cash flow visibility. 

We eliminate the manual handoffs and scattered tools that slow your team down. And with our built-in Smart Capture, Human-in-the-Loop oversight, and intelligent payments, you get automation that works with your people, not around them. 

Ready to take the first step toward a more streamlined, cost-effective AP stack? 
Download our “Building a Case for AP Automation” checklist to help identify inefficiencies, quantify pain points, and prepare your internal pitch for smarter automation.