Digital Technology in Finance Primer for 2022

Published 4 February 2022 - ID G00758972 - 5 min read

By Analyst(s): Nisha Bhandare

Initiatives: Digital Technology in Finance

Technology innovation and the acceleration of digital spending will

disrupt finance and challenge the way work is performed. To
support the organization’s digital ambition, CFOs must assess
emerging trends and build a technology strategy and roadmap
that enables a digitally ready finance function.

Scope
Given the rapid innovations in technology and accelerated digital investments, leaders
should use this initiative to inform finance’s digital technology strategy, investment and
execution decisions.

Topics in this initiative include:

■ Finance Technology Strategy: Use proven frameworks to enable CFOs develop a

technology strategy and roadmap for their function.

■ Finance Technology Selection: Leverage insights into the technology markets and
vendor solutions to enable finance technology selection and investment decisions.

■ Finance Technology Optimization: Use these best practices to scale and maximize
value from your existing technology investments.

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an account executive if you wish to discuss expanding your access to Gartner content.

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 Analysis
Figure 1. Digital Technology in Finance Overview

The economic recovery in 2021 coupled with a surge in consumer demand has disrupted
businesses and challenged finance’s traditional role throughout organizations. As digital
technology investments are continuing to increase to enable quicker customer response
and new business models and improve financial outcomes, CFOs face continued pressure
to transform their function beyond a transactional processing center into a strategic
partner for their business.

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 Finance technology and solutions are becoming more important than ever, acting as a
source and differentiating factor for finance functions to support their business to
optimize, grow and transform. In the 2020 Gartner Future of Finance Survey, 80% of
finance leaders agree they must significantly accelerate digital technology within their
function to effectively support the organization’s digital strategy. 1 Failure to invest in
finance technology will increase operational inefficiencies, delay business insights and
decision making, ultimately driving frustration within operational partners. This rise in
digital technology spending is driving CFOs to become directly engaged in the strategy,
planning and execution of finance technology initiatives to support their function in their
digital transformation.

However, accelerating digital technology decisions is challenging due to the evolving

landscape of digital capabilities within the market. Though 97% of CFOs have a mandate
to digitize their function by 2025, only 37% of finance leaders have a clearly defined a two-
to-three-year digital technology strategy. As technology vendors add more cloud solutions
to their portfolio and integrate technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA)
and artificial intelligence (AI) in their offerings, finance functions will continue to be faced
with multiple technology solution options and vendors to invest in.

To effectively execute on a digital finance mandate, CFOs must understand how emerging
technology trends have the potential to reshape the role of finance, champion a flexible
technology strategy for their function and have a defined framework to evaluate and
select the right technology solutions. Our 2022 research will provide relevant, unbiased
and practical insights and advice that informs decisions on technology and markets to
advance CFOs in their digital journey.

Topics
CFOs need to steer the digital transformation for their function to ensure technology
investments are aligned with the organization’s strategic business objectives. This
requires understanding how to define and deliver a finance technology strategy and
roadmap, successfully select finance technology vendors, manage technology costs and
ROI, and drive technology adoption within the function to improve decision making and
streamline processes.

Our research in this area addresses the following topics:

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 Finance Technology Strategy
To accelerate the digitalization of the function, finance needs to champion and develop a
technology roadmap that enables the function to measure progress and gain visibility into
the total cost of ownership (TCO) of technology investments over time.

Questions Your Peers Are Asking

■ What are the emerging technology trends that will affect finance in the coming
years?

■ How do I align my technology strategy with the organization’s digital roadmap?

■ How do I visualize and present my technology roadmap?

■ How do I calculate the true cost of my technology investments?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ 2022 Finance Technology Bullseye Report

■ Top 2022 Strategic Technology Trends for Finance

■ CFO Perspective on the 2022 CEO Survey — Digital Transformation Still a Key
Priority

■ Ignition Guide to Building a Finance Technology Roadmap

Planned Research
■ Top 2022 strategic technology trends for finance

■ How to calculate the TCO of your digital transformation

■ Strategic finance technology roadmap

Finance Technology Selection

With rapid advancements in digital technology, finance leadership teams need to get more
involved in understanding the solutions in the market as well as what capabilities vendors
are offering and how the market is expected to evolve. They should leverage our
technology and market insights to evaluate the vendors and their capabilities to ensure
they are selecting the right partner to accelerate their finance digital ambition.

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 Questions Your Peers Are Asking

■ How do I differentiate between the hype and reality of technology innovations in

finance?

■ What is the value and adoption of the various technology innovations within
finance?

■ What do I need to know about the market I am investing in and how is the market
evolving?

■ Which technology vendors should we invest in and how are they differentiated by
capabilities?

■ How do I evaluate vendors during the RFP process?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ Magic Quadrant for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications

■ Market Guide for Corporate ESG Ratings and Research

Planned Research
■ Hype Cycle on Emerging Finance Technologies

■ Magic Quadrant for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications

■ Magic Quadrant for Finance Planning and Budgeting Solutions

Finance Technology Optimization

As the mandate increases to drive efficiencies and cost optimization across business
processes, finance is challenged to maximize and extract value from existing technology
investments while exploring tools beyond RPA to enable productivity and scale their
function’s automation ambitions.

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 Questions Your Peers Are Asking
■ How do I maximize the value of my existing ERP?

■ What are the automation technologies beyond RPA?

■ How do I calculate and measure benefits of my existing automation program?

■ How do I continually identify and prioritize automation opportunities within finance?

Recommended Content

Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

■ Optimize RPA Governance to Scale Finance Automation

■ Ignition Guide to Creating an Automation Dashboard

■ RPA Opportunity Selection and Prioritization Tool

Planned Research
■ Define and guide automation citizen development practices

■ Navigate optimal routes for process automation with RPA, iBPMS and iPaaS

Suggested First Steps

■ 6 Reasons Why Finance Must Act Now to Establish Finance IT

■ 3 Signs that It’s Time for Finance to Optimize Processes Before Automating Them

■ How CFOs Should Champion Change for ERP Success

Essential Reading
■ Case Study: Bias-Focused Digital Technology Planning Toolkit (FutureSquare*)

Tools and Toolkits

■ Ignition Guide to Building a Finance Technology Roadmap

■ Ignition Guide to Developing a Finance Technology Change Management Program

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 Evidence
1
2020 Gartner Future of Finance Survey, n = 137 senior finance leaders throughout
dozens of industries with representation from North America, South America, Europe,
Australia, Africa and Asia. The survey was open for three weeks and designed to
understand finance leaders’ perspectives on steps needed to achieve finance’s 2025
transformation vision.

Document Revision History

Finance Technology Optimization Primer for 2021 - 1 February 2021

Finance Technology Optimization Primer for 2020 - 17 January 2020

Finance Technology Optimization Primer for 2019 - 8 February 2019

Related Priorities

Initiative Name Description

ERP Gartner’s ERP initiative equips enterprises

with the skills and knowledge required to
assess, select, deploy and manage ERP in
ways that maximize business value.

Financial Data and Analytics This initiative shows finance organizations

how to unlock their data’s potential through
predictive analytics that help them anticipate
opportunities for, and risks to, profitable
growth.

Finance Process Excellence Gartner’s finance process excellence

research provides proven process
improvement strategies and guidance on
how to apply the latest technology to
improve and mature finance and accounting
processes.

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Related Priorities
Initiative Name Description

ERP Gartner’s ERP initiative equips enterprises with the skills and
knowledge required to assess, select, deploy and manage ERP in
ways that maximize business value.

Financial Data and Analytics This initiative shows finance organizations how to unlock their
data’s potential through predictive analytics that help them
anticipate opportunities for, and risks to, profitable growth.

Finance Process Excellence Gartner’s finance process excellence research provides proven
process improvement strategies and guidance on how to apply
the latest technology to improve and mature finance and
accounting processes.

Gartner, Inc. | G00758972 Page 1A of 2A

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Initiative Name Description

ERP Gartner’s ERP initiative equips enterprises with the skills and knowledge
required to assess, select, deploy and manage ERP in ways that maximize
business value.

Financial Data and Analytics This initiative shows finance organizations how to unlock their data’s
potential through predictive analytics that help them anticipate
opportunities for, and risks to, profitable growth.

Finance Process Excellence Gartner’s finance process excellence research provides proven process
improvement strategies and guidance on how to apply the latest
technology to improve and mature finance and accounting processes.

Gartner, Inc. | G00758972 Page 2A of 2A

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