16 Industry Leaders Share Their Tips to Activate Your FinOps in 2025

The financial operations landscape is changing fast. Modern businesses face unprecedented complexity in managing their finances, with nearly half of multinational corporates dealing with 100+ bank accounts, and 68% of UK businesses seeking to expand their operations cross-border.

To navigate this changing environment, we reached out to sixteen industry leaders at the forefront of financial innovation. Their insights, drawn from real-world experience, offer a practical roadmap for organisations looking to optimise their financial operations in the upcoming year.

Here are their key recommendations for 2025.

"My tip for improving financial operations (FinOps) efficiency in 2025 is to leverage technology and automate as much as possible.

Harness AI and standardise processes to remove 'exceptions' from the equation. Integration to achieve cohesion between systems is crucial to avoid siloed data and to better support decision-makers with real-time data."

Clayton J Zammit, CEO, TEKKEE Media Group

"Make the best use of technology as much as possible to automate your financial operations so that as a finance person, you can focus on high impact areas"

James Camilleri, Co-founder & CEO, Fyorin

"My #1 tip for efficient financial operations? Automate processes wherever you can and keep a close eye on cash flow. Here’s why:

Automation can boost productivity by up to 20%, freeing up time that would’ve gone to manual tasks like invoicing and payroll. Tools like Forwardly (or other payment platforms) make it easy to automate these, helping you avoid human error and giving you real-time insights.

Monitoring cash flow is equally essential. Poor cash flow is one of the top reasons small businesses struggle or fail, with 82% of businesses citing it as a major challenge. Faster payments help you avoid the delays and unpredictability of traditional payment methods, improving cash flow and reducing the need for short-term financing. With real-time payments, your accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) processes speed up, making it easier to pay and get paid. This gives you the freedom to focus on growth rather than chasing down payments or juggling cash flow."

Nick Chandi, CEO and Co-Founder, Forwardly

"Leverage an ERP system like NetSuite to centralise your financial operations. By integrating accounting, reporting, and compliance into a single platform, you can streamline processes, gain real-time insights, and future-proof your operations for 2025 and beyond."

John Montanaro, CRO, Smart Technologies Ltd

"The biggest tip going into 2025 should be to look for where tech can add value to your clients and improve their business."

Zubair Mohammad, Co-Founder, Accounting Refigured

"Automating financial operations and improving efficiency in the function is not just a measure to lower cost or improve speed of the actual operational task, but the upside your organisation gets through:

Security and less manual errors

More time to focus on strategic matters

Easier documented automated processes.

One must always look into technology within financial operations as an enabler to do more and better things, rather than a replacer. "

Christian Joseph Agius, Co-Founder & COO/CFO, Fyorin

"You always need to utilise the RIGHT tool for the RIGHT purpose. It's always easy to grab every bit of technology on the shelf, even easier these days with so much out there, but make sure you find the problems you need to solve, pick the technology to do that and implement that project before you move onto the next one. Your team will thank you for it... too much change, too quickly is never a good thing."

Phil Hobden, UK Sales Lead, Silverfin

"Implement an Accounts Payable process early.

Why? - Founders waste hours each month paying bills and chasing up receipts. But it can be a hard area to handover as they are worried about giving someone access to their bank account or suppliers being overpaid.

Process - Here is a simple process you can follow to safely remove a founder from the accounts payable process.

Set up a business bank account where you can give access to upload but not approve payments

Create an accounts@ email address where all suppliers send invoices for payment

A bill payment tool with OCR capability like Dext to extract data from invoices and input to Xero

A set day of the week, fortnight or month to process payments to suppliers.

The founder is giving a list of invoices to be included in the payment run. They review this and decide which will be paid.

This is uploaded to a bank account to be paid

The founder logs into online banking and approves the batch payment to be released.

Bonus - a clear Chart of Accounts and a framework on what expenses should be allocated where will help create more accurate financial reports. "

Meryl Johnston, Founder at Bean Ninjas and Investor at TeamUp

"What should businesses, finance professionals and accountants should really watch out for when it comes to financial efficiency in 2025?

The connection between suppliers or stores, and your finance system. The movement of a receipt from point of sale to your accounting system is getting more efficient every year. Adapt or get left behind.

The rise and deception of financial fraud. Shopify stores can be closed with little to no trace, email targeting of individual inboxes for junior finance people, and imitation of the boss’s email from a slightly different email address. Verifying vendors, having good approval processes for supplier bills, and double-checking who you are paying is the right bank account is becoming harder and more onerous. Use as much tech as you can, but nothing beats intelligent people knowing what they are paying and why. I always say to my accounts payable team “Could you stand in the Board meeting and explain what we purchased and why we are paying this bill? If not, make a call or ask more questions until you know. EG: This was a new laptop for Sally who starts Monday, which has been confirmed to me by HR.”"

Tyler Caskey, Partner, The Bean Counters

"In 2025, the focus of FinOps should be on efficiency and availability."

Pierre Debrincat, Senior Manager - Financial Systems, GO

"In 2025, organizations will need to shift from reactive to proactive FinOps for AI workloads. Analyst firms such as Gartner predict a surge in AI adoption, bringing complex and dynamic cloud costs. FinOps teams must leverage AI-driven analytics to forecast spending, identify anomalies, and optimize resource allocation in real-time. This includes implementing strategies like right-sizing instances, utilizing spot instances for non-critical workloads, and automating infrastructure management. Proactive FinOps will be crucial for controlling costs and maximizing the value of AI investments."

Patrick Camilleri, CEO, 56Bit

"My top tip for efficient financial operations is to make tracking marketing ROI a core focus. When budgets need to be carefully allocated, understanding which channels deliver the best return allows you to scale high-performing channels and pull back or adjust those that don't. Analysing CRM data and tracking every touchpoint in the conversion journey reveals which activities truly drive commercial growth. Getting this clear picture ensures marketing spend is optimised, keeping budget efficiency front and centre."

Dan Strugnell, Head of PPC, Bright Blue Day

"My #1 tip for efficient financial operations is to stay on top of your numbers using reliable cloud-based accounting software like QuickBooks Online (QBO). Here’s why:

Cloud-based bookkeeping software lets you track your income and expenses in real-time, giving you a clear picture of your financial health. This helps you make informed decisions about your business, such as knowing how much you owe and how much is owed to you.

With cloud-based software, you can access your financial data from anywhere (including your mobile phone!), whether in the office or on the go. This means you have your financial information in your pocket, ready whenever needed.

QBO enables your accountant to access your financial data remotely. This facilitates timely business advice and ensures that your financial records are always up-to-date and accurate.

By leveraging these features, you can maintain efficient business operations, make better business decisions, and ensure that you’re always prepared for any challenges that come your way."

Aaron Patrick, Head of Accounts, Boffix

"Mobile technology and payments means that the financial system never sleeps. This means that consumer expectations of what good financial services looks like have also shifted dramatically. In this market, standing still is falling

behind. For finops leaders this means constant innovation. This is hugely exciting but also comes with the risk of getting it wrong and losing market share. After all, digitally native customers are far more willing to switch than they used to be, and open finance technologies make it as easy as hitting a button.

One thing we’ve learned from working with a range of scale up fintechs and payments businesses, is that good communications can mitigate some of this risks. Great communications build lasting relationships with audiences and help customers understand why they should choose your product from a wide range of alternatives in a market that’s constantly evolving.

Similarly, a clear communications strategy is essential to explaining why you’re innovating and managing the bumps in the road. Communications help outline purpose and craft a compelling story about your business for investors and potential investors.

So, while there are many tech investments and efficiencies that finops leaders will be looking at in 2025, these investments shouldn’t be left exposed to risk by badly executed communications."

Liam Thompson, PR and Content Lead, Rosely Group

"As a product marketer and an innovation geek I've challenged myself to write it up in less than two sentences. Concluding that is impossible given the current possibilities with regard to financial operations. Instead, I'd say - rigid financial ops should allow for 3 line charts that can be overlaid"

Leonard Burger, Product Marketing Lead, Lenvi

"The first thing that comes to mind is "Governance and Fraud" as a topic and basically via Fyorin and the automation it has, CFOs can ensure that they have:

Supporting documentation for payments processed (in the form of invoices normally)

A list of suppliers with IBANs tied to them that can facilitate reconciliations

Bank details for suppliers in 2 above that can make processing efficient and

Having the 3 above can minimize fraud - fraudsters can hack/impersonate a supplier and send a genuine-looking invoice, however, containing other bank details (usually the fraudster’s IBANs). This is known as an invoice scam, one of many APP fraud typologies. Having suppliers and bank details stored (as in 2 & 3 above), that are also tried & tested, will minimize this and can serve as a deterrent and as a detection practice. Such suppliers can be alerted of such impersonation attempts as well. "

Adrian Vella, Head of Risk & Compliance, Fyorin

The message from our experts is clear: financial operations in 2025 isn't just about cutting costs - it's about building smarter, more secure systems that can scale with your business. The right mix of automation and human oversight, combined with strategic technology choices, will separate the leaders from the followers.

For businesses drowning in multiple banking relationships or struggling with cross-border payments, there are technology providers offering innovative solutions to streamline financial operations. Platforms like Fyorin are helping organisations take control of their financial operations through unified banking, automated processes, and bank-grade security - exactly what our experts are advocating for. Get in touch.