From Fragmentation to Treasury Centralisation: Why CFOs Must Prioritise Unified Financial Operations in 2025

The fast pace of globalisation and technology attempting to solve the resulting problems has left finance departments and CFOs in an interesting place. On one hand, a lot of the day-to-day financial processes can be automated or handled with the support of technology; on the other hand, years of accumulating various systems have resulted in a fragmented financial system. This disjointed financial set-up becomes unsustainable over time as it affects efficiency, adds costs, hampers agility and competitiveness, and is something businesses must address in 2025. Introducing treasury transformation is crucial in addressing these inefficiencies and costs by enhancing internal processes, benchmarking against peers, and integrating market trends and technologies.

In this article, we discuss why, as we head into the new year, CFOs and financial managers should prioritise treasury centralisation, how they can consolidate the financial operations of their business, and thrive in an increasingly complex financial landscape.

Mid-sized companies, especially those operating cross-border, with a multi-entity setup, more often than not, employ a complex financial tech stack that combines bank accounts in different currencies, expense management systems, corporate cards, an ERP, and, in some cases, accounts payable and receivable tools. Additionally, different regions or entities may use different tools due to software restrictions. At first, this may seem manageable; however, as the business grows and scales, the disjointed nature of the setup may become a major bottleneck.

Disconnected systems often result in duplicated efforts across teams and manual work associated with sending invoices, processing payments, reconciling cash balances, and creating reports. The more manual entry involved, the higher the likelihood of errors, duplicates, and delays. For example, The Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM) reports that duplicate payments account for around 1.5% of an organisation’s total outgoing cash flow. In practice, this means that a company with expenditures of £1 million may inadvertently pay out £15,000 in duplicate payments.

Further down the line, disconnected systems, especially if operating on different currencies, may lead to delays in closing the books and create issues with audits, as the records on the payables and receivables side may be full of discrepancies.

Siloed financial operations hinder the ability to be agile in a dynamic global financial landscape, and react to market trends in a timely manner. Because the data is spread across multiple systems and entities, access to a real-time view is basically impossible—by the time all information is aggregated and consolidated, it may already be outdated; therefore, the business may miss out on some key opportunities. A study conducted by Gartner reported that 35% of CFOs cite data quality as the main issue hindering the adoption of automation in finance. The lack of rich, accurate, and consolidated financial data delays reporting and decision-making in both the short and long term.

Silos in financial operations create blind spots in revenue and liquidity management. Inconsistent visibility into cash positions across subsidiaries and regions can lead to suboptimal capital allocation, increased borrowing costs, and compliance risks. Furthermore, expanding tech and financial stacks by adding new tools and bank accounts increases costs associated with fees and subscriptions. While insignificant on their own, when multiplied by all regions and systems, a complex financial setup can cause a significant dent in the bottom line. Implementing centralized treasury management systems can address these complexities and risks by providing essential tools for effective cash flow forecasting, risk assessment and a unified approach to managing financial operations.

Centralising treasury, cash management, and financial operation processes such as accounts payable, receivable, and expense management through a unified platform is a transformative strategy CFOs can adopt to drive more efficiency, achieve success, and unlock value.

Automating routine financial management tasks and integrating systems across the organisation can eliminate redundant manual work, reduce the risk of errors, and free up the financial team’s time and mental capacity for more strategic tasks such as planning and forecasting. For instance, consolidating all business expenses into one system and automating the collection of receipts from employees can save hours usually spent chasing staff for missing invoices. Additionally, automating the reconciliation of payables and receivables has saved our clients nearly 280 hours per year, which translates to over two working weeks. This approach also provides businesses with a real-time and accurate snapshot of spending and income across the enterprise.

Cloud-based, unified financial platforms underpinned by APIs allow CFOs and finance teams to curate the solution to their needs by connecting multiple banks, tools, and building custom reports and dashboards for a complete, 360-degree cash flow visibility show. With a consolidated, real-time view into cash positions, liquidity, and working capital, finance professionals can engage in proactive decision-making, such as optimising cash flows or leveraging surplus funds for higher-yield investments.

By reducing reliance on multiple systems and manual processes, businesses can cut operational costs and improve scalability. Additionally, by seamlessly integrating enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems such as Netsuite or Microsoft Dynamics 365 with the unified financial platform, finance teams can create a robust, scalable financial ecosystem that handles payables, receivables, and expenses.

APIs for Seamless Integration

More and more systems offer APIs that are essential for consolidating financial operations across accounts payable, accounts receivable, and corporate treasury operations. With APIs, businesses can connect their existing bank accounts, automation tools, and ERPs to build a robust system where data flows seamlessly and is continuously updated.

Cloud-Native Solutions

Desktop solutions are still prominent, but due to their limited scalability and implementation issues, businesses have become more inclined to adopt cloud-based financial platforms. Cloud-native systems are not only more secure, but their access can also be shared and adjusted to the roles of more members, and the system can grow and adapt to the business and its needs. Additionally, cloud solutions decrease costs as there’s less overhead related to maintenance and infrastructure. These platforms provide scalability, security, and accessibility.

Real-Time Payment Systems

Getting access to real-time payment and settlement systems can enhance cash flows, optimise liquidity management and optimise access to working capital. Furthermore, reducing delays associated with expediting payments improves relationships with vendors and clients, which is essential for long-term business growth. The more integrated payment systems are into your payables and receivables processes, the better, as it further decreases the time spent on processing and improves overall efficiency. This capability is particularly beneficial for multinational corporations managing complex cash flows across multiple jurisdictions and currencies.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

AI and ML are foundational to automated tools such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, expense management, and forecasting that transform financial operations. Automations help reconcile bills and invoices, prepare payments without manual intervention, and detect suspicious transactions, shifting the focus from mundane processes and reactive work to more proactive decision-making.

Conduct a System Audit. Identify all financial processes and map systems associated with them—you may notice areas that overlap, which indicate inefficiency and risk. Determine the areas where your team wastes the most time or delays are the longest. These are your low-hanging fruit and areas with the highest potential for automation and integration.

Evaluate Data Quality. Before integrating, automating, or implementing a unified financial system, you need to ensure that data across all the tools is accurate, consistent, and accessible.

Align Stakeholders. At a certain point, you will also need to engage your stakeholders across different teams—the finance team, operations team, and IT—to help you bring the consolidated financial vision into reality. You can get their buy-in by highlighting benefits such as reduced costs and improved decision-making. For IT teams, the less implementation, the better.

Select the Right Platform. Choose a unified platform that integrates with your existing ERP systems and can scale with your business as it grows, whether by adding new entities, currencies, or expanding to new jurisdictions. Check how many processes the platform can automate through one interface, their API capabilities, connections to existing financial institutions, and real-time reporting. If you are still undecided, Fyorin offers automated payables, receivables, expenses, access to nearly 5,000+ worldwide financial institutions, and the ability to establish banking presence in 200+ countries and 100+ currencies to diversify liquidity risk from one interface. We also offer hands-on customer support and native, out-of-the-box integrations to leading ERPs.

Implement Centralisation in Phases. Begin with a pilot consolidation programme to test functionalities, spot challenges, and learn. Over time, roll out the integration and unified financial operations across all entities and regions with minimal disruption to day-to-day business.

With the role of CFOs shifting to become more strategic, the consolidation and unification of treasury processes and financial operations can drive operational excellence by streamlining workflows, eliminating redundancies, enhancing agility, and enabling faster responses to market shifts.

As we move into 2025, organisations that embrace financial unification will not only overcome the challenges of fragmentation but also position themselves for sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive landscape.