Successful technology projects in finance start with a clear vision and strong alignment between strategy, technology and data, said Stefan van Heerden, CFO of Microsoft, at the recent 2025 Finance Indaba. He and fellow panellists Morne van Tonder of Pragma and Jofi Alexander of Anaplan agreed that success depends on a solid business case, scalable platforms, AI-driven agility and empowering people to embrace transformation.
The key to successful digital transformation projects in finance is having a clear vision of the outcome you want to achieve. Finance teams must then align the technology with the strategy, and obtain the right data, said Stefan van Heerden, CFO of Microsoft during a session titled From vision to value: Understanding why technology projects fail.
His view on the factors that make technology projects succeed, or fail was underlined by Morne van Tonder, CFO of Pragma, who emphasised: “Know what you want to solve and establish if there is a business case for it.”
Jofi Alexander, regional director: Africa for Anaplan, said it was key to ensure that the technology foundations of digital transformation projects in finance are future-proof and scalable across an enterprise.
“It is important to focus on technology platforms rather than tools, as a platform allows you to have a future-proof project, while a tool only solves a problem. He added that it’s key for finance professionals to understand what value they want to create.
“Mediclinic uses Anaplan to strategically manage about 40,000 of their employees globally, making sure they have the right resources to deliver care at the right time. They collect data from all their different systems, bringing it into a single place, which provides them with a single source of truth.”
Identify important data
Commenting on the data aspect of tech projects, Morne said finance teams played the role of guardian in these projects. “Getting back to the end point, we must consider what data we really use and need, and how we want to use it. We must identify the important data and make decisions based on this data.”
Stefan revealed that Microsoft uses data to identify new opportunities. “We analyse data to establish where the new hunting grounds are – data also tells you how to unlock these opportunities as it gives you more insights into what works and what doesn’t.”
Other factors that are crucial in implementing technology projects successfully are getting buy-in from the operational side of the business, said Morne. This can be achieved by demonstrating the value they will get from the implementation and highlighting the quick wins that benefit operations early in the project.
Finance teams should also leverage AI for more agile decision-making, as it empowers them to take informed actions. Microsoft uses AI to prioritise its projects on a monthly basis, as the technology helps it to sift through the noise and reveals where the company should invest its energy.
“AI gives us the ability to pivot, so we don’t miss out on opportunities,” said Stefan. Jofi added it was important to consider the way that you communicated a change in the project plan to the business.
A technology platform can provide a business with a long-term outlook of five, 15, or 20 years. This is because a platform can handle a huge amount of data, allowing you to operate without technical skills.
Embracing projects
Jofi cautioned against project fatigue with legacy tech, stressing that finance teams must leverage the concept of a hybrid approach to project rollout. This means that technology can be customised slightly for a particular business like a suit can be bought and altered.
Stefan stressed that through the journey of implementing a technology project, it’s important to keep in mind the way of driving the project adoption.
“While things are changing much quicker now, your ultimate asset is the people who are going to use the technology. The important question to ask is how you excite and upskill people to embrace the tech, and how you redesign your process and our operating model to support the intended outcome.
