Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) at tech companies often oversee a patchwork of enterprise tools beyond the core accounting system. These include HR suites, procurement platforms, analytics dashboards, collaboration apps, and full-blown ERP systems. Many CFOs report deep frustrations with such software. Below we compile specific products frequently criticized by finance chiefs, direct quotes capturing their sentiments, the reasons behind the dislike, and context where available.
Workday (HR & People Management Platform)
CFO Pain Points: Cumbersome user experience; tedious processes for basic tasks; poor integration of HR data; time wasted by staff; high cost for what it delivers.
Workday is a cloud HR/talent management system used by over half the Fortune 500, including many tech firms . Yet it’s notorious for inflicting pain on its users – and CFOs hear about it. In one Business Insider piece bluntly titled “Everyone hates Workday,” employees across roles vented about its inefficiency. For example, a Reddit user raged: “I simply hate Workday… Everything is non-intuitive, so even the simplest tasks leave me scratching my head. Keeping notes on index cards would be more effective.” Another described onboarding a new hire via Workday as “like trying to get water from your sink to your stove using a colander.”
Such poor UX and convoluted workflows – for actions like applying to jobs, booking leave, or filing expenses – lead to “cosmic exasperation” among users. CFOs at tech companies feel the impact: HR processes take longer, data gets siloed in Workday, and employees procrastinate or seek workarounds. A Reddit discussion revealed that one company’s decision to adopt Workday was driven by necessity rather than love; their CFO admitted they “had to switch software because [we] had grown too big for the old system,” essentially outgrowing a simpler HR tool . In other words, finance leaders often view Workday as a necessary evil – they need a scalable system-of-record for payroll and personnel, even if it frustrates everyone. As one commenter astutely noted, Workday (and similar enterprise suites) succeed not because end-users enjoy them, but because they sell to corporate buyers with priorities other than usability . “HR managers, rank-and-file employees, and job applicants have never been Workday’s customers… Its actual customers are the corporations… It’s them, the users, who find themselves ‘botsmacked by bureaucracy incarnate.’” In short, CFOs continue to buy Workday for its compliance and data centralization benefits, all while acknowledging (often privately) the “misery” it creates .
Why CFOs Dislike It: Workday draws ire for its labyrinthine interface and inefficiency. CFOs hear constant complaints about how “difficult it is to book paid leave, how Kafkaesque it is to file an expense” in Workday . This translates into lost productivity and employee frustration, which ultimately hit the finance team’s efficiency too. Additionally, lack of interoperability can be an issue – finance chiefs struggle when Workday doesn’t seamlessly feed headcount or payroll data into their planning models, forcing manual data pulls. And, of course, Workday’s hefty price tag (it’s a $65B+ SaaS behemoth ) can make a CFO question the ROI given the user gripes. Tech CFOs at high-growth firms sometimes implement Workday for HR only to find adoption problems and incomplete utilization of its modules . As one operations exec observed, companies often buy an all-in-one platform like Workday with grand hopes, but over time “the rest of the platform capabilities… [go] ‘clunky,’ not properly configured… and met with disgust by end users. Everyone blames the software.” In sum, CFOs resent that Workday promises a lot on paper but delivers headaches in practice, requiring expensive implementations and training for a tool that many in the organization openly despise.
Context: Workday is prevalent at large enterprises and mid-to-large tech companies (e.g. Netflix, Spotify, medium-sized startups scaling up). CFOs at these firms are often the executive sponsors of Workday projects (alongside HR). They appreciate the robust compliance and data auditability but lament the toll on usability. Even Amazon’s attempted global rollout of Workday reportedly stumbled and was scrapped, a high-profile failure that underscores Workday’s implementation challenges . For CFOs, the takeaway is that Workday can strain operations and morale, and it requires significant change management – all of which makes it one of the most begrudgingly used tools in their arsenal.
Procurement Platforms: Coupa & SAP Ariba
CFO Pain Points: Overly complex workflows that discourage usage; high subscription costs (especially for mid-sized companies); poor user interface; integration hurdles with financial systems; aggressive vendor sales tactics.
To manage purchasing and supplier spending, many tech companies use dedicated procurement suites. Coupa and SAP Ariba are two market-leading examples that often come up in CFO circles – frequently accompanied by groans. These systems are powerful, but CFOs and their teams often find them clunky and unintuitive. Users tasked with actually ordering supplies or making purchase requests echo this sentiment loudly. One commenter on a procurement forum minced no words: “I hate Ariba… this was not designed to be user friendly or intuitive at all!” . That sentiment is common – Ariba (an SAP product) is known for its labyrinthine interface. Employees trying to “do the right thing” by following procurement policy encounter significant friction and tedious multi-step forms, which can lead them to bypass the system entirely (a nightmare for CFOs who then lose visibility into spend).
Coupa, a newer cloud procurement tool popular in tech, isn’t immune from criticism either. While Coupa markets itself as user-friendly, some finance leaders feel it’s over-engineered for smaller firms. In a Reddit discussion, one user observed that “Coupa is overpriced and overly complex for most companies under 1000 employees.” Mid-market tech CFOs often concur – they find Coupa’s cost hard to justify before a company is very large, and its myriad features overkill when you just want basic spend control. A common outcome is low adoption: business teams avoid raising purchase orders because the system is too cumbersome, defeating the CFO’s goal of centralized procurement. As a LinkedIn poster quipped about reluctant CFOs, “Procurement – that’s a later problem.” The result of this mindset or of poor tools is often rogue spending outside the platform, which frustrates CFOs because it undermines budget discipline.
Beyond usability issues, CFOs also dislike the pushy sales and licensing models of some procurement software vendors. Oracle’s NetSuite (which also offers procurement modules) drew such ire: one finance user recounted that their CFO got “sick of” the account manager constantly trying to upsell modules, and ultimately banned the rep from bothering the CFO directly . This highlights a general CFO frustration with enterprise vendors: once you’re locked in, they relentlessly push add-ons and renewals. Coupa and Ariba contracts can be similarly complex, with modular pricing that CFOs must negotiate. Rising costs and lack of flexibility in these contracts rankle finance chiefs, especially in tech where agility is prized.
Why CFOs Dislike Them: The core complaint is poor UX leading to low adoption. CFOs invest in procurement tools to get a handle on company spending, but if employees “hate” the tool, compliance drops. “This complexity introduces significant friction and frustration for employees as they seek to do the ‘right thing’ with procurement,” notes one KPMG report – meaning policies go unenforced. CFOs end up with visibility gaps and still resort to chasing down off-system purchases. Additionally, implementation complexity is a sore point: integrating Coupa/Ariba with ERP and payment systems can be a multi-quarter IT project, something resource-strapped finance teams dread. For mid-size tech companies, CFOs often feel these enterprise-grade tools are overkill – as one person put it, too many features “for most companies under 1000 employees” . Lastly, the cost is a big factor. These platforms are not cheap, and they charge per-user or per-module fees that add up. CFOs question paying premium prices if the software isn’t widely embraced internally.
Context: Large tech enterprises (think thousands of employees) often have no choice but to adopt tools like Coupa or Ariba to manage spend at scale. Their CFOs see some benefits in standardizing procurement. However, even at that scale, the user revolt is real – Reddit threads feature procurement professionals across industries commiserating about “the worst” tools (Ariba being a frequent target). Mid-sized tech companies (a few hundred employees) are a special case: their CFOs are torn between needing more control as they grow, and fearing that a heavy procurement system will be “too much” and choke agility. In many cases, those CFOs delay implementing such tools, or opt for lighter-weight alternatives, precisely because of the negative experiences they’ve heard about. As one procurement startup CEO noted, convincing CFOs to love procurement requires addressing “rogue spending” and the fact that limited visibility makes them nervous . Until usability improves, CFOs often harbor a quiet dislike for these procurement behemoths.
Travel & Expense Reporting: SAP Concur
CFO Pain Points: Tortuous expense filing process; employees procrastinating or making errors; lack of real-time visibility; integration gaps with credit cards/HR; user hatred leading to compliance issues.
If there’s one enterprise system employees universally loathe, it might be the corporate expense report tool – and CFOs hear the complaints loud and clear. SAP Concur, a leading travel & expense (T&E) management system, is so disliked that it’s practically a meme in many companies. Workers vent that Concur turns even simple reimbursements into an ordeal. “I put off doing my expense reports till the last possible minute because I hate Concur so much. I’ve never had an easy travel booking experience,” one user confessed bluntly . That “delay until the deadline” behavior is something finance teams observe frequently – and it wreaks havoc on monthly closing of books when piles of expenses arrive last-minute.
The CFO’s office dislikes Concur not only because employees hate it, but because it slows down expense processing and can hide true spending until late. A software review summarizing Concur noted the “interface is slow, could be more modern… lots of redundant steps” . CFOs at tech companies, who pride themselves on efficient processes, get frustrated when a supposedly digital solution creates more manual effort. For example, Concur might ask an employee to upload a receipt that the system already has on file from the travel booking – an unnecessary redundancy that one reviewer called out explicitly . Multiply these annoyances across hundreds of workers, and you have finance teams spending extra time policing receipts and answering helpdesk questions like “How do I get Concur to accept my hotel bill?”
Why CFOs Dislike It: In short, Concur (and similar expense tools) often fail at user-friendliness, causing compliance friction. CFOs count on these systems to enforce travel policy and capture all receipts for auditing – tasks which they do perform – but at the cost of employee goodwill. The poor UX leads to errors (users mis-tag expenses or choose wrong categories) that finance has to clean up. It’s telling that even in positive reviews, users describe Concur’s interface as “busy” and requiring significant time investment to learn . CFOs find that training and support costs for T&E systems are higher than they’d like, and yet many employees still struggle or avoid the system.
Moreover, CFOs often grumble about reporting limitations in these tools. Getting a consolidated view of spend by department or project in Concur isn’t always straightforward, so finance analysts still export data to Excel to analyze travel costs. This “export to spreadsheet” workaround feels like a regression when the whole point was to have an integrated solution. As a result, CFOs sometimes explore alternatives (or even homegrown expense apps) despite having already sunk money into Concur licenses.
Context: Almost any established tech company (from late-stage startups up to giants like Google) will have an expense system in place; Concur is one of the most common, though alternatives like Expensify or internal tools exist. The unhappiness with Concur spans industries and company sizes – it’s not unique to tech – but tech CFOs are perhaps more vocal about wanting a better user experience (given the tech sector’s focus on UX). Interestingly, some tech companies forgo full-featured tools like Concur in favor of lighter solutions (or corporate credit cards with automatic feeds), precisely to avoid the Concur-induced hatred that can stunt compliance. CFOs walking this line have to balance controls vs. employee experience. The consensus from finance chiefs who have used Concur is that while it “serves the purpose” of capturing expenses, it could be far more streamlined. As one reviewer noted, “no reason to stay behind an old interface when [the software] can be as modern and intuitive as possible.” Until that evolution happens, CFOs will continue hearing groans whenever “submit your expenses” reminders go out.
Collaboration & Communication: Slack (vs. Microsoft Teams)
CFO Pain Points: High licensing costs for Slack, especially when Microsoft Teams is bundled “free”; overlapping tools causing inefficiency; concerns about productivity and distraction; data retention costs.
Modern tech companies live on instant messaging platforms for internal communication. Slack, in particular, has been a darling of engineers and product teams – but not always of CFOs. The issue isn’t that Slack has bad usability (on the contrary, users generally like the UX); rather, CFOs dislike its cost and redundancy when alternatives exist. A candid discussion among IT pros highlighted the economics: “Slack is pretty expensive on an enterprise level. Meanwhile, Microsoft offers big discounts on Teams if [it’s] part of a broader contract… Teams can be as little as a quarter the cost [of Slack]… Honestly, for what it does, [Slack] is really expensive.” For a CFO, this kind of cost differential is hard to ignore. Many tech companies already pay for Microsoft 365, which includes Teams at no extra charge. CFOs thus often push to “standardize” on Teams to save money, even if the IT or engineering folks prefer Slack.
This dynamic has led to tension in some companies. As one anonymous employee on a forum put it, “the business/finance people force [Teams] for cost… ‘they’re the same thing’.” In other words, CFOs and finance leadership sometimes perceive Slack and Teams as equivalent collaboration tools and opt for the cheaper (or bundled) option. Engineers, who might find Slack more user-friendly or feature-rich, see this as bean-counting that hurts their workflow – but from the CFO’s lens, paying potentially seven figures a year for Slack (which can happen at large orgs with many users) isn’t justifiable if a free alternative is already in place. In fact, cases have been cited of companies discovering they had multiple paid Slack workspaces, leading to one of the “biggest IT spends they had” when consolidated , or even “30 Slack instances… total bill close to a million per year” . Those revelations make any CFO cringe.
Why CFOs Dislike It: The primary reason is cost inefficiency. Slack’s per-user pricing can climb quickly in a growing tech company. CFOs are tasked with managing SaaS spend tightly, and Slack looks like an easy target if an organization can move to Teams (or another chat platform) and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some CFOs also voice concerns about the productivity impact of Slack’s always-on chat culture – though this is more anecdotal. (For instance, CFOs have noted that constant Slack pings can disrupt deep work, which has an indirect cost on productivity, though employees can say the same of email.) However, the cost argument tends to overshadow this; one CFO humorously remarked that with Slack’s price, “we’re essentially paying top dollar for distractions.”
Additionally, CFOs must consider data retention and security. Slack’s free tier deletes message history after a limit, whereas regulatory or legal needs may require retention – which means upgrading and paying even more. Finance chiefs in more regulated tech sectors (fintech, healthtech) might dislike Slack if they feel it’s not as secure or compliant-ready without expensive add-ons. Microsoft, by contrast, pitches Teams as enterprise-ready and included in the suite, which appeals to a CFO’s sense of value.
Context: The Slack-vs-Teams debate typically hits mid-sized to large tech companies. A small startup might use Slack’s free version with no issue (and no CFO angst). But once a company scales to a few hundred employees, the CFO faces a decision: keep Slack and start paying significant subscription fees, or migrate to the already-paid-for Teams. Many enterprise tech companies with seasoned CFOs have chosen the latter, especially if their workforce is accustomed to Microsoft tools. Some high-profile tech firms, however, stick with Slack as a cultural choice, essentially accepting the cost. Interestingly, Slack’s own former CFO (when Slack was independent) argued that Slack improves productivity – but now that Slack is part of Salesforce, even Salesforce’s finance chief must weigh its cost versus bundled competition. The trend in recent years is clear: CFOs are increasingly scrutinizing collaboration software ROI. As one IT professional observed, “our company is holding out [on switching], but losing the good fight because [the finance team says] ‘they’re the same thing’.” That encapsulates the CFO stance – if two tools achieve the same core function, pick the one that impacts the bottom line least. And that often means giving Slack the side-eye, if not the boot.
Business Intelligence & Analytics Dashboards (Tableau, Power BI, Salesforce Analytics)
CFO Pain Points: Slow or rigid reporting tools leading to reliance on Excel; difficulty in getting “one version of truth”; poor tailoring of dashboards for financial metrics; high costs for licenses that aren’t fully used.
CFOs rely on data to drive decisions, and tech companies typically have fancy analytics or dashboarding tools (like Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, or Looker) to visualize data. In theory, these tools should empower finance teams with self-service reporting. In practice, many CFOs end up frustrated because the tools don’t fully replace the trusty spreadsheet. In fact, a survey found Excel is still the most-used tool by finance professionals, but it has “relatively low satisfaction scores” compared to BI tools . This love-hate relationship with Excel exists because the BI dashboards often fall short. A finance manager on Reddit highlighted common executive complaints after their company moved reports from Excel to Tableau: “It takes forever to load! Can’t you change X, Y, Z on this table for the meeting in 10 mins?” and general gripes that Tableau was less flexible for ad-hoc tweaks than Excel . CFOs hearing these complaints may start to view the shiny analytics software as more trouble than it’s worth.
One specific frustration is the speed (or lack thereof) of these tools. Unlike a static Excel file, a live dashboard might lag or take 10 seconds to refresh in a meeting – which, as one Redditor noted, “feels like an hour” when an executive is waiting . CFOs, who often present numbers to CEOs and boards, find this delay unacceptable. It undermines confidence when you have to say, “Please wait for the data to load.” As a result, some CFOs direct their teams to export data from the BI tools back into Excel to make board decks, defeating the purpose of the investment. Indeed, even outside the finance department, power users have resorted to bypassing native reporting: “I’ve gotten so fed up with Salesforce [reports] that I’ve taken to exporting data… and displaying [it] in external dashboards,” one person admitted . That sentiment resonates with finance folks who deal with Salesforce data; CFOs frequently complain that sales pipeline reports from CRM require heavy manipulation before they’re useful.
Why CFOs Dislike Them: The crux is promise vs. reality. Analytics platforms promise real-time insight and easy slicing of data, but CFOs often find that achieving the exact report they need is a project in itself. Either the tool doesn’t natively format financial statements well (e.g., showing an Income Statement layout in Tableau can “defeat the purpose” without complex workarounds ), or finance staff lack the training to modify dashboards quickly. Thus, CFOs see persistent dependence on IT or BI teams for what should be straightforward tweaks. One CFO lamented having to always go to IT for information because data was scattered in various systems: “Even as the CFO I didn’t know [where to find it] because we had it all over the place.” This speaks to integration issues – the dashboards are only as good as the data feeds, and if you have separate HR, CRM, and finance systems, the single source of truth remains elusive. CFOs get frustrated when their team has to reconcile numbers from multiple systems manually outside the fancy BI tool.
Cost is another factor. These analytics tools come with per-user or enterprise license fees. CFOs might not mind paying if usage is high, but often they observe that only a handful of power users build reports, while many others just consume occasionally. Paying steep fees for licenses that managers barely log into can irk a cost-conscious CFO. They might think: “Why are we paying for Tableau AND still using Excel? Could we downgrade or use a cheaper tool?” In some cases, CFOs have explored Google Data Studio or open-source BI as alternatives, simply to cut cost and complexity.
Lastly, CFOs dislike when analytics tools create a false sense of security. A majority (over 90%) of CFOs in one survey confessed they do not completely trust the accuracy of their company’s financial data – often because data moves between systems (and spreadsheets). So, if a flashy dashboard is built on questionable data, it’s basically a pretty facade. CFOs would rather have reliable numbers, even if it means a scrappy Excel model, than a polished visualization built on sand. This skepticism can make them cynics about new analytics software, especially if they’ve been burned by “insight-poor” implementations before.
Context: At virtually all tech companies, CFOs deal with a mix of BI tools and Excel. Early-stage startups might rely purely on spreadsheets (which CFOs find labor-intensive but within control), whereas larger tech firms deploy tools like Tableau, Looker, or proprietary dashboards. The tensions around these tools often surface when a company is scaling: e.g., a Series C startup brings in a dashboard tool to please investors with metrics, but the CFO finds it doesn’t align perfectly with the financials. Gen-Z and millennial finance leaders (and CFOs-to-be) tend to be more tech-savvy and hopeful about new planning software, yet even they revert to Excel for flexibility . It’s telling that in 2024, 58% of finance leaders still relied on spreadsheets as their primary tool, despite all the AI and automation available . CFOs may not hate these analytics products with the same visceral emotion reserved for Workday or Concur, but there’s a definite undercurrent of disappointment. As one LinkedIn post targeting finance execs put it: “Noticed your CFO looking frustrated lately? Slow reports, endless spreadsheets and surprise audits can quickly spoil their day.” Those “slow reports” and “endless spreadsheets” are exactly what fancy analytics software was supposed to eliminate – and the fact that they haven’t yet is a sore spot for many finance chiefs.
ERP Systems: Oracle, SAP & NetSuite (Core Finance/Enterprise Planning)
CFO Pain Points: Extremely high ongoing costs (maintenance, upgrades); inflexibility to business change; painful, lengthy implementations; clunky user interfaces; vendor lock-in and aggressive sales tactics; slow reporting and need for manual workarounds.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are the backbone for many companies’ finance and operational data. Ironically, while CFOs rely on ERPs, they also harbor some of the strongest frustrations toward them. A CIO magazine piece once asked “Why do CFOs hate ERP?” and found that a “typical company will spend $1.2 million each year (each year!) to maintain, modify and update its ERP system.” That kind of expense (often seen with giants like SAP or Oracle E-Business Suite) can make a CFO’s blood run cold – it’s like a black hole for IT budget. As the article put it, “ERP systems have become a noose around companies’ necks which tighten as the business changes… costs continue to spiral upward.” CFOs at tech companies, who value agility, particularly chafe at this inflexibility. For instance, if a tech firm wants to pivot its business model, the ERP might require complex re-customization that takes months, impeding the finance team’s ability to report on the new metrics.
Many CFOs have personal war stories of ERP implementations gone wrong. One finance leader had to restate $15 million in results due to a botched ERP rollout – the kind of fiasco that can cost a CFO their job . Even when implementations succeed, they are long and arduous. It’s not uncommon for an Oracle or SAP deployment to take 12–18 months (or more) and require armies of consultants. CFOs dislike this drawn-out process, especially in fast-moving tech environments. As a LinkedIn post noted, CFOs dealing with legacy systems suffer “slow reports, endless spreadsheets and surprise audits” – essentially, even after spending on an ERP, they still face manual work and the risk of errors . “Slow reports” are a classic ERP gripe: many CFOs find that generating a consolidated financial report or multi-entity roll-up directly from the ERP is painfully slow or impossible without additional tools. They end up exporting data to Excel (yet again) or buying bolt-on reporting solutions. This leads to the cynical view that the ERP is an expensive data repository that doesn’t actually streamline reporting as intended.
User experience is another issue. Traditional ERPs have clunky interfaces that non-accountants struggle with. Tech CFOs often hear other department heads complain that the ERP system is not intuitive for things like budget tracking or approvals. This mirrors some complaints about the other tools we covered, but ERPs are especially notorious for being user-unfriendly unless you’re a trained specialist. As one former SAP user quipped, “it’s like a programmer designed it with no thought for the user.” Modern cloud ERPs like NetSuite improved the UI somewhat, yet even NetSuite customers see drawbacks. A Reddit thread about NetSuite’s account managers showed a CFO fed up with constant upselling, to the point he told the rep to only deal with the controller going forward . That reflects a relationship strain: CFOs feel once they’re locked into an ERP, the vendor relationship becomes adversarial (price hikes, forced upgrades). Oracle’s hardball sales tactics under Larry Ellison are practically folklore in CFO circles . No CFO enjoys budgeting for an ERP renewal where they know it’s pay up “because Larry decrees” no discounts .
Why CFOs Dislike Them: Summing up, CFOs’ top ERP frustrations include:
- Cost and ROI: Huge ongoing cost for licenses, support, and consulting, with unclear return. One might spend millions on an ERP over its life, only to still need ancillary systems. “The upfront sticker price is almost meaningless,” as the true costs pile on over years .
- Rigidity: ERP systems, especially older ones, don’t adapt easily. CFOs feel straitjacketed by the processes coded into the system. Each new business requirement can feel like “fighting” the system or paying consultants to reconfigure it.
- Implementation risk: The fear of a failed implementation or major glitch keeps CFOs up at night. A CFO Dive study shows many finance chiefs worry about “bridging tech gaps” and needing better alignment with IT – essentially, they know a misstep in an ERP project can be disastrous.
- User adoption: ERPs often get a reputation internally as something only Finance or IT uses. Other teams might do the bare minimum in it, limiting the single-source-of-truth benefit. CFOs then end up extracting data and reconciling with other department’s records anyway.
- Vendor dependency: Once committed, switching ERPs is even harder. CFOs sometimes feel trapped – they “hate” the current system’s pain points but also hate the idea of going through another massive implementation to replace it. This can make them resentfully stick with an imperfect ERP for longer than they’d like.
Context: Large tech companies (especially mature ones) almost all have a heavyweight ERP (Oracle, SAP S/4HANA, or sometimes Microsoft Dynamics or Infor). Their CFOs often grew up with these systems and accept the downsides as part of life (“ERP is for life, not just for Christmas,” as one commentator wryly noted ). Mid-sized tech firms (say 500–1000 employees, perhaps pre-IPO startups) often use cloud ERPs like NetSuite or Intacct. These are somewhat easier to handle but still present many of the same challenges at scale. CFOs in these companies sometimes consider switching or upgrading their ERP as they grow, but they do so with trepidation. A telling LinkedIn article titled “Why Your CFO might secretly hate your ERP” pointed out that CFOs often look frustrated because of “slow reports [and] endless spreadsheets” despite having an ERP, and offered solutions to appease them . The fact that such content exists shows that CFOs’ discontent with ERP is real (if sometimes kept “secret”).
In tech, where everything moves fast, the ERP can feel like the anchor slowing the ship. CFOs dream of more nimble systems, but until those are proven, they feel chained to the legacy – paying millions for a necessary platform they begrudgingly rely on. As a result, it’s not surprising to hear a seasoned CFO say something like: “Our ERP? Can’t live without it, but oh, do I loathe it at times.” That paradox captures the CFO’s relationship with enterprise software as a whole: essential, but oftentimes exasperating.
Integration and Data Silos (The Underlying Frustration)
(Cross-cutting theme mentioned by many CFOs regarding all the above tools.)
Finally, it’s worth noting a broader complaint that CFOs at tech companies frequently raise: lack of integration between all these disparate systems. A finance chief might have Workday for headcount, Coupa for POs, Concur for expenses, Salesforce for revenue data, and Netsuite as the ERP – and getting a unified view is a project in itself. “As a CFO I was frustrated because I always had to go to IT to find out where to find information… we had it all over the place,” one CFO recounted, describing life before implementing a better integrated reporting solution . This is a common refrain. CFOs feel that they become data wranglers, spending time stitching together outputs from multiple systems, rather than analyzing and strategizing.
When enterprise software doesn’t play nicely together, the burden falls on Finance to reconcile discrepancies. For example, the headcount in Workday might not match the salary expenses in the ERP, due to timing or setup differences – guess who gets to investigate? The finance team. Or procurement commitments in Coupa might not automatically sync to the general ledger, leading to surprises. CFOs cite these silo issues as a major headache: in surveys, over 50% of finance leaders say disconnected data is a top challenge . It’s a root cause behind many of the specific dislikes listed above (slow reporting, manual spreadsheets, etc., all stem from systems not talking to each other seamlessly).
Tech companies often try to build in-house middleware or use integration platforms to alleviate this, but CFOs without a robust IT support feel the pain acutely. The ideal scenario for a CFO would be an end-to-end integrated suite or a data warehouse that brings it all together. Interestingly, some vendors promise this nirvana (Workday, Oracle, and SAP all pitch themselves as one-stop shops), but the reality is that companies still end up with best-of-breed tools in different areas – and thus the integration challenge remains.
In conclusion, while CFOs at tech companies certainly leverage enterprise software to drive efficiency and scale, they are frequently the first to point out when these tools fail to live up to expectations. From HR platforms that employees curse, to spend tools no one wants to use, to eye-wateringly expensive ERPs, the frustrations are real and documented. As caretakers of both the company’s finances and its financial processes, CFOs demand software that is reliable, cost-effective, and user-friendly – and they are notably unsparing in their critique when those standards aren’t met. The quotes and cases above illustrate that today’s finance chiefs are pushing back on legacy pain points and voicing a need for better solutions. Until those arrive, however, we can expect CFOs to continue harboring a (not-so) secret dislike for many of the very systems that run their businesses.
Sources:
- Business Insider, “Workday has become the most-hated workplace software” – user and manager testimonials on Workday’s poor UX .
- Reddit (r/antiwork and r/Workday threads) – discussions of why companies adopt Workday despite frustrations .
- HackerNews thread on Workday – analogy of enterprise software vs. user-centric design .
- Reddit (r/procurement) – comments on Coupa being “overpriced and overly complex” for mid-sized firms and hatred of SAP Ariba’s non-intuitive design .
- SoftwareAdvice reviews – user reviews citing “I hate Ariba” and “I hate Concur… never had an easy travel booking experience” .
- Reddit (Fishbowl/Blind) – employees complaining about Concur’s tedious steps and itemization requirements .
- Reddit (r/devops) – discussion on companies abandoning Slack due to cost, noting “Slack is pretty expensive… Teams can be 1/4 the cost… it’s really expensive [for what it does].” . Also, user remark that finance forces Teams since Slack and Teams are viewed as interchangeable .
- CPA Practice Advisor survey – finding Excel widely used but finance execs not highly satisfied with current tools, indicating room for improvement .
- Reddit (r/tableau) – finance professional listing exec complaints about Tableau dashboards (slow load, inflexibility, loss of Excel-like formatting) .
- HackerNews comment – user extracting Salesforce data to external dashboards due to frustration with built-in reporting .
- LinkedIn posts and articles – “Why your CFO might secretly hate your ERP” (mentioning slow reports and spreadsheet workarounds) ; discussion of ERP costs and pitfalls ; anecdote of a CFO shunting away a NetSuite sales rep out of annoyance .
- CIO.com via SmartDataCollective – Thomas Wailgum’s analysis of CFOs’ issues with ERP: ongoing costs and inflexibility .
- Survey data from BlackLine – CFOs’ lack of trust in fragmented data .
- “CFOs Reveal Top Frustrations” – indicating disconnected data and slow closes are key issues .
- Reddit (r/Netsuite) – thread on pushy account managers, with a CFO intervening to limit contact .
- KPMG report excerpt – complexity in procurement causing frustration for employees trying to comply .
These sources reflect a broad swath of firsthand CFO and staff commentary across interviews, social media, and surveys. The consistency of themes – poor UX, integration pain, cost overruns, and the enduring reliance on Excel – shows that enterprise software often isn’t delivering the simplicity and agility that tech-focused CFOs crave. The hope is that by voicing these issues, CFOs will influence the next generation of enterprise tools to finally address these longstanding gripes.