Finance teams are under pressure to plan faster, more often, and with input from every corner of the business. Holistic financial planning and integrated FP&A make that possible by connecting people, data, and decisions in real time.
Enterprise planning has never been more critical. As the business world moves faster, finance leaders not only handle the challenge of agile financial management but take on a growing responsibility to collaborate with leaders and act as strategic financial advisors. At the same time, more than half of CFOs surveyed by Workday depend on non-financial insights to make finance-related decisions..
This all underscores the increasingly interconnected nature of enterprise strategy, and why holistic financial planning is becoming essential to business success in that environment. It demands a shift from static, finance-only planning to a dynamic, enterprise-wide approach that reflects how decisions are actually made: collaboratively, continuously, and with real-time data at the center.
For that to happen, CFOs and finance leaders need a planning foundation that removes legacy systems and siloed processes, connecting data, teams, and decisions across the enterprise.
Holistic financial planning connects financial and operational planning in a single system so leaders across departments—finance, HR, operations, and IT, among others—can work from the same data and assumptions. Instead of building separate budgets and forecasts in isolation, teams can collaborate on shared goals, adjust plans in real time, and understand how decisions in one area impact the rest of the business.
For finance leaders, this visibility is crucial. Gartner research found more than 70% of CFOs now have ownership over areas like enterprise data and analytics and enterprise risk. Well over half have responsibility in corporate strategy, M&A, and procurement.
This expanded CFO role demands holistic thinking and planning. Integrated FP&A serves as the operational core of this model, connecting data, workflows, and teams so planning stays coordinated and responsive. Key components of a holistic approach include:
When FP&A is integrated holistically, CFOs can serve as enterprise architects of value creation. Rather than just reporting on past performance, they can embed financial strategy into the daily rhythms of the business, transforming finance into an active participant in driving growth, efficiency, and timely course corrections as business conditions evolve.
Integrated FP&A powers holistic financial planning at scale and drive. Finance leaders gain visibility they can trust, collaboration gets easier across departments, and plans remain relevant even as environments change. The following benefits show how FP&A integration translates into day-to-day impact.
A connected data foundation eliminates lags between data entry, analysis, and insight. Financial and operational data updates continuously, empowering leadership to proactively identify shifts in performance. Dashboards become dynamic tools and provide granular visibility to support informed decision-making.
Organizations move from rigid annual budgeting to flexible, ongoing planning. By combining driver-based forecasting with real-time inputs, finance teams can stress-test assumptions, simulate impacts, and pivot early. Plans remain relevant even amid market volatility.
Disconnected plans lead to competing priorities. A unified approach to FP&A brings together finance, HR, and operations on a shared planning cadence. Stakeholders align faster on budgets, capacity, and resource trade-offs, leading to smoother execution and less rework.
A unified approach to FP&A brings together finance, HR, and operations on a shared planning cadence.
Talent planning becomes more strategic when HR data flows into the financial model. Leaders can plan labor spend by role or region, forecast capacity, and model hiring needs by skill. This level of insight helps right-size the workforce while preparing for growth.
Traditional forecasts quickly become outdated. Real-time data feeds, frequent iterations, and embedded business drivers help create forecasts that stay aligned with operational realities. Course corrections happen sooner, and forecasts gain credibility across the business.
Manual reconciliations and version control issues introduce risk. Integrated platforms embed controls into planning workflows, automating approvals, enforcing policies, and capturing changes. Teams spend less time on compliance and more time adding value.
Strategic financial goals only matter if they shape daily actions. Holistic financial planning ties long-term objectives directly to operational and workforce plans. Everyone rows in the same direction, enabling faster results and more agile execution.
A unified data foundation is essential for holistic financial planning, yet many organizations still operate with disconnected systems and fragmented workflows. Legacy architectures obstruct visibility, slow collaboration, and prevent real-time planning.
Common barriers include:
Legacy ERP modules: Often hard-coded, difficult to integrate, and slow to adapt, making them ill-suited for dynamic, cross-functional planning.
Standalone spreadsheets: Prone to version control issues and manual errors, they create redundancy and hinder trust in the numbers.
Third-party business intelligence (BI) tools: Require external data exports and reconciliations, introducing latency and complicating governance.
Siloed departmental systems: Prevent alignment across finance, HR, and operations, resulting in miscommunication and misaligned priorities.
Modern financial planning requires the right tech tools to eliminate these disconnects. By consolidating financial, workforce, and operational data into a single architecture, companies gain a consistent, real-time view of performance.
Integrated cloud planning platforms also provide the structure needed to manage complexity. Governance, controls, and audit trails are built into workflows, not layered on top. This improves data confidence and compliance readiness while dramatically reducing the manual effort that typically accompanies compliance.
When data is centralized and planning is collaborative, insights become immediately actionable. Finance can model the larger impact of workforce shifts. HR can see the financial implications of capacity changes. Business decisions happen faster, with greater context, and are more likely to deliver results.
Effective holistic planning starts with targeted, actionable steps—not just hiring a single holistic financial planner. These five steps set the foundation for moving forward together with purpose.
Conduct a planning audit across finance, HR, and operations. Identify disconnected processes, inconsistent metrics, and decision delays. Determine where data currently lives, how it’s accessed, and where insight is lost in translation. Prioritize areas where integration would deliver the most value.
The CFO-CIO relationship is foundational to digital finance transformation. Workday research found companies with high levels of alignment between finance and IT were significantly ahead on transformation initiatives like holistic planning and integrated FP&A.
Align with IT leaders on shared outcomes like agility, data trust, and operational scalability, and develop a roadmap to connect financial planning needs to IT capabilities. Create an environment where the CFO and CIO (and their teams) work together regularly to maintain cohesive and effective systems.
Select a planning platform that brings together financial, operational, and workforce data in one place. The goal is to eliminate silos, ensure consistency, and enable real-time collaboration across departments. Solutions like Workday support this by enabling modeling, forecasting, and reporting from a single source of truth so teams can adapt and make decisions with confidence.
Evaluate current team capabilities. Identify skill gaps in areas like data analysis, modeling, systems thinking, and business partnering. Prioritize targeted talent recruitment and development that builds fluency in planning tools, enables cross-functional collaboration, and strengthens data storytelling. Align these efforts with internal mobility so top performers can grow into more strategic roles, helping finance scale its impact as a partner to the business.
Shift from static annual cycles to a planning model that runs alongside the business. Start by replacing one or two annual processes—like headcount planning or expense forecasting—with quarterly or monthly iterations. Use scenario modeling to test assumptions before committing resources, and build planning checkpoints into business reviews so adjustments happen as part of regular operations (not in a reactionary way).
Finance has always been central to how organizations allocate resources, but now it shapes how they define the future.
Today, CFOs are at the center of how organizations adapt, compete, and grow. Holistic financial planning provides the model modern enterprises need to unite financial rigor with strategic foresight and organizational agility.
By bringing together financial, operational, and workforce data into a single planning environment, finance leaders gain the ability to:
Finance has always been central to how organizations allocate resources, but now it shapes how they define the future. Finance leaders face increasing pressure to move faster, coordinate more broadly, and deliver more clarity in less time. Holistic financial planning supports that shift by giving teams a reliable foundation to work from where priorities are visible, plans stay aligned, and decisions reflect the full context of the business.
Unbalanced budgets lead to missed goals and lost opportunities. Achieve a “just right” budget that motivates teams and protects your business by downloading this whitepaper and applying its probability-based approach.
Did you know that 51% of CFOs are increasingly reliant on non-financial data to make financial decisions? That's just one of five trends set to define 2025 that Workday has uncovered in our latest research—click below to discover the other four.
More Reading
From spend analysis to faster close cycles, AI is helping finance leaders find new efficiencies, reduce risk, and reallocate resources for strategic growth. Learn the major benefits that your business could gain from AI.
Overhead costs influence more than just the bottom line—they reveal how well your business runs. With the right structure and insights, finance teams can turn these expenses into a source of control, clarity, and smarter decisions.
Retained earnings reflect the share of net profits a company retains to fuel growth and sustain operations. Mastering their calculation and forecasting empowers finance teams to harness internal capital to its fullest potential.