The 2026 ERP shift: Why UK CFOs are moving beyond the status quo

Our recent 2026 Annual Trends Report, which surveyed over 4,500 senior decision-makers within UK organisations, highlights a stark reality: the gap between digital ambition and operational reality is widening. For the consultants and advisors guiding these transformations, understanding this shift is the key to delivering genuine value in a volatile economy.

The integration dilemna: 18 applications and counting

Despite years of digital transformation investment, 58% of organisations still report significant integration challenges between core systems. Many finance teams are currently juggling between 18 and 20 disparate applications to manage day-to-day operations.

As Mark Farrar (CFO at High Town Housing Association) explained during our recent webinar, this fragmentation isn't just a technical headache; it’s a massive drain on decision-making. When data is trapped in siloes, reporting is slow, inaccurate, and lacks the integrity required by modern regulators.

Historically, many firms opted for a best-of-breed strategy, picking the best individual tool for every specific task. However, in 2026, if those individual tools cannot communicate seamlessly with one another, they cease to be assets. Instead, they become a liability, creating manual bridge-building work for finance teams who should be focused on analysis.

Closing the automation gap

The “automation gap” is a common frustration too: 56% of finance leaders feel stuck in a state of partial automation. We’ve moved past the excitement of the first Excel macro, yet many teams still find themselves performing manual workarounds for processes that should be seamless.

The barrier isn't a lack of will; it's a lack of standardised data. Without a consistent data ring at the centre of the organisation, end-to-end process automation remains a pipe dream. The CFOs winning in 2026 are those focusing on simplification first, stripping back customisations and collapsing legal entities to create a clean foundation for automation to actually take hold.

AI: From hype to governance

AI is the undisputed top strategic priority for 2026, but the conversation has matured. It has moved from "What can AI do?" to "How do we govern it?".

CFOs are rightfully cautious. The risk of Shadow AI or unmanaged bots causing havoc in the general ledger is a legitimate concern. This shift in priority highlights a new reality for the modern finance leader: the need for total resilience over mere functionality. Stephen Dews, CFO at OneAdvanced, notes that the focus has shifted toward the security of the underlying data:

"Resilience is now as important as functionality. It’s not always the piece of technology with the best buttons that wins the business case anymore; it’s the one that can prove the highest level of cybersecurity and data sovereignty."

By embedding AI into core systems rather than letting it run in isolation, the ambition is to move to a system that audits transactions in real-time. This reduces the soul-crushing audit season burden and provides a level of governance that a human team simply cannot match manually.

The rise of the UK-centric platform

Perhaps the most interesting trend in 2026 is the changing shape of the ERP shortlist (which was the central topic of the aforementioned webinar we hosted on March 19^th). More than 100 UK-based CFOs in the last year alone have pivoted away from traditional global giants in favour of platforms that are specifically tuned to the UK’s regulatory and economic landscape.

The move toward composable, platform-based architecture allows mid-market organisations to achieve enterprise-level outcomes, robust security, integrated workflows, and AI-driven insights, without the multi-year, multi-million-pound bloat associated with legacy Tier 1 providers.

Is your ERP selection strategy ready for 2026?

The highest-risk strategy in the current climate is to do nothing, or worse, to simply "pave over the cow path" by digitising bad, siloed processes. Transformation is a business journey, not just a finance one, and it requires a partner who understands the specific headwinds of the UK market.

If you want to hear the full discussion on how ERP shortlists are being formed today (supported by key findings from our annual Business Trends Report) you can now watch our session, ‘The Changing Shape of UK ERP Decisions’, on-demand.

To learn more about how a unified approach can accelerate your growth, explore the OneAdvanced Finance, Spend, and Governance Portfolio.