After another turbulent year, the UK business yo-yo is back in full swing. According to Pleo’s Finance and Business Synergy Report, almost half (48%) of UK businesses say their ambitions have increased in the past year. But despite this, less than half of that (22%) say their budgets have done the same.

How then can UK businesses climb out of this rut and start delivering meaningful success and growth? One word: collaboration.

The missing component of business growth

Collaboration is sometimes seen by business leaders as quite a woolly term, and can be drowned out by ones like growth, profit and resilience. But collaboration is at the heart of all of these. And if businesses want to make a success of 2025, they need to find ways to connect their teams – especially finance – to the rest of the business.

This is because as many as 86% of UK businesses agree that effective spend management is critical to the success of their business. At first glance “spend management” might seem like a very finance-y term for finance-y people, but it is for everyone. In fact, 78% agree that effective spend management is a tool for the entire company, while 76% say it promotes a culture of responsibility and openness across their business. This reminds us that everyone is on the finance team somewhere; whether they sit in the department or not, they contribute to and benefit from this crucial function.

However, effective spend management isn’t something that can be created in silo. Instead, it requires transparency and collaboration to thrive. This way, teams get the right insights they need to inform spending decisions and budget allocation. Which in turn gives them the necessary fuel to contribute to a high-performing business.

But effective spend management is currently missing from a lot of businesses. Almost half (47%) regret making drastic cost cuts in the recent past, while only 23% don’t. As a CMO, one of the most important relationships we can foster is with our finance team. Investing in this partnership allows us to build trust and understanding. Otherwise we’re flying blind when it comes to strategic investment. So how can companies open these same routes and put collaboration at the heart of their business?

Finding the path to collaboration

As many as 67% of UK companies consider in-house collaboration a priority for the coming year. To help businesses forge new ways to collaborate, below I look at the three blockers to finance and business synergy – and how to overcome them.

A lack of transparency in finance

The majority of organisations (60%) say that transparency leads to more accurate visibility for financial projections. But this is missing across the UK, with 66% of businesses saying if they had better insights into other departments they would have made better spending decisions. Business leaders need to work on their team relationships and identify what the blind spots are. For example, is it variable costs, strategic opportunities with uncertain ROI or macro strategy and goals? If these aren’t clear and agreed-upon between teams, then any investment that hits the mark will be because of luck more than strategy.

Outdated views of the finance function

Despite the role of CFO becoming increasingly strategic, some businesses still think of finance as a back-office function – 75% of UK businesses, to be precise. But this perception will only hold teams back from discussing strategy and investment, and create friction when they don’t receive the funding they need to back up their ambitions. Collaboration and communication can educate teams on the modern role of finance and what’s possible through stronger ties to the team. It can also help teams plan their budgets and expectations more effectively, and find out what metrics they need to focus on to receive more budget.

Unhelpful perceptions about finance team members

It’s not just the perception of the finance function that needs a do-over, but the perception of the team as well. As many as 61% of businesses say the perception of their finance team as “difficult to work with” is harming collaboration in-house. While 57% say they feel too intimidated to ask questions. The route of the problem here isn’t necessarily difficult teams, but nervousness about having conversations in the first place – money is not everyone’s favourite, or even the easiest, topic to discuss. This means that finance teams might need to over communicate to initially break down these blockers, and open those channels with other teams to show that finance isn’t something to be scared of.

What the future can look like

Throughout any financial year, we are presented with long and short-term opportunities that have the potential to drive significant growth. But to seize those, teams need to be agile and aligned with our financial partners in-house.

Having an open and collaborative relationship allows teams such as marketing, HR, IT and others to act swiftly, allocate resources effectively, and make data-driven decisions that benefit the entire organisation. When marketing and finance work hand-in-hand, we not only manage budgets better, but we also maximise commercial and reputational impact.

But we can’t do it alone. 76% of UK businesses say that spend management tools drive effective collaboration between finance and other departments. Like most things in today’s workplace, collaboration needs a helping hand – usually a digital one. And the expectations we are placing on our finance teams won’t be manageable unless we find ways to automate the manual work and liberate finance minds to focus on the mission-critical objectives.

The Autumn Budget will have already led to a lot of conversation around what businesses need to invest in. But top of that list should be collaboration.

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