Why operations and finance are speaking different languages (and what it's costing you)
The silent divide that's draining productivity, causing costly errors and holding back multi-site operators
The frustration nobody talks about: "I just want a simple answer, not a report."
If you've ever found yourself thinking this when finance finally sends over that report you requested three weeks ago, you're not alone. Or perhaps it's the equally maddening: "Why do I have to wait for a report to be run?" Or the classic: "What does this report even mean?"
These aren't signs of incompetence. They're symptoms of a fundamental disconnect that plagues businesses across hospitality, care homes, retail, construction and education - industries where margins are tight, teams are stretched and every penny matters.
The truth is, Finance and Operations professionals are different breeds entirely. They're trained differently, they think differently and they need different things. Yet we expect them to communicate seamlessly through spreadsheets and ledger codes that might as well be written in hieroglyphics.
Two worlds, one business
Here's what's actually happening in businesses across the UK every single day.
Operations teams think in categories that make natural sense: Food supplies. Cleaning products. Maintenance costs. Guest amenities. They see the world through the lens of "what do we need to run this place effectively?"
Finance teams think in nominal codes, cost centres and ledger lines. They see the world through the lens of "how does this affect the P&L and balance sheet?"
Neither perspective is wrong. Both are essential. But when Operations asks "How much are we spending on cleaning supplies across all our sites?" and Finance responds with a report grouped by nominal codes 7210, 7215 and 7240 – each representing different aspects of what Operations simply calls "cleaning" - the disconnect becomes painfully obvious.
Research from KPMG confirms this isn't just anecdotal frustration. Their global survey of 1,300 finance and operations leaders found that seven in ten only think about the needs of their own function when obtaining new skills. Even more telling: 74% don't coordinate with other business functions when acquiring and implementing new technology. The result? Unconnected processes, siloed systems, differing priorities and disagreements over responsibilities that create divisions impacting overall company performance.
The hidden cost of ‘throwing it over the fence’
You know the pattern. Operations has a question about spend or budget. They request a report from Finance. Finance, already overwhelmed with month-end close, adds it to the queue. Days, sometimes weeks pass. The report arrives. Operations opens it, stares at columns of figures that don't match their mental model and fires back clarifying questions.
More delays. More back-and-forth. What should have been a five-minute answer becomes a multi-day game of cat and mouse.
Meanwhile, the decision that prompted the original question? It's either been delayed or made on gut instinct - a coin flip that has roughly a 50/50 chance of being right or wrong.
This isn't a communication problem. It's a translation problem. And in busy operational environments, it escalates quickly.
The financial literacy gap nobody wants to acknowledge
Here's an uncomfortable truth that rarely gets discussed openly: the majority of people in management positions have never been trained to read or interpret financial statements.
Research from abrdn found that 44% of UK adults - equivalent to 23.3 million people - have poor financial literacy. Pay.UK's research revealed an even starker disconnect: while 78% of UK adults consider themselves financially literate, 71% don't actually understand how basic financial instruments work. The Financial Capability Survey found that 22% of respondents couldn't read a bank statement.
Now consider this in an operational context. In hospitality alone, approximately 90% of restaurant managers started their careers in entry-level positions. They worked their way up through front-of-house, back-of-house or guest services - learning the craft of operations, not the language of finance. They're exceptional at running a shift, managing a team and delivering outstanding guest experiences. But a P&L statement? That wasn't part of it.
A Xero study of UK SMEs found that 38% of business owners were unaware if their business was even profitable last month, while 55% admitted they actively avoid dealing with finances. As Kate Hayward, UK Managing Director of Xero, put it: "Culturally, there's a stigma around not knowing our numbers. There's no shame in it when nobody is teaching us about it, but businesses deserve more."
This isn't a criticism of operations professionals. It's a recognition that we've built systems requiring financial expertise in roles that have never provided financial training.
Waiting for month-end is already too late
In today's environment, the traditional monthly reporting cycle isn't just inconvenient - it's dangerous.
Consider the typical scenario: something goes wrong with supplier pricing in the first week of the month. Maybe a key vendor has quietly increased costs or an ops manager is over-ordering a particular category. Under traditional reporting cycles, you won't see this in the numbers until 15-30 days after the month closes. By then, four to six weeks of damage has already been done.
Research from the Chartered Accountants ANZ found that 82% of finance teams still rely on manual tools like spreadsheets to track financial operations and only 22% of organisations track financial performance daily. The remainder are flying blind between reporting periods.
The Grow CFO noted that "the month-end close process places significant strain on finance teams, reducing their capacity to support the company with strategic insights" while leaving decision-makers with data that "may be incomplete and is often outdated."
In an era where market conditions shift weekly and supplier costs can change overnight, waiting for month-end before making operational adjustments means you're always reacting to yesterday's problems rather than preventing tomorrow's.
The agility imperative
Modern businesses need to be adaptive. Supply chains are volatile. Consumer behaviour shifts rapidly. Labour markets remain challenging. The businesses that thrive are those that can pivot quickly - adjusting purchasing, reallocating resources and responding to trends as they emerge.
But agility requires information. Not information that's weeks old. Not information locked in spreadsheets that require a finance degree to decode. Real-time, accessible insights that operational managers can understand and act upon immediately.
When a site manager can see instantly that their food costs are trending 4% above budget this week - in terms they understand, like "meat and poultry" rather than “CoGs” or "6420" – they can course-correct now. Not next month. Now.
This isn't about removing finance from the equation. It's about bridging the gap between the financial reality and operational understanding so that both teams can do their jobs effectively.
Breaking the cycle
The disconnect between Operations and Finance isn't inevitable. It's a design flaw in how most businesses structure their information flow.
Think about what would change if:
Operations could self-serve their own spend insights - seeing data categorised in ways that match how they actually think about their business, without waiting for Finance to run a custom report.
Finance could trust that Operations understood the numbers - because the translation between ledger codes and ops categories happened automatically, reducing the endless clarification cycles.
Questions got answered in minutes, not weeks - because the data was accessible, understandable and available on demand.
Decisions were based on this week's reality - not last month's historical snapshot that's already outdated by the time anyone sees it.
This isn't a fantasy. It's what happens when you stop treating the Operations-Finance divide as immutable and start building bridges instead of throwing requests overfences.
A different approach
At OmniPATH, we built our platform specifically to solve this problem. Not to replace Finance teams - they're essential - but to give Operations the real-time spend visibility they need in the language they actually speak.
When a care home manager wants to know their agency staff costs across the last four weeks, they get an immediate answer. When a hotel operations director needs to compare maintenance spend across properties, they get clarity. When a multi-site retail manager spots unusual supplier invoices, they can investigate immediately - not after month-end.
The P&L still matters. The ledger codes still exist. Finance still maintains control and oversight. But Operations finally has a window into the financial reality of their sites that doesn't require a translator or a three-week wait.
It's a simple premise: Built for Operations. Trusted by Finance.
Because when both teams can see the same picture - just through lenses appropriate to their expertise - the cat-and-mouse games stop. The 50/50 guesswork ends. And businesses can finally move at the speed their markets demand.
The questions worth asking
If your operational managers are making decisions without clear visibility into their spend, what's it actually costing you?
If your finance team is drowning in ad-hoc report requests that pull them away from strategic work, how much capacity are you losing?
If you're waiting for month-end to discover problems that started weeks ago, how much damage has already been done?
The gap between Operations and Finance isn't a personality clash or a communication failure. It's a systems problem. And systems problems have systems solutions.
The only question is whether you'll keep playing cat and mouse or finally build the bridge.
Ready to give Operations the visibility they need without adding to Finance's workload?
Discover how OmniPATH bridges the gap at www.omnipath.ai
Sources
abrdn Savings Ladder Index;
Pay.UK Current Account Switch Service Research;
Financial Capability Survey UK;
KPMG Finance and Operations Survey 2022;
Xero SME Financial Literacy Study;
Chartered Accountants ANZ Technology Research 2024;
Escoffier School of Culinary Arts Industry Research;
Grow CFO Real-Time Financial Information Report
