One organization may need to allocate expenses across complex projects and business units. Another may have approval requirements shaped by regional operations, client relationships, or unique organizational policies.
These differences matter. When software cannot easily accommodate them, employees often create workarounds, approvals slow down, and finance teams lose visibility into processes that should be operating within a controlled environment.
This is the last mile of finance technology, where standardized software meets the unique realities of how an organization operates.
And it is becoming a bigger factor in how finance organizations evaluate technology.
The Last Mile Has Always Been Difficult
Enterprise software vendors have spent decades expanding functionality, automating processes, and reducing manual work. That investment has delivered real value. However, even the most comprehensive platforms cannot anticipate every variation in how organizations operate.
Historically, finance teams had limited options when software couldn't accommodate a particular requirement. They could adapt their processes, request customization, purchase another application, or manage the gap through spreadsheets and manual workarounds.
The challenge was often economic. Solving a relatively small workflow problem could require a development project whose cost exceeded the value of the improvement.
As a result, many organizations simply lived with inefficiency.
The relationship between organizations and their software is already evolving. IDC's 2026 Enterprise Application Agent Strategy Survey found that 54% of respondents currently use custom-built enterprise applications, while 71% use cloud/SaaS AI-enabled enterprise applications.
These findings illustrate an important reality: commercial and internally developed applications now coexist within enterprise technology environments.
The question is how organizations can make that combination more effective.
AI Is Changing the Economics
AI-assisted development is beginning to change what is economically practical. Finance organizations can begin to address specific operational problems through configuration, platform extensions, and targeted applications without a traditional software development project.
This doesn't mean every finance team should start writing software, or that commercial vendors should shift responsibility for essential functionality to their customers. The real opportunity is greater choice. A requirement that once justified an expensive customization project may now be addressed through a modest extension within an existing platform.
The business outcomes matter more than the technology itself. In IDC's survey, 51% of respondents identified operational efficiency, including reduced manual workloads and faster processes, as a measure of AI deployment success. It was the most frequently selected measure. The value of closing the last mile isn't the application that gets created. It's the time saved, friction removed, and better decisions that follow.
Standardize What Makes You Efficient. Customize What Makes You Different.
This shift raises an important question: Where should the responsibilities of software vendors end and those of customers begin?
Core financial transactions, regulatory compliance, security, auditability, and reliable integration benefit from standardization and specialized vendor expertise. Organizations generally gain little by attempting to recreate these capabilities themselves.
Commercial vendors should continue delivering comprehensive, dependable functionality in these areas.
However, the workflows surrounding those capabilities often reflect how a particular organization operates.
Consider a global organization whose expense exceptions are reviewed differently by region, client contract, or business unit. The underlying transaction may be standard, but who reviews an exception, how it is escalated, and which business conditions influence approval may depend on the organization's operating model.
When those requirements can be addressed through supported configuration or extensions, organizations can adapt processes while preserving appropriate financial controls.
The result can be faster approvals, fewer workarounds, better employee experiences, and more consistent policy enforcement.
The objective is to standardize what makes the organization efficient and customize what makes it different.
Why the Platform Matters More, Not Less
In my recent IDC Perspective, From Software Consumer to Software Producer, I introduced a framework to help finance leaders determine when to buy commercial software, extend an existing platform, or build a targeted application. For many organizations, extending an existing platform may offer the most practical balance between flexibility and control. The more of the last mile that gets closed inside a platform, the more that platform's openness, reliability, and controls matter.
But this approach places new demands on vendors. Platforms need well-documented APIs, secure integration, configurable workflows, appropriate development environments, and access to reliable data. Just as important, flexibility must be accompanied by governance, and that discipline is still maturing. In the related area of AI-driven decision-making, IDC's survey found that only 26% of organizations reported having fully defined and enforced governance frameworks for AI-driven decision-making. For most respondents, governance was still developing or inconsistently applied.
Extensions and internally developed applications still require testing, access controls, ownership, and ongoing maintenance. For vendors, this is an opportunity to rethink what a complete solution means. It may mean providing a dependable foundation that customers can confidently adapt as their businesses evolve, rather than trying to anticipate every conceivable requirement.
A New Question for Finance Technology Buyers
Traditional software evaluations emphasize functional depth, implementation requirements, and total cost of ownership. Those considerations remain essential.
But buyers should also ask another question:
What will this platform allow our organization to do tomorrow?
Can it accommodate changing requirements? Can workflows be adapted without compromising controls? Can the organization address unique needs without introducing unnecessary complexity?
These questions deserve a place alongside traditional feature comparisons.
The future of finance software isn't about eliminating every gap. It's about making the remaining gaps easier to close.
The organizations that benefit most won't necessarily be those that buy the most software or build the most applications.
They'll be the ones that understand what their technology providers should deliver, what they can safely extend, and what is genuinely worth creating themselves.
Source: IDC Enterprise Application Agent Strategy Survey, 2026 (n=876, unweighted). Results reflect surveyed enterprise organizations and are not specific to expense management.
Where does your finance organization draw the line between what to buy, extend, and build? Share your thoughts in the comments, and read my IDC Perspective, From Software Consumer to Software Producer, for the full framework.
At Emburse, we believe AI should make finance operations more adaptive, not more complex. Our purpose-built Emburse AI helps organizations bring intelligence to the moments where spend decisions, policy, and financial workflows intersect, so teams can move faster while maintaining visibility and control.
That requires more than access to a general-purpose model. The most consequential workflows, including payments, compliance, auditability, and the controls that protect the business, need trusted financial infrastructure, relevant data, and responsible governance. That is why we pair embedded AI with purpose-built finance workflows and maintain a commitment to responsible AI, including our ISO 42001 certification.
The opportunity is not to turn every finance organization into a software company. It is to help teams extend the workflows that make their business distinct while preserving a reliable core. IDC has recognized Emburse as a Leader across its MarketScape evaluations for AI-enabled travel and expense, as well as AI-enabled AP and embedded payments. We remain focused on helping finance teams apply AI where it creates measurable value without compromising confidence or control.