Driving the next wave of Finance and enterprise change

The following is a summary of an article published by the Harvard Business Review (Advanced Analytics and the CFO), sponsored by KPMG.

If advanced data & analytics are, at heart, an enhancement of the humans who build them and put them into action - augmenting not just their strengths but also their weaknesses - a company’s ability to make the best use of them will depend on its ability to foster the human capabilities that will be essential to its future.

Many CFOs and their teams have been on a transformation journey of some sort during recent years, and this has often included some form of technology-enabled change. Until recently, the notion that complex organisations must be supported by complex and inflexible technology systems was taken almost as a given.

But things are changing fast. There is now a renewed wave of digital change underway. Powerful new enterprise technologies are transforming customer expectations and fuelling disruptive new business models, within Finance and across the business. As R. 'Ray' Wang, principal analyst and founder of Constellation Research, says, “Technology change is now challenging those [old] assumptions. Systems can be integrated today in ways that weren’t previously possible. Today, integration capabilities are good, cloud capabilities are good, our ability to orchestrate systems is good, and computing power is excellent. And that is what makes this work.”

A new Harvard Business Review article (Advanced Analytics and the CFO), based on research and interviews with senior Finance and analytics leaders, shows that recent developments in data, analytics and enterprise technologies present a clear opportunity for finance leaders to take action, and realign how they can help their companies succeed in a changing world. Although the article is written from a Finance perspective, the thinking is applicable across the business.

There are five key areas where Finance can make a real difference:

1. Shaping and championing the enterprise’s strategic data and analytics vision
2. Supporting technology investment to improve data quality and access to analytics
3. Developing new skill sets and new talent
4. Finding the right business partnering and service delivery models to support the new analytics paradigm
5. Driving change across the business

Some organisations have been pursuing these themes, often as separate initiatives, but the opportunities presented by taking advantage of disruptive new technologies are now game-changing.

Don’t think that these new opportunities are the preserve of only the most advanced organisations. The disruption created at the moment, means you may be able to make more progress than you think.

Although this new set of emerging technologies holds great promise to improve finance professionals’ working lives while boosting their ability to contribute value, companies should not forget the human element in what can seem, on the surface, to be a mostly technology-driven effort.

Without buy-in at all levels, initiatives will languish in the face of employees’ uncertainty, neglect, and even outright suspicion. As these technologies are becoming increasingly more pervasive, data and information are becoming more democratised and widely available. There’s a greater chance that analytics will be perceived as usurping authority and traditional decision-making responsibility. So as CFOs and business leaders consider how to support their change management efforts, it can be useful to bear in mind a few questions that are likely to be top of mind for employees. What will these initiatives mean for me and my function? How will this change what I do? How will it make me more successful? Will I remain relevant? Will there be a place for me and my role in all of this? ... Whilst there is not one answer that will work for all, the best option is to explore and position how these changes are helping to enhance peoples’ lives and create more enterprise value, rather than take something away.

Far from being replaced as a result of the first, second and third industrial revolutions, people developed new skills and capabilities. The same will be true now, albeit the current pace of change is a lot steeper and this is putting clear space between winners and laggards quicker and sometimes with more dramatic effects.

If advanced data and analytics are, at heart, an enhancement of the humans who build them and put them into action (augmenting not just their strengths but also their weaknesses), a company’s ability to make the best use of them will depend on its ability to foster the human capabilities that will be essential to its future.

If you enjoyed this summary, you can read the full article at the link below. I’d love to hear your reflections on it.

Harvard Business Review article: Advanced Analytics and the CFO

You might also enjoy this excellent article by my colleague Mazhar Hussain, which adds more colour in relation to some of the key technology trends shaping our world.