Insider Business Club: softworld

How have FD views on technlogy changed?

Tom Gunson
Partner, leader transforming finance, PricewaterhouseCoopers

FD’s views on technology have fundamentally changed over the past 10 years or so, particularly as companies realise that a lot of their future, and future aspirations, are inextricably linked to IT.

A lot of CFOs have come to realise that they need to understand much more about IT than they ever did before. And those who are aspiring to become CEOs really need to have a much better understanding of IT and what it can do for the business.

I liken it to a journey. Both IT and finance have the same customer, which is the business they serve. And that business is on a journey, which is generally to improve performance.

Most of us don’t start on a journey without knowing how to get there – which route to take, in other words. So, the first point is, you’ve got to know where you’re headed.

I think the finance function plays an important role in working with the business to understand where exactly the business is headed and how it hopes to get there. We have a destination. And in this modern world of technology, most of us have sat-nav or a TomTom to help us get there. That’s what I liken to the IT department.

Now, putting in the wrong destination into your TomTom can be disastrous. Likewise, without the aid of a TomTom or a road map of some sort, you’ll probably never get where you want to go. You’d end up circling the M25. The same is true of an IT strategy.

So, I think both CIOs and CFOs have to realise they need each other in the sort of journey on which they are trying to take the business.

How are relations between CFOs and CIOs?

Ade McCormack
Founder, Auridan

In most organisations, the CIO tends to work for the CFO. But the CFO is often frustrated by the CIO, because the CIO finds it difficult to demonstrate the value of IT as an industry.

If you put a pound into the IT department, do you get £1.50 back? Do you get 95p back? The CFO doesn’t know the answer to that, and that frustrates him. The CIO doesn’t know how to do that, because the industry itself still has some way to go.

IT is there to serve the business, ultimately. It’s not, as some technologists think, that the IT department is a kind of Toys R Us type of environment, where they can play with the latest technologies.

We have to look at it from another perspective. How often do you call your help desk just to thank them for being there for you? My guess is not very often, and that’s because there’s a lack of trust between the user community, the finance community and the IT community.

The IT industry hasn’t learned the [lesson] that, say, the medical industry has, whereby a bad doctor with a good bedside manner can come across as a good doctor, but a great doctor, with a bad bedside manner, may as well be a bad doctor.

IT has got a lot to do to build up the trust levels. It hasn’t focused too much on that, because it’s busy putting out fires around the organisation.

One of the major areas I encourage IT departments to invest in is their PR, and reaching out and forming relationships with the company or departments that buy the service. IT needs to sort out the problem, but I think the problem also occurs on the user end as well. Finance people need to embrace IT.

Do accountants have sufficient IT skills?

Bill Murray
Managing director, Group Business Information Strategy, Haymarket

I come from the media industry, where there’s a lot of talk about 'convergence'. In the media marketplace, convergence is when is your television acts as a computer, when your computer is also a mobile phone, when your phone is your desktop, and so on.

Convergence is the right word for what we’re thinking about here. There comes a point where it’s pretty difficult to see the boundaries between what’s a finance function, what’s a business system function, what’s an IT operations function and what’s an HR function.

The fellow who runs our business systems team within what we saw before as the IT department is, in fact, a highly qualified accountant. He’s a financial accountant. But he happens to have developed some serious skills in the systems technology environment.

So it goes without saying that finance and IT have to work incredibly closely. But actually, all of them have got to understand that their real relationship needs to be directly out and business-facing. Without understanding what the business is trying to do, and what the business’s requirements and frustrations and opportunities are, the agenda on which those central departments start to work together will be flawed.

To ensure that at board level, you need proper representation and, increasingly, a proper understanding of the value of those central services. At the risk of stating the obvious, the greatest business opportunities and ambitions in the world can be scuttled by not having the right supports underpinning the business and technical capability.

Hosted by David Rae, deputy editor of Financial Director

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