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The CFO evolution: fusing finance with technology July 4, 2012
Guest post by David Hurwitz
Business functions once had very clear roles and responsibilities: finance looked after the money and IT was a distinct unit responsible for back-office technology and communications. However, responsibility for IT decisions has evolved. Responsibility for IT has increasingly become a matter for the entire business leadership group to weigh in on, including the CFO. This change in responsibilities requires CFOs to extend their skills based on the kinds of capabilities that IT empowers.
Since large-scale IT systems can account for significant budget outlays, financial leadership has often been involved in the decision-making around enterprise IT procurement, but this has been limited to just a 'sign-off' capacity. As familiarity with technology has grown and IT has shifted from back-office to customer facing, the potential role for the CFO in IT decision-making has grown.
Cloud computing has a role in this transition, since it involves using third-party service providers rather than owning the hardware and software assets. Cloud has also introduced a pay as you go model rather than relying on capital expenditure. However, the change in financing needs to take a backseat to the revenue-driving nature of today's IT systems.
A new paradigm is created with organizations actually having a decision to make: Should IT operations move from strict control of the IT department and out into the business units themselves?
The change of responsibility from CIO to business means finance professionals must understand the value, as opposed to the cost, of new technology. While the CFO will not necessarily want or need to understand each new implementation in great detail, he or she will certainly require thorough analysis of the IT components of business initiatives, and how they connect with support request from both the business and IT.
This means having an IT management overview of what is happening and metrics against which to judge IT success. From the CFO perspective, this requires insight into what processes are in place and where they link up. This understanding of how individual services or teams connect together in order to deliver results is important. As in so many things, the final result is much more important than the sum of the parts.
The emphasis on process around IT requires a more in-depth approach to management. Mastering a more connected approach to IT improves the manner in which teams work together. IT has to become more business facing, responding to the needs and objectives of the enterprise as a whole, as it contributes more directly to the bottom line.
The concept of an "IT front office" is bubbling to the surface from this shift of focus in responsibilities of both IT staff and non-IT staff and presentation of services out to the rest of the business. The IT front office involves providing not just IT tools, but services that can match those available from outside providers in terms of user experience and simplicity.
For CFOs seeking to understand IT, looking at where the organization is now and where it wants to be in the future is essential. This will include ensuring that IT is meeting its business requirements in a straightforward, easy-to-understand manner. Analytic tools provide this information in a dashboard format enabling executives to quickly identify which projects are running on schedule and which are not. If more information on projects is required, then a CFO can drill down into the process itself, rather than looking at specific technology projects in isolation. Without the right orchestration strategy and processes in place, it is not easy to aggregate this information into the kind of data that can be used for effective decision-making.
Companies with online components to their business are voracious consumers of IT. However, the manner in which companies manage their use of IT resources will have to change. In order to keep up with the many new trends affecting business technology, the CFO must understand which tools exist for delivering efficiency and cost benefits. Techniques such as orchestration can help streamline processes and deliver individual projects like developing applications in a more efficient way, but there is an opportunity to improve IT service performance across the organization as a whole.
Ultimately, this change in management leads to lesser overall technology costs but without sacrificing the potential for business agility and faster performance. By ensuring their understanding of key IT metrics, CFOs can both keep hold of expenses and also move their organizations forward.
David Hurwitz is senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Serena Software.
Read more: The CFO evolution: fusing finance with technology - FierceCIO http://www.fiercecio.com/story/cfo-evolution-fusing-finance-technology/2012-07-04#ixzz2VEa6tO30
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