While each organisation’s needs differ, most businesses tend to share certain common aims when approaching finance transformation. There is usually a desire to boost the finance function’s decision-making capabilities, to generate clearer insights, and to ensure metrics are aligned to business realities. You probably want to improve your forecasting capabilities, and gain a joined-up picture of performance, as well as automating and streamlining core tasks. And especially in the current environment, the desire to optimise costs is also paramount; enhancing your ability to do more with less, and creating added bandwidth for finance to focus on value-added strategic work.
So how do you ensure these priorities are met?
As a start, we entirely agree with Gartner on the project leadership point. CFOs can and should be in the driving seat, owning the transformation initiative.
This is also an area where the principle, well sown, is half-grown definitely applies. Preparation in the right areas significantly increases the likelihood of success. More specifically, we would advise paying special attention to the following four domains:
Part 1: People
Early Engagement
Engaging early with stakeholders enables you to understand the wider business requirements of the project, and potential hurdles.
Seek input from likely business users of the proposed new technology on what they think needs to change and why. For example, which processes cause the most frustration, and the highest risk of error? Which specific tasks do they think could be made easier, and how?
Detailed input will be needed from IT on matters such as compatibility, systems integration, security, timetabling, and deployment options.
Stand Up Your Project Team
Setting up your project team early makes sense from a logistical point of view, ensuring that team members have sufficient resources for the project. It also prevents the overloading of key personnel who are likely to have critical day-to-day responsibilities outside of the project.
Key Benefits
- Buy-in from key individuals is much more likely to happen if they are consulted early. The project becomes something they are actively shaping, rather than something that is happening to them.
- Early engagement helps to give you a more realistic assessment of likely costs and timelines.
- It also enables you to identify any gaps in the knowledge/skillset of internal teams. Offering a collaborative approach to implementation, a consultancy such as Cofiniti is then able to bridge those gaps for you; complementing and building upon your existing resources.
Part 2: Process
Establish Objectives
In relation to the core finance processes you intend to optimize (e.g. planning, budgeting, consolidation & close, financial reporting, and compliance), collaborate with finance team members and other stakeholders (e.g. departmental planners) to understand inefficiencies and bottlenecks.
From this, you can define your process optimization goals. You should also ensure these goals are aligned with broader finance transformation objectives, such as cost reduction, more data-driven decision-making, and enhancing organizational agility.
Process Mapping
On a process-by-process basis, map your existing ‘as-is’ state; the distinct tasks, resource requirements, parties involved, and inter-dependencies for each step in the workflow. Based on this, you can then carry out gap analysis before defining your desired state (‘to-be’ vision).
Phasing
Your project should be phased and timetabled with direct reference to critical business process requirements (for example by avoiding going live with a new process when stakeholders are tied up with tasks such as year-end or report preparation).
Expectations
Ensure project expectations in terms of scope and timelines are realistic. Rushing to an early go-live can easily result in a sub-standard implementation and causes needless pressure for the people involved.
Key Benefits
- Clearly defining your objectives from the outset provides a firm footing for aligning software selection with business needs, while helping to prevent unnecessary scope creep.
- It facilitates the creation of precise RFPs (Requests for Proposals), or RFIs (Requests for Information) and enables you to better evaluate the responses to those requests.
- Realistic timetabling ensures your project stays on track, resources are allocated appropriately, and expectations are managed.
Part 3: Technology
RFP (Request for Proposal) / Scoping Questionnaire
Ensure all stakeholders and impacted functional areas of the business have input into the RFP. Do not focus exclusively on bare functional / technical requirements; make sure you include wider relationship, training, support and aftercare needs, too.
As detailed in the process section (above), you should define your as-is and to-be processes. Make sure this analysis is shared with vendors, in addition to Moscow ratings (must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have) for each feature.
Understand Your Technology
Do not rush your software selection and ensure you have spent time allowing all stakeholders to understand the solution in relation to business requirements. Solution aesthetics and user-friendliness are key to successful adoption and acceptance; for example, a solution may have powerful predictive analytical capabilities, but how accessible are these to ordinary business users?
Review individual solutions in this context, ensuring the skillset of your team aligns to the requirements of using and maintaining the solution. Ensure you have identified any skills gaps and estimated long-term ownership and maintenance costs.
Key Benefits
Putting solutions under the microscope in this way ensures a better fit with your business and business requirements.
- Establishing what is ‘under the bonnet’ ensures you are capable of maintaining it in the long-run.
- This analysis also provides you with a more realistic forecast of long-term solution ownership costs.
Part 4: Data
Data Discovery
What data sources will your new solution need to draw from? Work with your business users to understand the key data inputs and requirements of the business. Review all relevant data source locations and their interaction with current processes. Highlight areas of data processing that cause issues in terms of time and workload.
If there is a reliance on data from third parties (e.g. supply chain partners), make sure they are engaged and informed. Create a data map with your to-be solution as the central focus.
Data Review
After your data has been mapped, review data quality and integrity, establishing any key data transformation or cleaning steps that are required (poor data quality is one of the primary risks to the success of the implementation project in the long-term). Review your current data model and hierarchies, analyzing if they are fit-for-purpose, and identify any disconnects that may need to be corrected in-project.
Key Benefits
- This approach provides your implementation team with a data map, allowing for a greater understanding of the business and technology fit.
- A robust review avoids shoring up risks and surprises further down the line. Major issues that go unnoticed at this early stage could have a significant impact on time and costs.
- This analysis also allows a more accurate implementation assessment for internal and external parties.
Next Steps
Early-stage preparation focusing on the areas of People, Processes, Technology, and Data puts you on the right track for successful finance transformation.
Want to see how a best-practice approach to consultancy enables you to bridge any skills gaps and maximize the value of your software investment? Find out more about Cofiniti here.
And to discover what’s possible in terms of streamlining your most resource-hungry finance processes, while also revolutionizing your decision-making capabilities, explore CCH Tagetik here.
