Finance Transformation: a real world experience
A few weeks back I had the pleasure to host an episode of the Business Unwrapped podcast, where myself and Nick Hawkes looked at one of his latest Finance Transformation initiatives and the key outcomes and lessons learned from that program. Even with years of experience behind us, every project is different and it is always beneficial to take some time at the end of your engagement and really think back at what you achieved, what were some of the key success drivers but also what areas of improvement and lessons learned you can derive that will help you do an even better job in your next project. Here is a summary below for you:
Some contextual information (problem statement):
high growth organization requiring flexible solutions which would need to keep up with the changing business landscape
multi-geographical presence meaning access to solution needs to be available over the Internet (cloud is a must!)
legacy and/or outdated on-premise software no longer coping with the data volumes requirements
high dependency on technical resources to support in-house built software point solutions presenting a risk for the company’s continued operations
Some of the key success drivers of the program:
business case built outlining the current problems and giving visibility into proposed solutions to get formal executive buy-in and give visibility into how the program would be structured and run
positioning the project as a business-wide transformation and not Finance-led, which helped ensure participation and cooperation from other operational areas throughout the project phases
rigorous selection process involving the key areas of the business for increased transparency
realistic but ambitious timelines
get external support for key workstreams to ensure the project progresses according to plan (internal resources are already doing a full-time job)
Lessons learned:
more thorough testing of “out-of-the-box” functionality such as reporting
performance testing especially for high transactions volumes applications
transition to support meant a slight drop in the responsiveness of the software vendor to help with issues
And after this? There will always be areas where process improvement and review, automation and AI adoption can bring even more value to the business and enhance the output of its people and processes.
Transformation is never over!