Once we understand what problems your business has, we try to help you match those problems with an appropriate product. “Once that shift in mindset has been achieved, the platform provider typically comes in and engages in ‘front loading’. FDs, says Cran, need to understand that it’s in their interests to work collaboratively. Our job is to identify, firstly, exactly where the FD’s pain points are coming from.” The transformation journeyįrom the FD’s side, there needs to be more openness to multiple solutions, according to Cran -and a commitment to finance, security, and IT teams working together, sharing responsibility for different areas of expertise, rather than clashing about what systems work best for whom. “If CFOs haven’t updated their systems, or they’ve inherited something old and bow to pressure to maintain the status quo, then the buck stops with them. It’s a constant source of frustration for the finance leader having to make excuses when really it’s the system which is at fault because the architecture can’t provide the financial information needed. “Say a CFO is working with a senior management team and they’re not getting the information they need to run the business.

This, he says, is because FDs operate differently depending on the industry, the size of the business, and whatever part of the finance function may already be working effectively. If you just go straight to the top end of complexity, then you get bogged down and end up creating new problems which hadn’t existed before.”Ĭran believes there is also a responsibility for providers of platforms and services to identify and address different buyer personas.

“Successful digital transformation is about getting the human and technological aspects of the finance function working in tandem. “A good starting point for businesses is to connect their current functioning software with newer systems which allow them to scale. “The truth is that there is no substitute for the human touch,” Cran says. If an organisation’s finance leadership is not systems experienced, or has become used to the kind of automation not appropriate to their business’s size, then those organisations are in danger of neglecting staff competency. The key to successful digital transformation is to automate only the parts of the financial process that need automating. Finance functions, says Cran, are in danger of falling into a trap whereby the level of complexity introduced by their new platform or service does not match up with the training or skill-set of their staff, leaving them in a position which requires a lot of time-wasting manual intervention.

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