If you want to transform IT, start with finance

Re:If you want to transform IT, start with finance by andrewlgood on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @08:10AM (#27832173)

I think one of the communication challenges in this broad discussion is what is a "finance" person. Several people refer to them as people in Accounting (accountants) when I think they really mean Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A analysts). Within most Finance organizations there is a big difference. Accountants (particularly early in their career) focus primarily on the past and properly describing it in the general ledger following accounting rules (e.g. GAAP / IFRS). FP&A analysts (should) focus on forecasting the future, then looking at what happens and describing why it differed from their forecast (variance analysis) so they can make a better forecast next time.

I agree with you that it is unlikely accountants will learn SQL/Python/R. They are tied to their ERP and Excel. My hope is the FP&A analysts will develop the SQL/Python/R skills to enable the better/faster development of complex models to forecast.

>The product that would've solved the problem (and then some) was IBM's TM1

I have not used TM1, but have heard many good things about it. Today I hear more people discuss Workday's Adaptive Planning than any other product in that class. Unfortunately most are still creating their primary forecast in a spreadsheet, then loading it into the TM1 or Adaptive which then has additional rules to build out the forecast.

I agree that using these types of products increases transparency and speed.

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Re:If you want to transform IT, start with finance by tpuser on Thursday July 15, 2021 @03:58AM (#27842387)

>I think one of the communication challenges in this broad discussion is what is a "finance" person. Several people refer to them as people in Accounting (accountants) when I think they really mean Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A analysts).

Noted and agreed. I'm not well versed in finance lingo beyond what I learned by taking up a business analyst role. The distinction you mention was likely lost on me due to the fact that this division didn't really have an FP&A team and every accountant was given the title of "financial analyst".

Sure, FSS made projections, but those were all terrible. They were worth less to functional managers than the paper they had been printed on. A given year's labor forecast came in the form a single column of multimillion dollar (Ex)cells per cost center. No ability to dig in. Consistently low by ~10%. Did leadership get a bonus by expanding the business book over the course of a year? Who knows?!

FP&A was an afterthought for leadership. I was probably the only full-time FP&A employee (at an office with over 700 employees), yet I did not report to finance--I was under the program management umbrella for some reason. It didn't take long to recognize the potential value-add that our finance area could provide with a single change. Alas.

Appreciate the replies. You probably feel my pain better than I do.

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