Being a Finance Business Partner

to a Digital Organization

March 2019Geetanjali Tandon

Bayer Crop Sciences

Technology has impacted how we work.

The pace of change is very quick,

but adoption is occurring even faster.

14yrs 12yrs 7yrs 4yrs 4yrs 3yrs 2yrs 19 days

68yrs 62yrs 50yrs 46yrs 28yrs 22yrs 18yrs

Mainstream

Early Adoption

Adolescent

Emerging

How has your company’s IT function

changed to enable digital adoption?

• Mobility

• Security

• Data centers

• Speed of networks

• Skill sets

• Data

• Cloud …

What does this mean for the

Finance Business Partner??

Finance Business Partner

Core Financial Principles

Analytics

Know the Business

Influence

Collaborate

Understand the Full Cycle

Transparency & Impact

Analysis

Learn the LingoBe the Translator

Bring the Discipline

of Investment Principles

Understand the full cycle.

• Transformation ideas start withinthe business.– These are not “IT-led transformations,”

but “business transformations.”

• Applications are not built to be maintained for free.– Ongoing support expenses have

become a big burden for IT departments.

• Agile development models lead to continuous improvements.

• During transformations, organizations must pay for

both new and old systems.

• All applications need continuous maintenance and

enhancement. Finance BPs must ensure it is budgeted.

• Tranformation is a continuous process. It does not stop

after one update.

Transparency & Impact Analysis• Explain IT spend in terms of business

• Explain savings, as well as growth of spend – Per unit spend may have reduced,

but total units may have increased

• Simple KPIs such as IT spend (% of Revenue) are not sufficient.– Understand the impact of spend

– Develop KPIs that matter to the business

• Trend analysis of various spend components is an important way to track is spend allocations.

*Sourced from TBM **Apptio application

*

**

Transparency & Impact Analysis

Learn the lingo.

*Word Cloud Sourced from: https://www.costrategix.com/blog/6-digital-transformation-signs/

As Finance BP, you do not need to be an expert on these technologies.

You must be able to explain what they are

and understand the impact on business

What is it

replacing?

Is it a mature

technology?

Is there a

change in the

expense model?

Understand

dependencies?

Be the translator.

I need my sales

people to get

accurate, upto data

for their clients

ABC application is a

CRM tool that will be

hosted in cloud

which can provide

you upto data

Translate in business and cost/benefit analysis.

What does this actually mean –

both in tangible and intangible terms?

Bring the discipline of investment

principles.Idea

Generation/ Pilot

Project Development& Valuation

ApprovalExecution

Closing

Follow Up/ Tracking

Agile projects need more frequent

communications and follow up.

A complete business and IT-partnered

approval process for investments Project Managers manage the

execution with frequent reviews

to understand project health

How many of you have ever felt

like this?

IT

As a Finance BP, you are the conduit

to a good relationship between CFOs & CIOs.

74% say “CFOs and CIOs need to collaborate to

drive technology innovation in a digital

economy”*

66% of finance leaders say that “IT executives

are reluctant to collaborate with their finance

peers” *

55% say the relationship between finance and

IT leadership is characterized by “tension and

disagreement” *

*Data from study conducted by Longitude

One of the most important roles

of the Finance BP is to be a storyteller.

Make technology an integral part

of your investment discussions.

• Develop a set of KPIs that tell your story

• Value and impact of investment

• Long-term trends

• Measure the benefits

Be ready to learn, unlearn and re-learn.

Continuously.