Overcoming DX challenges in the finance department

BUSINESSES face many obstacles in implementing digital transformation (DX), and different departments within an organization face different sets of challenges that are unique to them.

Take the finance department, for example. Unlike other business units, their most pressing issue is not implementing digital technologies to processes, but rather to get the people on onboard the transformation agenda and use the techs solution efficiently.

Enterprises are not only finding it difficult to align finance professionals around the organizations’ digital initiatives but also further facing challenges around reskilling them for a more digitally enabled financial system.

Another problem that is plaguing businesses is the lack of clear vision in managing financial data, which happens to be a significant aspect of DX. Companies need to have a robust strategy when it comes to integrating data in a way that could be incorporated and reflected in the organization’s financial reporting, analytics, and projections.

Making data integral to DX in finance

To overcome these challenges, companies have to take a different approach and put data at the center of it all.

From a technical standpoint, the finance team in a company should be able to gather and analyze data from the entire organization, which will enable them to derive actionable insights.

To achieve this, businesses must first craft a robust data governance framework which spells out how financial data such as expense reports or invoiced are entered, the systems used to enter it and how they are integrated throughout the entire organization.

By doing so, the data becomes more trustworthy and standardized, which would help the company to be data-driven.

Beyond that, finance leaders within companies should also understand how the different business units are connected in order to achieve accurate financial planning.

While it is crucial to integrate data from various departments, it is also equally important to understand what is being captured and what is not.

Harmonize DX in finance across the enterprise

With the advent of cutting edge computing, storage and networking technology, deploying new systems is no longer the biggest hurdle, but harmonizing them to serve the organization’s common transformation goals remains elusive for many companies.

Due to the past misalignment of digital journeys and goals, different business units may have acquired and deployed different solutions, which store data in silos, or worse still, depend on legacy systems.

One solution to this problem is building a system that could consolidate diverse systems within the company.

Numerous financial planning and corporate performance management software currently available in the market have the ability to connect to different systems to pool data from diverse sources within an organization. The key to success lies in choosing the right product.

In conclusion, the hesitance to adopt digital tools within the finance department in many companies could be hampering their overall DX agenda.

However, by putting data at the center and deploying a robust financial planning solution, the finance department could play the role of common denominator that could harmonize the organizations’ DX efforts, while also pushing the company to be data-driven.

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