Financial Transformation – Revolution or Evolution?

As you begin your financial transformation journey, it is important to first assess your current level of maturity and key areas of focus for improvement. Once you have made that assessment, the next big decision is how to implement. Will you opt for a staged evolutionary approach, or a big bang revolution? Through extensive experience, we find that the answer often comes down to appetite within the organization itself. The key is to try and move quickly, always within your resource constraints, but with the right methodology and systems to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

In effect, this means adhering to three core principles:

• Realize that you may not be able to do everything at once. With a large number of processes, people, geographies and partners, start somewhere that is manageable enough to deliver, but also somewhere that can demonstrate value.
• Ensure that there is a suitable project methodology and defined project team that has the appropriate resources to make the project a success.
• Plan thoroughly and improve what has been done before. If you need best practice examples, work with a 3rd party or your software vendor.

On this last point, the software provider you decide to partner with is extremely critical, so you need to make sure you’re asking the right questions to help make the right choice. Does the solution you are evaluating include both configurable workflows & ad hoc reporting? Does it have a Risk Intelligent RPA™ functionality roadmap? Does it provide pre-built Connectors to your ERP of choice and have agnostic integration capabilities? Can it handle exceptionally high volumes of reconciliations and journal entries and support a risk-based approach?

If you want to learn how to best identify which technology best suites your business, how to get a project like this approved internally, and what you need to think about when it comes to delivery, download our most recent eBook, Ensuring a Successful Record to Report Software Delivery.

Written by: Ed Brandvik and Kelli Shoevlin