How can a CFO foster enterprise-wide change in finance transformation?

Successful finance transformation initiatives cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Beyond building solutions that could potentially deliver enterprise-wide value, chief financial officers (CFOs) must also engage other department heads, alliance partners and key stakeholders in scope planning to encourage alignment on a shared vision.

Finance departments traditionally used data that works within their own part of the business, but they are increasingly using non-finance data from within their companies and unstructured data from external sources. An example of a significant finance transformation initiative might be embedding artificial intelligence (AI) in forecasting revenue. Modern systems will be based on insights delivered by AI. While these reports may be accurate and delivered by a CFO with a high level of confidence, the CFO’s peers (who previously relied on other manual reports yielding higher payouts) may resist this change. In this finance transformation scenario, CFOs must consider the perspectives of colleagues in other departments to mitigate resistance.

Effective integration between finance and non-finance data is crucial to the ever-evolving technology landscape. Strategic CFOs are stewards of transformation whose change management styles enable operational excellence.

Risks of change management failure

Money is left on the table. Without understanding new ways of working through change management programs, businesses will not realize the full value of any finance transformation. It’s like buying a vehicle with 4-wheel drive, but never engaging the feature—you will continue to get stuck in the snow. In finance transformations, we have seen similar operational pitfalls. We’ve seen teams continue to custom-tailor reports in Excel after their enterprise implements a new ERP or other reporting system. We’ve seen staff double-check transactional work even after the company tasked a new shared services center to execute these transactions and manage quality.

Performance takes a nosedive. Unless a focus is put on business partnership, insight generation, continuous improvement and advisory activities, business units will not fully benefit from finance transformation efforts. There is always a learning curve during transformation, but if CFOs don’t employ the most effective change management to mitigate this curve, finance function performance such as operational process metrics or time spent on business partnering, will likely lead to an increase in total cost of implementation and system ownership, which could negatively impact the business.

The superstars leave. Top talent within an organization has many career options available to them. Those individuals expect to work on well-managed programs with clear expectations. Employees need to know how transformation will make their lives better and progress their careers. If they experience the extra effort involved in transformation without a clear view of the benefits, they are likely to look for other, more attractive opportunities. Robust change programs that highlight and champion individual benefits and enable participation and contribution from skilled employees help to lower top talent attrition and have broad business impact.

Succeed in collaborative finance transformation with strategic talent

The approach will vary depending on the enterprise, the maturity of the finance organization and how the plans on scaling your new system. There are different starting points and catalysts that drive the finance transformation agenda within finance organizations.

Transformation is constant and essential, but one of the biggest challenges to overcome is transforming talent. The focus of the CFO has shifted from transactional work to relational value that generates business partners.

Organizational constructs are evolving, especially after the pandemic. Now CFOs should be less focused on acquiring talent with traditional finance competencies and more focused on talent who can be strategic and mindful of behaviors and outcomes.

Winning strategies for managing change across finance and non-finance teams

When working to unite finance and non-finance teams, here are some key strategies:

Think big, start small, act fast. Finance transformation should feel empowering and realistic. A big-bang mindset is great, but the goal should be achievable. This is possible in small, fast-paced phases where value and benefits are generated quickly and reinvested. A CFO should feel like his or her team is finally enabled to reach operational efficiency that supports the business and makes life easier. Long gone are the days of feeling change fatigue amid a big-bang transformation that also requires heavy cost takeout.

Involve your whole workforce. Spending USD $100 million or more on an ERP solution will not drive benefits if the workforce does not know how to use it. CFOs need to enable the workforce to operate in their new environment and use the new tools and technologies to make their roles more efficient.

Don’t hunt for unicorns. It’s impossible to find a one person within a finance organization who has all the skills required for every role required in a modernization initiative. But by training and equipping people across the enterprise with diverse skills and by creating a culture that’s receptive to change, teams can operate holistically to create the unicorn effect they’re striving to achieve. When working with CFO and senior finance executive clients, IBM Consulting brings not only finance and accounting experts but also data scientists, industry and technology leaders.

To gain widescale adoption of transformation initiatives, CFOs must ensure that relevant stakeholders have a purpose and a place in the planning of efforts and design principles. Empower employees with new ways of working to fully realize initiative benefits that you, as CFO, are championing.

Source: ibm.com

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Collecting multiple community viewpoints after a crime

Seeing George Floyd have his breath forcibly taken from him in 2020 left me with a strong urge to act. But what could I do? Inside of IBM, the Black community and allies decided to use data and technology to turn the frustration of #BlackLivesMatter into something that can actually make a difference. I felt compelled to join in.

Through a design thinking workshop, I got enthused about the idea of using AI to gather and process the various viewpoints that occur after a crime in a community. The project took shape and became the Incident Accuracy Reporting System (IARS) which allows witnesses and victims to corroborate evidence after a crime. This allows a more complete picture of a crime to be gathered from the whole community, rather than the one that is usually just captured by a police report.

From that original design thinking workshop through development inside of IBM, I was pleased to see the application released as an open source project just over a year ago, opening it to a much bigger base for development and for potential for use. Working on this project has really opened my eyes up to the potential for AI to make a positive impact in our lives in ways that I could not have imagined.

Use of AI to simplify data capture 

For a system like this to be successful, people need to be able to easily enter information after a crime occurs. That should be in whatever format makes the most sense. IARS is a mobile app, so thinking through the capabilities of a phone, we needed to allow facts to be captured after a crime via text, pictures, video and audio (voice). The use of AI in the form of the Watson Text to Speech service enables video and voice information to be standardized into a text document: the normal format for a police report, and a useful format for further AI analysis.

Use of AI to find difference of perspective 

After an incident occurs, some accounts may converge while others may differ. For IARS, we use AI clustering algorithms to automate comparison of various reports. We arrange topics into clusters that show similarity in viewpoints. We want the AI system to help us find those instances where the perspective differs.  We had started with the k-means clustering algorithm but are switching over to DBSCAN so we don’t have to specify the number of clusters we are looking for. These algorithms highlight which reports are outside of the cluster. The difference can suggest anything from a restricted viewpoint of an incident to intentional bias or a cover-up. The potential here is that the application can scale and quickly identify where there is a different perspective that needs to be further looked at.

Scaling the AI across any cloud  

We have been using Watson Studio to manage our AI models. This makes it easier for us to switch out algorithms while keeping the core application intact and also gives us the opportunity to be able to scale the application in a cloud environment.

Like any open source project, IARS has evolved over time. Originally there were 12 people working on this, covering the frontend development, setup of the backend and the data science and AI needs. The members involved have changed, based on the degree to which they have availability to work on this project.  One key learning for me is the power of diversity: we’ve had team members coming from distant places like the UK and Uruguay, which has really helped me see how approaches to social justice can really differ across the globe.

Source: ibm.com

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3 ways to eliminate the pain of manual transactions with your smaller partners

The global pandemic has shown us that supplier collaboration and innovation have never been more critical – as is the need for trading partner networks to be more fluid. Companies are augmenting and switching suppliers at a faster pace in response to geographic boundaries imposed by the virus, workforce disruptions and dramatic demand mix changes. When agility and resiliency are key to survival during extended periods of volatility, you can’t continue to live with manual processes to onboard and transact with trading partners. The pain of error-prone manual data processing, and inefficient, paper-based communications – fax, email and physical documents –is too great and in some jurisdictions becoming obsolete.

To help you digitize and automate B2B transactions with every trading partner – including smaller partners that lack the technology and expertise to support EDI transactions – we offer the following solutions.

◉ IBM Sterling Supplier Transaction Manager, formerly IBM Sterling Web Forms Supplier Community

◉ IBM Sterling Customer Transaction Manager, formerly IBM Sterling Web Forms Customer Community

◉ IBM Sterling Catalog Manager, formerly IBM Sterling Web Forms Supplier Catalog and Customer Catalog

Your partners only need internet access to start connecting and collaborating efficiently and cost-effectively with you. Here are three ways these solutions help you and your smaller suppliers and customers work better together:

1. Automate the onboarding process. Automate registration and information gathering of suppliers and customers through the IBM Sterling Transaction Manager powerful web portal. There’s no need to manually contact partners, form partner agreements and collect information.

2. Digitize and automate transactions. Create, exchange and view documents without asking your partners to change their way of doing business. Sterling Supplier Transaction Manager allows you to submit documents, such as a Purchase Order (P.O.) in EDI format, via the web portal to your suppliers and converts into a format they can view and use. They can create and send back P.O. acknowledgements, advanced shipping notices (ASNs) and other documents, either uploading documents to the web portal or entering the data directly into an online form. The solution ensures compliance with EDI and business rules and handles the document conversion so that supplier documents can be brought into your systems for viewing and processing without manual intervention. Use Sterling Customer Transaction Manager to adopt the same processes in reverse with your smaller customers and gain similar efficiencies. Smaller retailers can generate a P.O. more easily in a format your systems can use, which streamlines your sales process.

3. Share product information easily. With Sterling Catalog Manager, smaller suppliers can share their product catalogs and updates with you, uploading detailed product information such as models, configurations and prices through a web portal. The solution generates an EDI product catalog or other structured file for use by your enterprise’s ERP system. You can also make it easier for your smaller, non-EDI customers to order products from you by distributing curated product catalogs via the web portal, including business rules and the ordering process.

As we move to the “next normal,” the ability to adapt to change, including churn and shifts in trading partner networks, will be part of every business’ strategy. Our focus at IBM is on supporting you as you accelerate your path to resiliency and agility. To help, we are offering eligible organizations special discounts on 12-month contracts for Sterling Transaction Manager.

Schedule a consultant to explore if these solutions are a good fit for your organization and how to get started quickly.

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IBM Connections 6 CR3 now available for download

IBM has released “Cumulative Refresh 3”, the latest update to IBM Connections 6. CR3 centers our efforts on streamlining the user experience and providing a more contemporary UI with features focused on usability, engagement, and maintenance.

This update allows end users to find their relevant content faster than before, by remembering the last view used in Files and returning to where they left off on the next visit. The new “Recently Visited” views available in Files and on the Community Catalog page show the files and communities a user looked at most recently. This makes it easier to find things on which users are currently working.

In addition to IBM Connections CR3, the mobile app for IBM Connections has also been updated with a number of end user focused improvements – look for it on the app stores.

Here is a list of the most important enhancements in the CR3 release:

Focus on your work

◉ Quickly return to the Communities and Files you viewed recently.

◉ Instantly filter recent content in Communities and Files.

◉ Pick up where you left off – Files will return you to the last view where you were working.

◉ Simplified navigation and a full-screen option for Files make it easier for both new and experienced users to find the content they are looking for faster.

Recently viewed Files and Communities with type-ahead; rich Communities on Mobile

Increase User Adoption

◉ Deploy “Visual Update 1” with IBM Connections Customizer for a beautiful, modern user experience.

◉ Mobile Connections users have a consistent experience with the web user interface.

◉ Upload images and files with a consistent user experience throughout Connections.

◉ New filters for Metrics provide additional insights into usage activity and community health, and Metrics now allows for the import of additional historic data.

◉ Use the new Highlights app (preview) to engage users with easier to design, fit-to-purpose Communities.

Easier to install and customize IBM Connections

◉ New quick filters and the universal search capability can now be powered by Elasticsearch instead of SOLR – install it once to simplify the environment.

◉ Deploy “Visual Update 1” to provide a clean, modern user interface for IBM Connections and as a basis for easy customization of colors, fonts, icons, and other attributes based on the new design language for IBM Connections.

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