Achieving a shared goal

Many decades ago, just about the only requirement for a company’s set of accounts was that they be true and fair. Those were halcyon days: honest boards could concentrate on providing information that reflected the performance and the state of affairs of the business, untroubled by the burdens of detailed regulation. Dishonest boards could manipulate data and transactions, similarly untroubled by the burdens of detailed regulation – and unhindered by the constraints of an unerasable audit trail.

Since then, financial reporting regulation has gone through a succession of Big Bangs. Technology has exploded on the scene in ways unimaginable back in the days of paper ledgers. And most importantly, the information demands of boards and all other senior executives are as complex as the new business models they manage.

And yet, despite the huge passage of time since the days when the only impediment to accessing information was that the filing cabinet was locked, finance and systems still often struggle to connect with each other. It has become a cliché that the bean-counters don’t appreciate what the techies bring to the table, while the geeks regard the pen-pushers as Luddite cost-control nerds. The goal of joined-up thinking between finance and IT as a means of ensuring better decision-making remains, for many, still out of reach, if not completely elusive.

In recent years, Financial Director has confronted this problem head on. Various research projects we have undertaken confirmed that there is, indeed, an understanding gap between finance and IT. Worse, there is often an “appreciation gap” whereby each side fails to value the contribution that the other can make.

In 2002 Financial Director reported that barely one company in 10 claimed that mutual understanding, support and communication between finance and IT was “excellent”. A year later, it was apparent that IT did not rate finance’s contribution towards setting IT strategy anywhere near as highly as finance rated its own contribution. And in a joint research project with our sister title, Computing, in 2007, we found that IT recognised there had to be more understanding by finance of IT’s objectives as well as an improvement in IT’s understanding of the business’s objectives. Suffice to say that FDs’ views weren’t symmetrical to those of IT.

Taking the discussion further, Financial Director is again partnering Computing to produce this supplement. In it, you will find some of the most up-to-date thinking from experts and the real-world experiences of firms at the sharp end of implementing solutions. This joint publication brings together some of the keenest business journalism with a technology bent – or is it technology journalism with a business bent? The lines between the two seem to be blurring – but there is nothing out of focus about the goal: achieving superior business decision-making, whatever the technology.