Some business professions do not hesitate to circumvent the ISD to create their own digital BU. Why? Today we are talking about this practice within the financial department.
Our two recent articles on IT purchasing decisions made outside the ISD (” 3 out of 10 IT purchasing decisions are made outside the ISD “) and on the DAF priorities for technology investments (” The priorities of the DAF for technological investments (Gartner) “) have highlighted the drift that some DAF tends to take in hand their technology projects and to dismiss the ISD.
Despite the reminder of the essential role led by the ISD, both on the issues of infrastructure and choice of solutions, interoperability, security, or support, and the invitation to adopt a hybrid approach incorporating, under the control the general management that must act as a sponsor, all components of the company, some businesses no longer include the CIO in the strategic choices of acquisition, deployment and maintenance of technologies.
These professions that create their IT team
These businesses do not hesitate to create a digital business unit (BU) to take charge of their IT projects. Finance is one of those professions that are now leaving ISD’s client status and verticalizing their equipment and IT development approach, creating what the industry describes as a channel of ‘non-traditional’ suppliers and partners.
Today, most of the strategic business priorities are directly related to digital and informatics, or indirectly dependent on technology. But in finance, for example, budget management, profitability analysis or risk management are considered sufficiently differentiating for the DAF to create its own IT team. And no matter what data analysis solutions require diverse but hard-to-find skills or that data protection against cyber-attacks and regulatory compliance requires a cross-industry approach and specific applications of technology …
The priorities of finance
In fact, what are the priorities of the CFO and finance?
- 60% – Planning Strategy and Budget
- 52% – Profitability Analysis
- 46% – Risk Management
- 44% – Accuracy of cash flow forecasts
- 35% – Regulatory Compliance
- 33% – Prevention against cyber attacks and data loss
- 20% – Tax Planning
- 12% – Analysis of dashboards
In search of tools to inform decision-making, one in two CFOs is now in direct contact with technology providers and external consultants. In the same order of magnitude, they are 1 in 2 to turn to their peers, or to consult the economic press (!). On the other hand, they are only 17% to read the specialized press. And nearly half of them are looking to get away from their dependence on internal computing.
When asked about their motivation to create their own IT team, the DAFs answer:
- 53% – To speed up project response and completion time
- 53% – Easier and more efficient collaboration with internal IT staff
- 31% – To maintain tighter control over their own staff
- 27% – Because the cloud has changed the rules on purchasing, supply and staffing
Looking for skills
This is why a majority of CFOs intend to play an exclusive role within their department in the choice, deployment and management of their IT tools. This also means that they have to take care of all the processes, from development to analysis and data protection. The DAF then creates a hybrid role and seeks to acquire specific funds. Not to mention the delicate mission of recruiter, because finance needs skills. This has an influence even on the ‘technological’ professions that finance recruits:
- 44% – Data analyst
- 40% – System Administrator
- 24% – Database Administrator
- 23% – Business System Analyst
- 23% – Security Specialist
- 19% – Software Developer
- 19% – Data scientist
- 15% – Cloud specialist
