Transformation insights

November 15, 2023

A blog post by Beth Kaplan, Carrie Lieberman, and Court Watson

The finance and accounting industry is in a state of transformation—and it is a constantly evolving environment as the industry adapts to disruption and newfound landscapes. As executives and finance professionals are in the thick of the financial digital transformation journey, they may offer valuable insights from the hurdles overcome and successful milestones achieved on the road thus far. In a recent Dbriefs webcast, Lessons from the road: Wins and roadblocks on the transformation journey, we explored some lessons learned with leading executives navigating transformation and the new finance data model in a positive direction. Here are some insights and new methodologies that leverage considerations from some of the accelerators driving successful transformations.

Roadblocks: Common transformation challenges with the finance data model

Organizations often face transformation challenges as they struggle with barriers to evolving their finance data model (FDM), including overly ambitious timelines, lack of visibility and data governance, and incorrect data mapping.

Data conversion timeline constraints challenge the balance between data conversion timelines and data accuracy due to the potential mapping risks and consequences of data conversion errors.

A lack of stakeholder visibility and feedback is a roadblock to receiving timely feedback and attention from critical stakeholders amid numerous competing priorities.

Insufficient data governance, policies, and procedures foster an inability to maintain data integrity and consistency across systems and processes due to a lack of governed policies and procedures, roles and responsibilities, and proactive measures for the FDM function.

The large volume and complexity of transactions—coupled with varying data sources and formats, discrepancies, errors, and delays in transaction processing in the new FDM—contribute to challenges in achieving accurate and timely reconciliation.

The right time to engage controllership with FDM implementation

When is the right time to engage an organization’s Controllership function during a financial digital transformation? A lack of business involvement has a considerable influence on data transformation challenges. However, the proper involvement of the business function—from the initial finance transformation discussions to the current state and reporting assessment—can also be a key indicator for success. 

What many organizations have seen in successful transformations is that the earlier Finance and Controllership functions are involved, the fewer resource hours are necessary overall to complete the implementation effort. This translates to more meaningful time in the pre-planning and design phase, providing prebuild design validations and robust communication of the process and reporting requirements to the technology teams. Front-loading involvement contributes to solution outcomes that better align with the needs of the business and the desires of the customer.