Having worked in financial planning and analysis (FP&A) for over 15 years, I'm a frequent customer of corporate IT.

From the setup of the company laptop to pulling data for analysis from different systems, IT is all over the office, and it becomes more and more present in the daily operation of FP&A.

As the appetite for detailed business insights is growing on data that is accumulating, we face the need for a stronger, true cooperation between FP&A and IT, to support faster, more accurate business decisions.

The Need for Change: Old Ways Do Not Work Anymore

15 years ago everything in business was clearer and easier to oversee. Duties were segregated and responsibilities more clearly defined. Systems and equipment were provided and maintained by IT, business analysis was mostly self-serviced and executed by finance, using spreadsheets or pre-defined system reports, often printed out. 

Although we were in the same building, it seemed like we were working at separate companies. Payroll and organizational charts were the only places Finance and IT would be seen side by side. IT was only contacted once the user had a problem with a system or a tool, while the user was only contacted when an upgrade or maintenance was needed.

Things have drastically changed since. The world has become more information driven, with more data, more analysis, increased need for accuracy and faster speeds for survival. Currently, the pressure for better communication and improved cooperation between Finance and IT is increasing, yet old habits die hard. 

What Stands Between Finance and IT?

While companies and situations are different, there are some patterns that I recognize everywhere I go. Below are the ones that I feel are the most important, and based on my experience, some recipes to overcome them.

• Silo mindset. Talking to business professionals, it seems that both Finance and IT are still viewed by many as inward looking enclaves, using their own language and hierarchy, rejecting ownership outside their comfort zone. This creates several problems from a lack of trust to a lack of efficiency. 
• Issues with collaboration. IT provides the platform and produces the data but doesn't own them. FP&A, as the user, thus needs to clean and reconcile the data before analysis. This, in turn, takes resources away from the qualitative work. 
• Lack of trust. We are all too often using the old methods, trying to keep up with information demand by fattening up finance departments and creating massive redundancies by a reporting bloat of spreadsheets and presentations. We are manually processing huge data dumps, running the risk of errors and misinformation, not to mention the limited use of these static, non-repeatable snapshots of business history.

This practice has to stop. IT cannot distance itself from the business the way it did before, and FP&A has to understand that no matter how appealing it is for managers to run big departments, no finance department will be big enough to manually keep up with the information demand of a modern consumer business. Things will be overlooked, errors will be made, decisions will be postponed, opportunities will be missed. 

The to do list for FP&A: Building a Bridge Between Finance and IT

I firmly believe that FP&A should be in the driver seat of change and foster the collaboration between finance and IT departments. Therefore, I would like to share a list of some achievable goals that FP&A can easily begin with.

1. Give clear messages and requests. 

Core deliverables need to be defined, demand for data needs to be based on standard, repeatable calendars that can be followed by everyone. No IT department is able to provide quality service if they don't know what the expectations are. 

2. Adopt some basic IT knowledge.

The ivory tower attitude is another issue that should be addressed. Finance should be able not only to communicate what the business needs but also to understand limitations of the associated technology. It is important to appreciate that IT is not there to provide “whatever” at “any time”. 

3. Stop creating redundancies. 

While it might seem easier to hire another analyst to put together manually the fancy pie chart exactly the way senior management likes to see it (special attention to the colors!), it is ultimately Finance's responsibility to initiate standardization and to make sure the balance of demand and supply between the business and other support functions is established and maintained.

The to do list for IT: Working Together is Success

Although efforts from the FP&A side are important, they are not enough if IT is not ready to collaborate. The desire for collaboration should be mutual to achieve success.

1. Understand and embrace the fact that IT is a support function. 

IT needs to listen to the business, and take ownership of the service it provides. This includes but is not limited to data integrity and data quality. These need to be controlled at the source, error detection cannot be delegated to the user. Don't know how good data looks like? Ask! 

2. Understand basic finance.

IT cannot be fully detached from the business, it is not an island of technology. Simple metrics like growth, simple business calculations like adding VAT % need to be understood to be able to detect and correct errors where the data are created.

In Retail, the control of business data is essential. At one of the retailers I’ve worked for, a dedicated BI Team was created within IT, to take ownership of the business data provided to FP&A. This way IT stayed in control of the platforms and FP&A was also assured of the quality of the data it uses.

Conclusion: Working on a Forced Marriage Can Bring Some Benefits

All in all, FP&A and IT are co-dependent, and borders between them become blurrier by the day. They are both support functions that need a basic understanding of the other to be able to communicate and collaborate efficiently. 

FP&A needs to move away from being a 'reporting department' to become a true adviser of the business, and the level of trust it needs is not achievable without effective collaboration with a service-oriented, business-focused IT. It's a forced marriage where both parties are responsible for the open and honest communication, and for making it work.