At ASUG, we like to hear from our com­mu­ni­ty about rel­e­vant top­ics, trends, and shifts in the mar­ket­place. If you’ve par­tic­i­pat­ed in some of the sur­veys we’ve con­duct­ed on top­ics like this one, we’d like to thank you.

Finance and IT Team­ing Up

In a study we con­duct­ed for LeaseAc­cel­er­a­tor ear­li­er this year, we asked some ques­tions to bet­ter under­stand behav­iors and pref­er­ences relat­ed to finan­cial tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing how finance depart­ments and IT depart­ments are work­ing together.

Here are some of the key take­aways from the study.

Cur­rent adop­tion of SAP S/4HANA Finance is low, but we expect it to grow soon. While less than 10 per­cent of ASUG’s finance com­mu­ni­ty is cur­rent­ly using SAP S/4HANA Finance, anoth­er 50 per­cent is expect­ed to adopt the pack­age with­in the next three years. And the prod­uct should have near-opti­mal mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion when it’s all said and done. Only 6 per­cent of ASUG mem­bers in finance say they have no plans to move to SAP S/4HANA Finance.

Respon­si­bil­i­ty for finan­cial tech­nol­o­gy pur­chas­es depends on the company’s orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture. When the finance depart­ment sits in either the CIO’s or CFO’s depart­ment, the IT depart­ment makes these calls. But when these two exec­u­tives share the respon­si­bil­i­ty for the finance depart­ment, it’s the finance depart­ment that becomes empow­ered to han­dle the deci­sions on finan­cial technology.

Finance and IT depart­ments need to talk more. Those in the finance depart­ment (33 per­cent, in fact) are not as knowl­edge­able as they should be about the sys­tems need­ed to exe­cute the company’s finan­cial close process. Con­verse­ly, in 45 per­cent of ASUG mem­ber com­pa­nies that we spoke with, the IT depart­ment is not famil­iar with how many gen­er­al ledgers its com­pa­ny runs. These two depart­ments both have inter­est in get­ting the tech­no­log­i­cal aspect of finance right, so we think these walls need to come down.

Many finance process­es are still too man­u­al. And man­u­al can mean time-con­sum­ing and/​or prone to errors. Even more alarm­ing is that almost half of sur­vey respon­dents with­in the finance and IT depart­ments are unaware of what their com­pa­ny is doing when it comes to han­dling new account­ing rules or keep­ing track of leas­es for finan­cial report­ing. Many com­pa­nies appear to be lack­ing in their under­stand­ing of finan­cial strategy.

Finance and Tech­nol­o­gy as a Win­ning Combo

If you are part of the finance and IT com­mu­ni­ties, where do you find your­self on each of these issues? Are some of these chal­lenges news to you? If so, you should talk with your team about what actions you can take now to ush­er in the next wave of inclu­siv­i­ty and inno­va­tion in your company’s finan­cial tech strategy.