In many companies, CFOs and Controllers have absorbed the responsibilities of Chief Information Officers. Unless the company is in business of creating technology or relies on it as the primary operational tool, it's only natural for the senior financial person to keep IT under her wing. Even if the entire value chain is integrated into an ERP, 70% of the modules are ours anyway.
Moreover, a lot of companies are not there yet. At best, most smaller businesses today have integrated systems that cover all of their Accounting and HR functions, plus a bunch of special-purpose software for other needs.
Leading IT function is a difficult undertaking for a CFO. It is plagued by conflicting tendencies:
1. On one hand, you want to be a strategic thinker. You want to be an agent of change that will propel your company into the future. You envision information seamlessly flowing from product design to financial statements. On the other hand, you are the one standing guard over the company's purse. Ideally, you don't want to spend any money at all.
2. On one hand, you don't want to meddle in other VP's business. They run their departments to the best of their abilities. On the other hand, if you are to make decisions about informational support of their functions, you will have no choice.
3. On one hand, you adore technological progress and you love trees. You dream of paperless offices. On the other hand, you cannot let go of the comfort the filing room with all the source documents gives you.
This list of woes can go on and on. However, none of the IT management issues can compare with the pain of your Boss's Expectations. I am not talking about a techy entrepreneur here. I am talking about your all-other-industries business owners.
Small business CEO's software expectations are usually focused on two aspects: implementation time and reporting capabilities. In their minds, both are in direct correlation with money.
As soon as the money are paid to the software vendor, they expect "all systems go" status. The customization, the setups, the data transfer are all expected to happen with installation, which, by the way, is taking too long ("What are these people are still doing here?").
The reporting expectations are proportional to the amount of money spent. Here are typical examples:
- if you've spent around $100,000, the system is expected to "print" a report with any combination of randomly chosen data ("What do you mean, the data needs to be exported into Excel and analyzed? What did I pay all that money for?")
- if you've spent around $500,000, the system should estimate December cash availability in March; the answer is expected while he is on the phone with you ("Can't you just look it up in YOUR system?")
- if you spent over $1,000,000, the system must initiate a daily call to the boss's personal phone reporting in a soothing voice, how much profit was generated yesterday.
Anything short of that is "UNACCEPTABLE!!!" And it's all your fault!
The Frustrated CFO 