The CFO is the COO - or is the COO the CFO?
Established back in 1999, SSON was one of the first to recognise the rise of shared services and the need of those working in them to have a support network. As a global operation, they have a presence in most of the key markets – Asia, Eastern Europe, Australia etc, and can lay claim to over 110,000 members.
However, up until recently their presence in the UK has been muted. But with an event in Glasgow last year and a couple of events queued up for this year, that looks set to change. So, I went along to their Finance Transformation Europe event at the Radisson at Heathrow last week to find out more.
They were hoping to attract around 150 key finance professionals to each of the two days, and although the space they’d booked certainly provided growing room, I’d say they achieved what they set out for.
First up on the stage was star of the show, Roche board member and CFO of Smith & Nephew, Julie Brown. Being a FTSE 100 company with revenues of $4.6bn, any complexity hidden within the processes or systems of a company that size are going to become amplified. And despite being in her words “sheep dipped in lean sigma” in the end three things mattered most in their transformation project – mindset, skills and capabilities – in that order.
With 20 ERP systems in Europe alone and a decentralised finance team, Smith & Nephew was fragmented and inefficient – so changing that was going to involve a shift in culture above everything else. Two years later, the company now has just a single ERP instance in Europe, and after taking a long, hard look at their KPIs and accountability levels, pared things down and simplified. Taking a leaf out of the Toyota handbook, and with what sounds like a passing nod to William Morris*, Julie said you should ask yourself “Is it necessary for the customer? Is it needed for regulations?” If the answer’s no – ditch it.
And as Julie so rightly pointed out; “nobody likes change apart from a wet baby” so that should be the number one hurdle to approach. In fact this turned out to be a common theme over the next two days, with Keith McAvoy, former SSC Director and GPO Hertz, delving deeper into the people aspect of change management. One of the key takeaways from his session was to focus on the “must haves” of a transformation strategy. Work out what these are, why they’re imperative, and if nothing else, ensure that these are achieved without fail. It’s a lesson that borders on the simplistic, but if a list of objectives includes could haves, nice to haves and should haves, jumbled together with the “must haves” it’s a project doomed to fail.
There were a couple of other sessions which stood out as excellent over the two days including the panel discussion with Greg Whiting from Goldman Sachs, Jeff Singleton from Rocco Forte Hotels and Simon Edwards from GE Digital. It’s always nice to see a panel discussion in the agenda, and as long as the mic isn’t hogged for too long by one person, it’s often a more dynamic, fast paced session.
A couple of interesting points came out, one being a topic I’ve noticed on Twitter a few times recently – the view that the CFO is the new COO. As someone who oversees the strategic direction of the company, increasingly, the view is that the CFO is actually accountable for everything. In fairness, I've seen it represented the other way round too. What this probably means is that there is some convergence, but ultimately highlights the new fluidity in the workplace.
This was a view that linked nicely into Greg's comments around the fact that they don’t necessarily recruit finance professionals to finance roles. Greg said that they are happy to train the finance skill – in their view, it being more important in today’s environment for their staff to be analytical and intellectually curious. And in a way, this relates to the point made by Simon that in the next 5 years, there will be no more accounts payable.
Of course, he said this (and admitted so on the stage) to be controversial, but the point he was making was a fair one – that the rise of automation will see the end of accounts payable (as we know it) in the next five years (more of which later), which leads us back to the convergence of roles and the importance of change management.
The rise of automation, and with it the ability to track KPIs and report on them across departments has enabled a more lean management approach. Of course it takes time to deliver, but if you really are going to “transform” rather than just change a little bit – the best place to start is with a question – Why? Everything else falls into place behind it.
*Have nothing in your house which you neither know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful
