Dive Temporary:
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Efficient CFO-CIO communication is crucial for organizations searching for to keep away from the potential pitfalls of main expertise investments, based on Gartner analyst Emily Riley.
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Digital investments are inclined to require a excessive degree of collaboration on account of their complexity and cross-functional nature, Riley, a senior analysis director at Gartner, stated final week on the firm’s 2023 CFO & Finance Government Convention close to Washington, D.C.
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“Our analysis has proven that sturdy CFO-CIO relationships result in measurably higher digital spending outcomes,” she stated.
Dive Perception:
A survey carried out by Gartner in December 2021 discovered that sturdy CFO-CIO relationships had been 51% extra prone to simply discover funding for digital initiatives, 39% extra prone to hold digital spending in keeping with a funds plan and 18% extra prone to obtain supposed enterprise outcomes.
Nonetheless, solely 30% of CFO-CIO relationships had been considered as sturdy partnerships.
Within the “70% of organizations that don’t take pleasure in a robust CFO-CIO relationship, we truly see some actually counterproductive and unsightly tendencies — finance and IT capabilities whose goals simply appear to be at odds; unproductive interactions; and a common lack of readability round what the group’s digital goals are and the way they plan to get there,” stated Riley, who makes a speciality of progress investments and price construction administration.
Colgate-Palmolive noticed a lower in duplicative digital investments throughout the New York-based shopper merchandise firm after its CFO and CIO started working to strengthen their relationship, based on a Gartner case research developed by interviews with the 2 executives.
The connection-building course of included steps comparable to “shared precedence mapping,” by which the duo recognized areas the place their expertise objectives had been in alignment.
“Naming that alignment may help finance and IT determine alternatives for better collaboration,” Riley stated. “On the identical time, this mapping train surfaces the place the true gaps and misalignments exist between finance and IT’s priorities.”
