The disconnect between finance and accounting mattered less in years past, when the pace of change was slower and business disruptions smaller. But now, economic uncertainty, talent-market fluctuations, and the ever-accelerating pace and scale of business change have transformed disconnected processes and data hand-offs into serious business risks.
When finance or accounting is stuck waiting on information—like a relay racer impatiently waiting for their turn with the baton—it’s all but impossible to deliver the swift, actionable insights that business leaders need, when they need them. Half of finance leaders admit they’re making financial decisions based on gut instinct, because the data they need is siloed or in the wrong format or not ready available, according to a recent Workday survey.
Replacing gut instinct with data-driven insights can’t happen without collaboration. In fact, I’d argue a company’s ability to adapt and flex, to course correct or accelerate, is fundamentally tied to the strength and speed of its collaboration across teams. While difficult, I know it can be done, because in my current role as VP of Finance at Workday, I’ve seen firsthand what it looks like.
Here’s what I’d share with my peers looking to seed stronger, richer collaboration across the finance function.
Sync Around a Single Source of Truth
Accounting and finance are typically swimming in data—unfortunately, it’s not always in the same pool. Fragmented, siloed data causes team members to spend serious time tracking down data, as well as manually aggregating and ticking and tying it. That friction doesn’t only slow people down—it fuels frustration and impedes collaboration.
With a cloud-native platform, unified data means everyone has access to the same information in real-time. Cash flow projections that might traditionally be managed in accounting spreadsheets can instead be far more granular—and accessible to all. Our accounting team runs cash flow daily, easily drilling into details like vendor activities and various upcoming tax payments. At the same time, our FP&A team uses that same real-time, reliable cash flow to forecast much more accurately and often.
Swap Status Updates for More Meaningful Conversations
When my FP&A colleagues are building forecasts during the close, we need to know when milestones happen. Historically, these sorts of routine updates have happened through status meetings, haphazard emails, or watercooler check-ins.
We use dashboards that make it easy to understand exactly where we’re at throughout the close window. The dashboards are tailored to individual users, so I get the relevant status updates I need at a glance, and I can see exactly how accounting’s status might impact my team. Real-time status visibility results in far more productive conversations between our two teams. Instead of asking if something has been posted, we’re now connecting to problem solve specific or recurring issues.
Tailor New Workflows to Adapt Existing Processes
If collaborating with colleagues makes someone’s day-to-day job harder, it’s unlikely they’ll prioritize. To sustain true collaboration, find tools and processes that simultaneously drive collaboration and fit your usual ways of working. For example, I love the flexibility of spreadsheets, but don’t love stale or siloed data. But by using our cloud solution with OfficeConnect, I’m still able to use spreadsheets and layouts the way I like them and yet be able to refresh my data with a click of a button.
It is essential that you are able to present information/data at the right level for your audience. Take foreign currency exposure, for example. Accounting needs super-detailed data when collaborating with our treasury team on net currency exposure and hedging activities. But when I’m meeting with business partners from an operational standpoint, FX can feel too in the weeds. They need to be able to see their P&L, as they have control over it. By tailoring the reporting view—say, showing the actuals but at the budgeted FX rate with a few clicks—I can deliver exactly that. And flipping back and forth between views, based on the use case of who I’m collaborating with, requires almost no effort.
Put AI and ML to Work
Think of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as a valuable coworker, freeing up accounting and FP&A teams to spend more time on meaningful—and, yes, collaborative—work. We’ve seen the benefits of AI and ML across two main buckets. The first is speeding transaction processing by automating many of the repetitive, manual tasks that would otherwise eat up so much of our teams’ time. For instance, a majority of our vendor invoices now get scanned automatically. The second bucket is delivering strategic business insights, such as using predictability features to better understand variances.
Our organization faces a great deal of variability around employees’ wage base tax limits and how those limits affect employees’ vested shares—something that can change every year. AI and ML can help predict those cost variations, helping accounting deliver insights and finance create plans that are more efficient and effective. On the planning side, we’re also using algorithm-generated forecasts, and we’re using more flexible demand planning by leveraging data elements beyond the general ledger, such as operational drivers and third-party metrics.
Look to Keep Leveling Up
Improved collaboration is a massive undertaking. Rather than feeling discouraged by this never-ending endeavor, I get invigorated. For example, one common collaboration blind spot is budget variance analysis for novel initiatives that don’t easily fit within the standard general ledger string. Sure, FP&A teams have the flexibility to forecast and plan beyond the rigid parameters of sub-pillar groups and cost centers. But analyzing actuals is far harder because the accounting norm is understandably rigid.
Looking to solve that pain point (among others), our teams have started using dynamic tags, which means, along with the general ledger string, we’re able to easily add, sort or report by any number of dimensions. I’m the first to admit that I’m still learning, when it comes to making the most of these capabilities, but it’s already mind-boggling what a difference the tags make. And because FP&A and accounting are already used to working together closely, when we roll out something new, both sides are eager to collaborate around testing and giving feedback on how to make the most of the new feature of functionality.
As the CFO takes on an increasingly strategic role at many organizations, there's a growing need for teams across the finance function to work together—swiftly, smoothly and productively—to deliver the insights that can help guide c-suite decision-making. While investing in the right technology is a crucial part of meeting this modern need for stronger collaboration, I’ve realized that just as important is shaking free of traditional mindset. Because, now more than ever, maintaining a competitive advantage requires the entire company to be moving in the same direction.
Melissa Kullander is VP of Finance, Workday