Finance transformation
Pitchford, the CFO of Experian, the global consumer credit powerhouse. “It has a huge power for good as it lowers the cost and the friction in all our daily lives, and the finance function is no different.”
The power of digital
Pitchford says the world now works in real time – with monthly financially close cycles becoming a thing of the past. But what does that mean in practice? The truth is that one organisation’s reality is very different to another’s. Depending on your industry, your business structure, and where you sit within it, digitisation will mean something different to you than it does to your competitors – or even your cross-enterprise colleagues. All the same, digital transformation essentially means providing finance teams with meaningful insights from across the business. Gone are the days when finance was finance and other parts of the business were siloed entities that only came to you when there was a problem. “As a technology company, we are constantly changing and evolving, and finance within the company is no exception,” says Pitchford. “We’ve radically transformed our finance department over the past decade, using technology and innovation to change the way we do things.”
Experian, for its part, has created a so-called ‘Global Finance Services’ organisation, which has progressively taken on ever-more complex global finance services. The shift began with transaction processing, but quickly moved beyond that into complex financial planning and analysis, controllership and business partnering. Now well over half of the company’s global finance team operates within it.
For a business this size that is no mean feat. Experian, after all, operates across 43 countries, employing around 20,600 people, and tracks the financial behaviour data of 2.3 billion consumers globally. From there, meanwhile, Pitchford says the next phase of the transformation is to bring digitisation to the company’s financial processes, enabling the shift of finance from batch to real time. “This,” he explains, “involves investment in ever greater harmonisation of data structures across the globe, investments in data scientists within finance and training the next wave of finance talent in digital skills.”
This transition will allow the consumer credit firm to make even greater use of its already efficient global single enterprise resource planning (ERP) and single customer relations management (CRM) systems, as well as its single data lake. It is a move Pitchford believes will allow the company to use “ever fewer” enterprise systems across the prospect to cash (P2C) cycle, enabling it to look “ever more seamlessly” across its data. “We
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are working towards fully integrating our P2C systems globally to allow auto forecasting, including revenue forecasting, across complex revenue accounting bundles directly from source data in our CRM.”
People power All the same, it’s also clear that these complex transitions aren’t just about the systems themselves. Rather, they also encompass providing employees with the tools and skills they need – ultimately changing the business culture along the way. “This use of data obviously means finance professionals need to have a broader business skillset,” stresses Michael Casamento, CFO at Amcor, a global packaging firm with over 45,000 employees across 225 sites. “Our finance team is filled with business people as well as technical and financial specialists. Everyone has a role to play in being a business leader. “In today’s environment, speed is of the essence, so we’ve moved to be quick, agile and adaptive to changing circumstances,” Casamento continues, adding that employees have to be able to cope with a growing number of vital tasks. “Technology is a crucial enabler of this – driving system enhancement and standardisation to optimise work processes and reporting.” Describing the changes to Amcor’s finance function as “considerable”, Casamento says his team has moved beyond simple numbers and accounting, to become integral, forward-looking partners across all areas of the business.
“Finance is now resolutely business focused,” he stresses. “Technology has also allowed Amcor’s finance team to become ever-more connected and aligned across the globe, ensuring best practice and efficiencies are increasingly being shared to enhance performance and productivity.” This is vital, he says, given Amcor business comprises decentralised groups. “It means we can use the same systems, processes and standards to be efficient globally.”
Digital transformation means providing your finance teams with business-wide insights.
Lloyd Pitchford, CFO of Experian.
20,000
Experian’s total workforce across 44 countries.
Experian 37
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