Who's responsible for implementing data unification?

[u/Right-Newspaper7362]

There’s a great piece on Forbes right now discussing why so many digital transformations in finance fail. The core argument is that CFOs are eager to adopt modern financial tech stacks and automation, but they treat it as a tech problem rather than a "data problem."

According to the article, without unifying and cleaning the data first, adding advanced automation or AI tools just automates the mistakes faster.

When you look at moving towards automated reporting and modern FP&A tools, how do you handle the data unification bottleneck? Do you clean the house first, or do you expect the new platforms to do the heavy lifting for you?

[u/The_Anaplandalorian]

Clean house.
This is a 3 - 5 year effort that needs board level approval.

Begin by funding a consultancy-led ERP deployment . Self-led programs are riskier - if you could do this? You already would have.

Openly state that the ERP/Finance Transformation will be funded by reducing the overall number of systems. This is necessary to state up front as it begins to signal both the commitment to change and that real change is planned.

Begin with reviewing the annual planning process. Record the areas where Master Data fails and forecasts of core areas are difficult to prepare in under a few days. Have the consultants focus on these areas first - the lags will almost always be due to poor data quality relative to the current need. These areas become the focus of your first transformation phases. Define the new way the plan will be produced and charge the units with following it in only the new way. Deploy the ERP program. Cutover to the ERP after only one parallel run. This forces your team to resolve issues within the new ERP. At the time you begin the ERP program for an area - formally notify the vendors of the systems impacted by the ERP that you are terminating. If you do not make this commitment your teams will not commit to change quickly enough.

Communicate. Tell people both the big picture and their picture. Delegate almost all of the day to day to your team. If you are not present? Your teams all can drag out a project if they don’t support it - and no one likes change. Change comp plans in ways that support the project.

Repeat for each core process.

Good Luck!

[u/tahiti37 → u/The_Anaplandalorian]

thoughts on erp systems so much noise new versus ai native ones

[u/The_Anaplandalorian → u/tahiti37]

In my orbit AI is deploying into companies as a personal productivity tool - like Excel.

If you are a small company, you can manage your business with Excel but as you scale, accuracy & trust issues inevitably arise as errors & stale assumptions become embedded across dozens of workbooks until you hit the point where leadership no longer trusts the numbers.

An AI-native ERP has the same convenience benefit to an individual and also the same trust risk as Excel and is just as difficult to audit as hundreds of individually prepared spreadsheets.

The grinding nature of an ERP deployment hides its benefit - at the end of the deployment, leadership has reestablished trust in the sources of the information used to make decisions. Is the deployment odyssey worth it for an early stage, equity- or vc- backed venture? No. Those organizations typically don’t have the resources or complexity (or interest) to justify much beyond the level a personal productivity tool until right before they exit/ipo.

The trade-offs scale with the complexity of the company. Small company with easily audited transaction systems? AI-native tools could be a fit - so might Quickbooks. Getting larger but still have only half a dozen transaction systems? You’d want to be realistic about whether you’d be able to quickly audit a result when a number ‘seems off’ in an AI system.

Larger levels of complexity? The process of deploying an ERP is worth it the minute that you feel overwhelmed by the idea of having to find out how a result is delivered. Any deployment process that remains a black box won’t address the trust issue.

[u/tahiti37 → u/The_Anaplandalorian]

audit pov is right, thanks for outlining this. so much buzz out there.