A Finance Leader's Guide to Automating Analytics

Chapter 3. How Finance Leaders Can Drive Success in Analytics Automation

The previous chapter shared examples of how analytics automation improves visibility into financial operations, reduces risk, and increases accuracy. Knowing these benefits, how do CFOs transition their departments to deploy analytics automation into daily operations? Where is the best place to start and what steps should be taken to achieve a successful transition? This chapter will examine factors that may influence a CFO’s decisions on where to begin and how to maintain momentum. It will also examine key principles for driving the transformation across the organization and provide a plan of action for CFOs to follow to implement the process.

Considerations When Scoping Analytics Automation

Choosing a starting point and developing a transition plan are arguably two of the hardest steps when adopting analytics automation. How does a CFO decide where to start? Do they look for an area within the finance department that will experience the largest benefit from an analytics transformation, or do they look for an area with users who are more likely to embrace it and advocate the change to others? Is there a place where these two factors come together? How do they keep enthusiasm high and the adoption moving forward in a controlled yet agile manner? These are all decisions that will determine the success of analytics automation within an organization. The following seven factors should be considered collectively ...