IT Best Practices for Financial Managers

Chapter 1. The Information Technology Planning Process

Robert Fabiszak

Accurate and timely financial information is essential to managing a modern corporation. Investors and regulators require periodic disclosures, while managers and executives rely on financial data for decision making and strategy. Businesses have no shortage of such information—in fact, the very volume and complexity of their financial data often presents a significant challenge to their ability to use it wisely. This financial data is maintained in a wide variety of information systems, ranging from sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, to single-purpose tools such as financial consolidation systems, to the individual database on someone's personal computer that generates an important journal entry each quarter.

In most companies, this array of financial systems and databases has been built up over time, sometimes with great foresight and planning and other times as an expedient reaction to a specific business need. As a business grows and becomes more complex, the difficulty in managing its financial information can also grow, often disproportionately. It can become more difficult to provide appropriate financial controls as transactions become more complex and new business models evolve. Duplicate systems can arise due to mergers, which often leads to inefficient operations and inconsistent data between systems. Responding to management requests for information can become more difficult as ...