Collaboration
Is your back office collaborating with your front office?
A financial system should be equipped with tools that provide organizations with agile communication between the front-end and back-end of a workplace. Finance may be focused on getting invoices paid, but often lacks context of the customer relationship. If sales is finalizing a new upsell, finance may jeopardize a big deal by chasing a smaller cost.
Having cross-departmental collaboration features built in to your system of record and molded around functional needs and work patterns is a must for any organization that wants to stay competitive today and in tomorrow’s IoT economy. CFOs need to work with CIOs to ensure that this sort of system is implemented and tailored to an organization’s business processes and strategic needs.
5 Questions CIOs and CFOs Need to Ask to Prepare for IoT
5 Questions CIOs and CFOs Need to Ask to Prepare for IoT
There is a lot of hype around the Internet of Things (IoT), but make no mistake, the IoT is here to stay and will have a transformative effect on businesses of all kinds. According to a 2015 report from McKinsey, over the next decade the economic impact of the Internet of Things will be as much as $11.1 trillion per year. Ensuring that your IT processes and technologies are prepared for the changes the IoT will bring will be crucial. Investments in infrastructure, security solutions and analytic capabilities are musts for any organization.
Business models are changing too. With the rise of the service economy — a concerted effort by many businesses to focus on developing revenue from their existing customer base (e.g., subscription services, recurring billing, professional services and product/service bundling) — companies are shifting from being product-oriented to service-oriented. Although IoT-inspired business models have not hit the masses, many C-level executives are already evaluating how the IoT may change the way they deliver, measure usage, and ultimately bill for products/services. Sensors and wearables will soon be used to measure how much of a given product or service is used, and businesses will charge accordingly. Recurring revenue is increasingly becoming a key tenet of any business; however, first there needs to be a financial system to support it. When the IoT goes mainstream, will your business be able to perform?
In this slideshow, Kevin Roberts, director of platform technology at FinancialForce, outlines the five questions CFOs and CIOs need to ask themselves to better prepare their infrastructure to support an IoT-centric model.
