Have you heard these types requests from leadership, management, and co-workers?
“We need to be more efficient to stay relevant.”
“You need to find us a way to optimize what we already have.”
“How can we automate these spreadsheets?”
So, what are the barriers in our path to fulfill these improvements?
What are the communication issues?
Where do we start?
Who understands the overall picture?
How do I best engage IT?
What are the communication issues?
If you work within the confines of Finance in your organization, more than likely you will need technical assistance to develop process flows and configure your financial systems to automate workflow. Here is where we arrive at one of the greatest challenges……being able to clearly communicate with your IT or technology department. A primary obstacle is the failure to articulate needs, wants and desires, which leads to a lack of understanding on both sides. Finance doesn’t regularly “speak” technology nor does IT commonly “speak” accounting. Understandably, functional and technical requirement gathering suffers as each tries to explain their functions.
Where do we start?
If possible, partner with a Project Manager (PM) to help guide your initial steps. An accomplished PM will provide a checklist of items needed to facilitate a successful solution. These deliverables may include a Business Plan that provides an overview of goals, objectives, and functional features to accomplish the task at hand. Today’s leading-edge PMs are affluent at bridging technology and business “speak” as well as understanding the overall organizational dynamics. If a Project Manager is not accessible then ask your manager for a resource recommendation that closely aligns to the above skill set in order to successfully build a Business Plan.
Who understands the overall picture?
Also, a Project Manager will coordinate the organizational key stakeholders to assure positive communication and collaboration. The Project Manager generally has an understanding of the overall organizational model and can leverage the right people during the right decision points. In the absence of a Project Manager, schedule time with your manager to discuss your organization and identify the key stakeholders of process improvements. Please note that your manager may have you discuss this project with other division heads in order to drive out all of the process touch points and their associated impacts.
How do I best engage IT?
Finally, who in IT should I talk to? I only know the person in Desktop Support that helps me when my computer locks up or my applications crash. They might not know anything about our cash accrual processes or how I can automate my data importing for the CFO. In addition, I don’t want to look incompetent if they do indeed know the processes and I don’t have the right technical answers they may ask. Yes, Project Managers are experienced at identifying tasks and managing projects. Unfortunately, most do not have the ERP integration experience to understand all of the business process touch points nor the cause and effect of each. Herein lays our current problem. Who can identify those sensitivity points? Who understands how to leverage this new process in our financial system, and how to optimize our environment into the overall company strategy?
Introducing the ERP Strategy Consultant
The goal here is to find your own “Technology Concierge”. Someone within the organization (or an external partner) that can communicate to both finance and technology effectively. Someone that understands the functional and technical needs to deliver your desired solution. Someone that has the ear of leadership to serve as a trusted advisor on best practices and lessons learned for your particular ERP financial suite. Someone to be your advocate across organization communication, technology, and culture barriers.
Wells Fargo’s ERP Strategy Consultant
In order to strengthen their product services and integrations, Wells Fargo has recently added the role of an ERP Strategy Consultant to their sales and product channels. In today’s competitive marketplace of integrating bank treasury products into a client’s ERP financial environment, Wells Fargo is proactively addressing the industry’s present gap of ERP expertise in strategy, automation and optimization by introducing the ERP Strategy Consultant into highly-complex environments early in the sales process.
By providing an experienced ERP Strategy Consultant, Wells Fargo has shortened the integration period while achieving higher client satisfaction by identifying challenges, introducing the right resources, and addressing sensitive points of integration much earlier. Additionally, the ERP Strategy Consultant provides networking and consortium opportunities with like-industry or ERP-specific situations where other leaders overcame related decision points and challenges.
All-in-all, the introduction of the ERP Strategy Consultant has been a refreshing and competent answer to the integration industry. A successful partnership with the Treasury Management Group has allowed Wells Fargo to strengthen its position in the Treasury product space and offer a full-cycle solution across the sales channel for their clients. The professional care and service to their clients remain Priority One as reflected in bridging this much needed advisory gap. The ERP Strategy Consultants truly provide an experienced insight into bridging business and technology.
Interested in where Wells Fargo and their ERP Strategy Consultant can help you? Please contact your Wells Fargo Relationship Manager today to begin the process.