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If you read part one, it’s possible you’ll be all fired up about the prospect of changing your finance system. Unfortunately, there are some odd people who are not as inspired by accounting software as the rest of us.
In fact, there’s a risk that when you put your proposal to colleagues, there will be an awkward silence. The kind that greets a comedian who’s told a bad joke to a tough crowd.
This chapter is about avoiding that tumbleweed moment...
“People often overlook what one might describe as the ‘dull but worthy’ things,” says Keith Collins, Principal Consultant at Adapta Consulting, who advises nonprofits on processes, people and technology.
“Back-end infrastructure – CRM, data management, the finance system – may not be the most exciting topic for everyone but it’s incredibly important.”
Lauren McCluskey, Head of Virtual Finance Function at AAB, says: “Typically, people don't like to spend money on the finance system because they see it as a pure overhead that isn't going to give anything back to the business. So it's all about engaging the right people at the right time and making sure everyone feels involved in the process – without allowing everyone in the organisation to have a veto.”
Read on for some reflections on who you might have to influence. We’ll look at how to start building a case that can convince even those weird non-finance people.
Are you likely to encounter a bit of pushback when you suggest switching finance systems? The answer is yes. (For other silly questions, see: Is water wet? Is declining balance depreciation quite complicated?)
As soon as you can, it’s important to anticipate where that pushback will come from and what may lie behind it.
Sometimes, you’ll come across plain old resistance to change. The attitude of “We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.” But quite often, you’ll hear people voicing a healthy scepticism – the kind based on the reasonable concerns that people are paid to have.
Addressing those concerns as early as possible can help get people onside – and what’s more, it can help you reach the best possible decisions.
As Lauren McCluskey puts it: “You have to ask yourself: Who are the stakeholders? What do they care about? What do I need to explain to each of them?
“If you provide the same information in exactly the same form to everyone, you’re not going to get the results you want. You have to judge what’s going to appeal to each person and what won’t.
“For example, the chair of the board might be interested only in high-level finance reporting and won’t want to hear all about dashboards. The IT team, on the other hand, will care about compliance and security, which is a completely different conversation.”
Be prepared for some of the most robust challenge to come from those who are deepest into the existing software.
“Often, the biggest blockers of any digital transformation project in finance are the people using the current system – if they’re not ready to acknowledge their current level of pain and admit they need some help to deliver the things they need to,” says Jamie Allen, Founder and CEO of 4PointZero.
“You’ll often come up against the defensive mentality which says: ‘Just let me hire someone’ – that’s their answer to scalability.”
However, there can be a lot in this for the finance team. Their jobs could suddenly become more rewarding.
Frances Kay, Partner with TC Group and Director of App Advisory Plus, has visited a lot of businesses to review how they do things. “I certainly wouldn’t go in and suggest everyone’s doing everything wrong with their current system. And it’s not just about making things more efficient,” she says.
“If someone’s doing a really mundane job, it’s worth asking whether that’s what they really want to be doing. They often appreciate having a role that adds a little more value to the business and is a bit more interesting than just data entry.”
If you can win some people over and even enlist some as allies in change, the next parts will be a whole lot easier.
Marketers and salespeople spend a fair amount of time devising personas – the “pen portraits” that present a simplified version of their typical customer or prospect. If you’ve ever been tempted to suggest they should pack that in and get on with some real work, bear with us.
Reflecting on the concerns and motivation of the people you’ll want to influence is likely to pay off. So we’ve constructed some stakeholder personas.
Let’s look at a few people you might come across.
What else is on her mind:
🔑 Communication key.
Sure, she needs persuasive data. But she also needs a compelling story to share with non-finance people.
What else is on her mind:
🔑 Communication key.
She’s concerned about disruption and the learning curve involved. She needs to be involved and listened to.
What else is on his mind:
🔑 Communication key.
He’ll be understandably cautious about what you’re getting into. Make sure his concerns are respected alongside the wider needs of the organisation.
What else is on his mind:
🔑 Communication key.
He’ll be concerned about getting involved with a finance system. Keep him reassured about the benefits and ease of use.
This process isn’t about charming and cajoling your stakeholders until they’re ready to say yes to your brilliant ideas. Well, it’s not only about that that.
If you listen early and listen well, you’ll find you’re also marshalling evidence to make a business case for change.
You’ll see what your current processes are really costing you and what you’ll need from a new system – and you’ll begin to put numbers to it all.
To really uncover what your current system is costing you through its inefficiencies, your best bet is to listen to the people who use it day-in, day-out.
Russell Frayne, Director of Transformation at Gravita, says: “The FC or CFO knows the theory of how they run their finance team – but the finance team knows how they actually do it. And the two can be massively different. To see how things really work, you have to talk to the people who do the doing.”
Frances Kay says: “I start by scoping out the weaknesses of the current system and the potential efficiencies. It’s important to do that with the people that actually use the system, rather than me just walking in and telling them I can make things better.
“When you talk to people, they’ll usually tell you which jobs take a lot of time or what tasks they hate doing. It helps me understand the process, as well as reminding the team that the system isn’t ideal.”
Russell Frayne says talking and observing reveals a lot about a department’s inefficiencies.
“For example, I visited a client once and I saw there was a noticeable wear in the carpet between one chair and the printer,” he says.
“You could tell that the member of the team sitting there was getting up and going back and forth to the printer all day long. I talked to her and discovered that she had to take invoices and emails, print them, then take them back to her desk and type in that information.
“We brought in a couple of applications to change the process. She didn’t have to walk to the printer any more, they saved a lot of stationery costs and they didn’t need all those cupboards and filing systems.”
Mark Preston of Blackpool Grand Theatre adds: “In past jobs, I’ve known systems where we had paper invoices which have to be registered and sent out to another site, from where they’d come back a week or two later to be entered into the accounts system. Now, invoices are scanned and authorised on the system within the predetermined authorisation levels we set up, with no paper going backwards and forwards and potentially getting lost.”
Your finance colleagues will not be the only ones whose working days involve wrestling with a beast of a finance system. Consulting with people outside finance is vital.
In many workplaces, finance has become a bottleneck. Budget holders can’t quickly get the information they need and may find workarounds by keeping their own records in spreadsheets. The finance team is beset by bottlenecks too, waiting for non-finance people to approve invoices, submit expenses or answer queries.
It’s time to begin putting some numbers on the problems we’ve been talking about.
Take a look at the unnecessary time spent on all those inefficient processes. Can you use it to do a straightforward sum?
To this you can add the other “cost of doing nothing” that we covered in part one.
Lauren McCluskey explains: “You need to be able to say: ‘These are the frustrations we’ve got and this is what those frustrations are costing us’. Most people don’t realise that unwieldy systems cost the business money because they eat up time and resources that could be better used on something else.
“People love it if you add up all the hours you can save and give them a quantifiable number.”
After you’ve quantified all the current costs as accurately as you can, you can start to meaningfully compare that with the cost of new software.
By now, you’ll also be getting an idea of the less quantifiable benefits a new system could bring,
How much better could your organisation’s decision making be if the leadership was working with real-time data – instead of figures from a time that’s already slipping into history?
And what could be done with the time that will be freed up by better systems? Can staff time be put to more useful purposes? Can you bring forward other revenue-generating activity without hiring new people?
All this information is going to be vital to the business case you’re likely to be writing a little later on.
But first, it’s time to go software shopping.
Some people just hate change – but others have a healthy scepticism which can drive better decisions.
Talking to the users will reveal how your system really works – and what it’s costing you in inefficiency.
You can start counting the costs by working out how many hours you’re paying staff to do unnecessary work. Then add the costs of doing nothing from chapter one.
Some benefits of change – e.g. real-time data for decisions, more time for higher-value work – are real but harder to put a number on. But they’re real.