In 2019, Forrester predicted that digital transformation will move from super-wide enterprise to a pragmatic, surgical approach to digital investments in order to make incremental and necessary changes to operations.
Such a change puts the CFO at the top of his or her game. With oversight for overall business operations, including what, where and how technology is being adopted, the CFO can more easily reign in spending and account for set KPIs.
The wild days of early digital transformation efforts are gone. Boards recognize that while benefits can be gained by transforming the business into agile, technology-savvy operations, budgets are not unlimited, the competitive environment is not standing still, customers are evolving, and regulation is a moving target.
The CFO of the digital enterprise provides the discipline innovation efforts need to ensure that deliverables meet expectations, at a manageable cost to the organisation. The CFO may not be the architect of the company’s technology strategy but he or she is an important part of the process that defines what technology the company will invest on.
This is because the CFO is responsible for the overall performance of the company, and this includes what technology is adopted and how it is being used by everyone in the organisation.
Asked whether digital means dismantling legacy systems in favour of new technologies Sandip Gupta, Accenture Managing Director, Cloud, Products – APAC, Middle East & Africa, clarifies that digital as defined within the future systems framework is not about the rip and replace of legacy systems.
“Future systems is about harvesting the investment in yesterday’s technology with newer concepts like digital decoupling where you can use technologies like APIs, containers, cloud, and really create an interface between the existing systems and new environments that helps you interface and interact with older technologies,” he elaborated.
For Gupta, this setup enables the creation of new customer experiences and untethers the boundaries of the existing system making them more adaptable to current market conditions.
He raised the example of Del Monte Foods which saw the public cloud as the platform that would enable it to better compete in a tightening packaged food market, keep pace with evolving customer expectations, and prepare the company for its next phase of growth.
The project involved migrating over 200 servers to Amazon Web Services (AWS) – 40% of the application footprint consisted of core SAP systems, its Red Prairie warehouse management system and a bunch of SQL-based custom applications accounted for 30%, and the remaining 30% comprised of support systems for infrastructure management, cybersecurity, and directory services.
“By migrating to AWS cloud, Del Monte improved customer service and achieved better engagement with their partners. The cost savings were used for innovation in other areas of the company,” commented Gupta.
But setting aside the technical complexity of the undertaking, Gupta makes it clear that the CFO has as much importance in any future systems project as anyone in the team.
In this exclusive interview with FutureCFO, Gupta details the importance of a Future Systems to the role of a CFO as innovator and disruptor to the digital enterprise.
