Corporate finance and IT departments have become ever more closely intertwined.
Chief financial officers (CFOs) need IT tools to monitor and run the finance function, ensure data are secure, and help them in their role as strategic advisers. IT needs the CFO to sign off budgets, pay the bills and help sponsor initiatives for business development.
Mike McKeon, finance director of Severn Trent Water, the UK utility, says: “Good IT investments can make an organisation, while poor investments can break it. As CFO, I am interested in taking the business forward to success and to do that the CIO and I need to work together ... Separately, we will fail.”