2008 Technology Issues for Financial ExecutivesReport: Leveraging Quality Data Is Top IT Concern
The information technology needs of chief financial officers (CFOs) echo the same themes expressed for the past several years — the need to leverage analytical information to monitor and improve business performance and drive shareholder value. With each passing year, the performance expectations of stakeholders continue to rise.
For most companies, the easy improvements have already been realized. Executives are increasingly being driven to use information to improve business performance — how can we better understand our markets, our channels, our existing and potential customers, our suppliers? While it is likely true that “best” normally wins — best marketing, best service, best product, best reliability, best price — when companies understand what customers value and provide it to them, there is another “best” that is growing in importance. Best information, a.k.a. intelligence, enables companies to make “bests” better. One of the major Achilles heels limiting better intelligence and analytical information is high-quality data.
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“Improving data quality/information integrity” retained its position as the most pervasive critical technology concern among CFOs, with about 42 percent of respondents considering it a critical technology issue, according to the tenth annual Technology Issues for Financial Executivessurvey, conducted by CSC in collaboration with Financial Executives Research Foundation — the research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI) — and FEI’s Committee on Finance & Information Technology.
“High-quality data is a precondition to any reliable reporting and analysis,” says Jerry Boltin, a senior partner in CSC’s Global Business Solutions and Services Group. “To use a manufacturing analogy, you must start with high-quality raw materials (data quality) and properly convert it at each stage to achieve high-quality information (information integrity). Developing and maintaining high-quality data and information is as much determined by the business community and its discipline, as it is by technology.”
Nearly 70 percent of respondents, an increase of eight percentage points from last year, indicated that information integrity was negatively impacting business performance to some degree.
“Information integrity is a fundamental underpinning of effective and efficient business operations, from routine transaction processing to management reporting to decision support,” says Boltin. “To the extent that information integrity is lacking, it becomes one of the major hidden costs of doing business. The business then pays for the lack of information integrity every day.”
Investing in better information Planned spending for better analytical and decision support information continued at the same high levels reported last year, indicating on-going significant investments to produce decision-quality information and monitor performance.
Most respondents with analytical spending plans intend to address multiple analytical information needs. However, even with the continued large investments, the percentage of respondents who reported making significant progress with their top information issue slipped from 10 percent last year to seven percent this year. The good news is that most made some progress.
“The market demands for better information are going up year-over-year and, to be competitive in the marketplace, the CFO’s knowledge level of market factors, competitors and customers is going up as well,” Boltin says. “That’s driving year-over-year investments in analytics because what they did last year may not be sufficient for this year and next year. An unending need for more knowledge is driving continued investment in analytical information.”
