The odd couple: finance and IT

In nearly nine years of reporting on finance directors and their teams, I've rarely come across an FD who doesn't have board-level responsibility for IT. (Many of them have have line management responsibility for it, too...) But I think we're starting to see sentiments shift.

I was chatting to Martin Craddock the other day - he's the former FD of Rank Hovis. "FDs are increasingly moving out of the IT role, simply because technology is no longer just about recording and ordering transactions in the finance function," he told me. "IT has become such a linchpin of so many activities in so many businesses that it’s becoming too important not to have its own voice on the board - although that remains a major debate in British business." That debate is happening: "What are the signs that IT is taken the right way?," asks Gary Flood in Computing Business. "‘When the IT director or CIO, being one of the highest-paid people, is sitting on the board,’ says Auridian’s McCormack. ‘Where he or she acts as the digital coach to the other people on that board – and where very definitely he does not report in to the finance director – that is never a good sign.’" [My emphasis]

Now we're talking mainly about larger businesses here, where there's scope for a seat on the board for, and a department beneath, an IT director. But this issue is equally important for growing businesses. How can you grow unless you have up-to-date technology to provide efficiencies and scalability in your operations? How can you put together a coherent business plan (for growth or for exit) without describing your IT strategy? But to my mind that means finance professionals - FCs carving this stuff out at the coal-face and FDs evaluating tech investments at the board - will always need those IT smarts. Perhaps we ought to accept that they also need someone alongside them - a true peer - to offer specialist support and strategic vision in IT.

UPDATE: And then I saw this feature from the same magazine. The case study is particularly interesting: "Unlike many CIOs, [Scottish Power's] Jim McEwan did not start his career in the IT industry. He was an accountant before moving into IT in the early 1980s." A-ha. Better yet: "To ensure the IT department’s plans match up to this [ROI] requirement, McEwan has his own dedicated financial controller, who ensures that all the numbers stack up before any business case is presented to the board. ‘It makes it much easier to have a good relationship with all the other finance directors,’ he says." That's what we like: finance integrated with operating and support departments - or even being the force for integration between all those silos in organisation. But the second article - by Sally Flood - does seem to contradict the first - by Gary - slightly...

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