[K15 Session Review] Financial Management: The magic of transparency

[morganhunter]

Presenter: Fran Fernandez

Session title: IT Financial Management - a Business Perspective

I remember the first time I learned to do pivot tables in Excel; truly it changed my life forever. The power of manual reporting was at my fingertips. All I had to do was gather data from 20 different departments, spread over email, SharePoint, and financial systems, then normalize, reconcile, and clean the data within an inch of its life, and voilí  I was finally ready to drop it into a pivot table and get down to IT financial reporting. Looking back now, I think I loved pivot tables mostly because it signified the end of a long and painful financial reporting process.

Today I had another life-changing "pivot table" moment during Fran Fernandez's presentation: IT Financial management — a Business Perspective. It's that bitter sweet moment when you realize just how much of your life you've wasted managing financial data manually, combined with the sweetness of knowing you will never have to waste your time again. Suddenly I'm having visions of family vacations and uninterrupted weekends in my future. It made me long to be back in IT where I could show off my new super power called ITFM.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

Fran states in his presentation that "Cost Transparency is a journey, and most customers are in the early stages."

Sit with that for a moment. Let it sink in. Because ironically, I have often seen organizations use their lack of maturity as the very reason they don't seek out more mature ways of operating their business. Here's your chance to be different. Getting to maturity is a journey, and the first step on your Financial Management journey should be ServiceNow.