“The CFO’s understanding of the balance sheet and what drives value, together with his or her growing influence in strategy setting and technology decisions, makes the CFO an ideal business partner and agent of change.
CFOs that have this 360 degree view of technology enablement and processes will be uniquely placed to help the whole of the ‘C’ suite rationalize and make tough investment decisions, whether this relates to the CMO’s (Chief Marketing Officer’s) request to fund a new customer App, the CIO’s request to underwrite a Big Data initiative or the finance function’s need to resolve the most appropriate technology approach for absorbing an acquisition. d-CFOs [digital CFOs] will be in demand.”
Gary Simon here
CFOs (Chief Financial Officers) obviously have an important role to play in any organisation, increasingly so in modern e-businesses. Gary Simon’s article also states, “With 45% of large-company North American CFOs saying that IT is a direct report and 20% of CIOs (Chief Information Officers) reporting directly to the CFO there is little doubt that the CFOs influence in the setting of IT strategy and investment is growing. But along with this growing influence comes the responsibility to be on top of the subject and the CFO is uniquely placed to help. That’s because the modern CFO has oversight of most major IT spend and can learn from each of these experiences whether it is digital on the ‘outside’ or ‘inside’.”
Let me distil this first sentence again, “The CFO’s understanding of… what drives value, together with… influence in strategy setting and technology decisions, makes the CFO an ideal business partner and agent of change.” ln a telco environment, this gets to the crux of investment in OSS in the future. Those seeking funding must have an understanding of what drives value in their organisation, how the OSS contributes lo strategic advantage and how the OSS will be a positive agent of change to the organisation.
As a technology, OSS are uniquely positioned to enhance (or degrade) a modern organisation’s business, probably more than almost any other tech. But how many CFOs would deeply understand that? If yours doesn’t, then you need to find a way to ensure that they do. And you’re not going to influence their view of OSS with a whole bunch of intangible benefits or without an understanding of how it will contribute to the bottom line to justify its existence.
If you’re looking for ideas on how to build a compelling case, you may be interested to check out my new eBook.
Have you ever had an OSS or BSS project that’s impacted by poor data quality? The problem of data integrity gets raised on almost every
“One of my favorite things about designing software is designing the defaults. The defaults define the experience for everyone out of the box. And, therefore,
Have you ever been tasked with mapping out the processes for the telco you work for? Either as a way of documenting current state, or
In the last week alone, I’ve had two potent reminders that the world of OSS is simply (pun intended) too complex. This manifests in many
Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
