In a rather insightful blog “Take Back Control of your Consulting Relationships” (click here to view), the author, Jenny Sutton, talks about where responsibility for relationships with external consultants should lie - and how the value of their work can be measured.
Here at Invenio we work side-by-side with many business consulting and advisory firms to ensure that technology becomes an enabler in helping our joint-customers realise their goals. Whether that be in reducing costs, improving performance, introducing new product or service lines or expanding across new markets - technology is almost always a foundation block in underpinning the success of these efforts. These particular types of consulting relationships are usually owned by the business or executive functions within a firm - and are therefore clearly measured in terms of what impact they have on the bottom line (not always, but that’s a whole other story!).
However, one relationship that is often at arm’s length from the business is that of the technology consulting partner. These consulting relationships are traditionally ‘owned’ by IT department. So, since we’ve already established that technology is a tool that helps to improve business performance, should it therefore follow that the business – rather than IT - owns these relationships too?
In her blog, Jenny goes on to suggest that the responsibility for a consulting relationship – ANY consulting relationship – should lie with the CFO, as the “guardian of business value for the enterprise”. And, as technology falls squarely under the banner of providing “business value”, then shouldn’t the CFO be more involved with driving technology consulting decisions? Whilst the value of having the CIO as a key facilitator within any technology consulting relationship should never be underestimated, as the first priority is to ensure that technology supports the objectives of the business – wouldn’t it be wise to have the CFO more closely involved to provide a business perspective on what these consulting relationships should deliver?
In many businesses today, the CIO reports directly into the CFO’s office - thereby ensuring open (if not always convivial!) communication between the business and IT functions. However, even then there still exists a disconnect between the CFO and technology consulting partners - and so I do wonder if many of the horror stories we hear about cancelled and failed projects, budget overruns, incomplete and ineffective systems could be avoided by closer ties with the CFO. When you look under the surface of these stories you’ll often find references to “ambiguous objectives”, “unclear project definitions”, “poor communication”, “changing expectations”, “moving of goalposts” and a “lack of direction or leadership”. Now that’s not to say that blame should be laid entirely at the door of the IT Department as, after all, they are simply trying to do what is in the best interests of the business... but I do think that any business-savvy CFO worth his or her salt could make enormous inroads into clearing up many of these issues from the get-go – thereby helping to reduce these kinds of stories by a not insubstantial amount.
So, as I step down from my soapbox, I would like to end with saying that the most successful software implementations we’ve delivered are those that are actively driven by the business users themselves - with a supporting hand and good, clear guidance from the IT function – so perhaps it is time for both the CIO and CFO to get closer in managing what the technology consulting firms do - so that way everybody wins.
Laura Coles
Marketing Director and Chief Blogger
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