IT Financial Planning & Analysis

Money talks

When I joined my previous job's Chief Financial Office in 2012, I wasn't sure how I could contribute to the team.   I quickly learned, however, that the team really valued my technology background having spent many years as Systems Engineer, Technical Project & Product Manager, and other technology related gigs.   They liked the fact that I could communicate with the Technology team and act as a conduit between them and Finance.

Techie-geeky speak

It wasn't easy in the beginning, however.   As a techie guy, I didn't understand how business-initiated projects would translate in financial ledgers.   I understood, however, that projects that demanded datacentre infrastructure and labor resources are not free all-you-can-eat buffet, but when I listened to my accountant colleagues talk about credits/debits against certain IT accounts and cost centres (cost centres are like internal credit carts), I felt I had to deep dive in to the accounting world.   I was motivated to speak the same lingo - money - that both Finance and the Business already understood, but the Technology folks, well, needed to learn more in order to align the right amount of dollars with the right technology solutions.

Where's the Rosetta Stone?

However, something was amiss.   There wasn't a single dataset that could explain the relationships between vendor spend by way of purchase orders and invoice accruals; we couldn't explain well the timing of the contractor/consultant renewals; and there were seemingly endless variety of spend on cables, power, cooling, temp project staff, etc.   There wasn't a single system to keep everybody honest.   Just then I discovered that we already had an offshore team that shipped canned reports to colleagues, but the reports were too fragmented and weren't arriving on schedule.   I decided I needed to become an expert on retrieving and analyzing data from SAP, Essbase, and home-grown accrual system in order to put together such one-stop-shop system.

IT Cost Analytics

I volunteered to lead the effort to create an IT cost data analytics that would finally allow us to trace the projects' run-the-business, grow-the-business, and transform-the-business expenses all the way to the ledger.   When it became clear that both the onshore and offshore team were not equipped with a proper system, I started wearing a familiar hat: a hands-on Technical Project Manager.   I acquired and configured a Microsoft SQL server, migrated the MS Access database that was housing the SAP extracts, refactored the Essbase add-in-powered spreadsheets, and set up the Extract-Transform-Load processes to flow the data from SAP and non-SAP systems into the relational database that served as our "single source of truth".  

It was an intense effort that took about a year from design to implementation to training and handover.   I was exhausted, but extremely satisfied to have built a system and a global analytics team to support Finance.

We went on a roadshow to present the new analytics capabilities to Technology, Finance, and the Business.   The analytics were delivered to each IT area as auto-generated-auto-emailed Excel spreadsheets, shipped on sharepoints and Alfresco.  

They loved it.  

Spend Governance Analytics

While most people were pleased with the IT cost analytics, it wasn't as interactive as some of the more senior leaders and power users wanted it.   Also, the SAP-powered analytics was based on Actuals, so the information delivered were not fresh enough for timely action.   The central challenge was how we could control the expense on vendor contracts without visibility to the in-flight POs.  

After I sorted out the data feeds and integration with Ariba P2P and the in-house accrual systems, I decided I needed something better.   SQL and Excel weren't sufficient.   I had heard about Qlikview in 2014 and some of its awesome in-memory associative techniques.   Alteryx and Tableau were not available in the bank, at the time.   Luckily, the central BI team allowed me to vet the Qlikview solution and let me publish the documents on the Qlikview access points.   There wasn't much local Qlikview expertise in the US - most Qlikview practitioners were in London - so I taught myself Qlikview at YouTube and Google universities.   To make a long story short, I was able to conveniently plug the IT cost analytics datasets to Qlikview, bada bing bada boom, I delivered my first non-Excel-powered analytics!  

The new Spend Governance tool received strong endorsements across the board as people were empowered to approve, stop, and modify the purchase orders before it's too late.

Infrastructure Planning & Forecasting

There's a saying that success begets success.   Just as soon as we completed the hand-over of the Spend Governance Analytics to the off-shore team, we were given a new project.  

When the CFO of Infrastructure asked us to consider broadening our scope to handle the Planning & Forecasting for all of the bank's Infrastructure, we felt very confident we've already got the experience and solid foundation to take it on.   After all, we noticed that although different departments - HR, Legal, Risk, Finance, Compliance, Technology - did Planning & Forecasting differently, the challenge wasn't as complex as Technology's.   After we brought everybody in the same swim lanes by adopting an enterprise process model, we quickly gathered momentum and buy-in.   We built a library of VBA classes, modules, and user interfaces on Excel and after six months we rolled out a multi-year Infrastructure-wide Planning & Forecasting tool.  

It was probably the most intense in my career, and I'm thankful for it.  

I learned a lot.