The good news is that a recent Rimini Street survey of nearly 3,000 global CFOs and CIOs reveals 86% of them believe their CFO-CIO relationships are stronger. Still, CFOs have trust issues. Only 32% see CIOs as partners who bridge the gap between business decisions and technology. And only slightly more — 36% — see CIOs as change agents who drive business strategy.
Mark Partin, CFO of cloud-based finance software provider BlackLine, believes better understanding and close collaboration between the leaders is integral to an organization’s success. He discusses why, and how CFOs and CIOs can improve their partnerships.
Mark Partin
CFO, BlackLine
First CFO position: 1997
Notable previous employers:
Fiberlink
American Health Imaging
Headhunter.net
Contour Medical Inc.
Williams Group International
Arthur Andersen & Co.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
SANDRA BECKWITH: You’ve said that CFOs and CIOs need to break down their silos and collaborate more. Why is this important?
MARK PARTIN: Nothing short of the future of the enterprise could be at stake. There’s a lot of technological change happening inside organizations that’s impacting CFOs more than ever before. Whether that's systems or data, they all have both long-term and short-term consequences.
If you don't get it right, you're going to continue to move the ball forward with systems that don't support your growth, expansion, scale or margin. You can't do it without a collaborator, and with data and systems, that’s the CIO.
How are things different from the past?
PARTIN: CFOs have historically looked to the CIO as an IT leader who could help them bring truth to the reporting. But over the years, something has been happening in both the CFO’s and CIO’s offices.
We’re both being asked to think more long-term, more strategically. What is the organization trying to do? Where's the organization going? What is our strategy? And how do you build infrastructure, systems, people and teams to accomplish that?
So, I need a CIO who doesn't just think about the here and now. I need somebody who is thoughtful about the ultimate outcome and strategic about where the company needs to go and how the existing and future technologies will or won’t help us get there.
In addition, today’s CIO must have a seat at the table and be part of the leadership team.
What are the trends in CFO-CIO collaboration? Is it happening more often?
PARTIN: There are a couple of areas where collaboration has expanded.
The first is automation around technologies that help you think about how to have a digital workforce. How can I improve the lives of my employees? How can I have a more seamless go-to-market experience for my customers? The CIO is critical in those decisions.
The second collaboration relates to long-term planning around a global workforce’s skill set.
Previously, CIOs could be left out of the discussion and then brought in just to implement what others decided. Now, more are saying to them, “Here's what we want to accomplish. What systems, architecture and data will help us over time?” The partnerships are happening in key areas of data security and strategy, not just around infrastructure now.
Describe the ideal CFO-CIO relationship.
PARTIN: I think my relationship with our CIO, Sumit Johar, is close to it. He's strategic, but he's also focused on an experience mindset in technology because technology is not the answer. Technology helps you get the answer.
We meet every week. We're on the executive council together. He shows up at the highest levels of leadership, and he's part of our long-term planning.
Sadly, it’s easier to find examples of less-than-ideal relationships. We see CIOs who have been promoted internally on the strength of their valuable institutional knowledge. But if they don’t have the ability to, for example, point out that our plans won’t work if we don't have accessible data in the right place or that based on where we want to go, our security posture needs to triple, it’s not going to be ideal.
On the flip side, it’s up to the CFO to know what they need. And CFOs are not positioning IT leaders for success if they don't elevate them to a seat at the table when CIOs are capable of taking that seat.
What are the obstacles to greater collaboration for these two leadership positions?
PARTIN: The biggest is trust. Traditionally, while finance and accounting require the highest levels of governance, compliance and controls, these needs haven’t always received the priority they warrant. Instead, they were often viewed as equal to those of other functions.
As CFOs, we recognize our data and systems are among the most sensitive and critical to the business. Being grouped with other departments such as sales, marketing and HR created challenges because our needs are unique.
This led many CFOs to build their own ”shadow IT” solutions to ensure that their systems received the specialized attention and security required to meet stringent financial standards.
How can organizations overcome those obstacles to greater collaboration?
PARTIN: You need to rebuild trust. That starts with the CIO understanding finance and accounting system needs and priorities, and the CFO getting a clear understanding of IT’s situation, too.
When my peers talk favorably about their partnerships with their IT groups, it's usually around the idea that they're building and working together for the future, versus just implementing a system. Constant collaboration, meetings and long-term planning help the CFO feel confident that the CIO is a partner.
If a colleague asked you to recommend one “must do” to be a better collaborator with IT, what would you say?
PARTIN: Meet and communicate regularly, and share goals and challenges for an effective CFO-CIO collaboration.
