Does the CFO’s Roadmap drive the CIO’s Roadmap for Cloud Computing?

Remember my post on whether shareholders are driving the CIO's IT strategy?  This is what came to mind as I was reading the article on the CFO's Journey to the Cloud by Gerri Gold, Vice President of Global Sales, Business Development and Asset Management, HP Financial Services.  “By developing a financial roadmap to complement the CIO's technology roadmap, CFOs can maximize the benefits of cloud for their organizations,” says Gold. You will also see some of the thoughts that I have already shared in the context of the CIO and the CFO roles called out in this article. It provides valuable insight into key steps that enterprises can take to bridge the gap between the financial and technology worlds within the enterprises.

The thoughts reinforced in this article are:

• CIO role. CIOs have a critical role to play in integrating the business of IT to combat its consumerization
• CFO role. CFOs must ensure that they have an effective mechanism to compute the cost of cloud computing

Additionally, Gold also highlights the following 3 points:

1. Bridging the Gap. CFOs and CIOs tend to have their own worlds focusing on finance and technology. Both have roadmaps that must be aligned with each other. In the absence of well-defined, sustained governance across the enterprise, there is a strong likelihood of these two worlds operating in isolation. Therefore, it behooves enterprises to take appropriate steps to bridge this gap.
2. Role of HP Financial Services. HP Financial Services can work with its customers to directly address this gap by acting as a bridge between technology and finance organizations to help answer key questions and enable our customers to achieve their business goals.
3. Experience Sharing. There is no one answer that fits all enterprises. At the same time, CFOs can benefit from their individual experiences and share information with others to understand what has worked well and what has not to define the solution that best works for them. CFO roundtables organized by HP Financial Services go a long way in the structured facilitation of such knowledge sharing.

HP has taken the lead in helping CFOs understand the benefits and risks of transformational technologies, such as cloud computing. As part of that initiative, HP Financial Services has organized a series of roundtable events that focus on defining what a cloud environment could mean for their businesses and respective area of responsibility.

So, here is a simple test:

• How many times has your CFO office asked for a technology roadmap?
• How many times has your CIO office asked for the Financial Roadmap?

If the answer to either question is zero, this article is for you. If the answer to both questions is more than zero, I look forward to your comment on what has worked for you.

Additional resources:

• BPO Edge: Finance and Accounting Edition
• CFO's journey to the Cloud
• HP Financial Services
• The CIO's and CFO's journey to Cloud Computing

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