A case for Finance to become the intermediary between data science and business
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
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Coding is the future of the Finance Function and the future of the finance professional's working life.
That's the claim being made by many in the field. There's an assumption that, as automation and data science develop an even larger footprint within the Finance Function, the best or only option for Finance professionals will be to double down on their SQL or Python skills.
I disagree, for reasons that I've explained throughout this series. Here, we're going to look at a case study of two experienced finance professionals who have integrated data science into their practices in useful and specific ways - while ensuring that they remain value creators.
Dashboards and beyond
Al Cranswick, a data scientist based in Brisbane, Australia, is well aware of the benefits that the thoughtful application of data science can bring. Early in his career, he was tasked by the CFO of his organization with improving the performance of a division of 200 people - none of whom reported to either Cranswick or the CFO. Cranswick's solution was a carefully-designed dashboard, bringing together the most important data points and presented fortnightly. As he says, it helped the team understand the "underlying drivers" behind their performance. "The CFO and I were blown away over six months," he says, "in terms of the way the financial performance lifted."
As his career progressed, though, Cranswick expanded his understanding of KPIs and metric-based work as just part of a broader set of priorities and tasks facing any C-level professional. As he explains: "whilst I was indulging my fascination with KPIs, I realized that in order to have any remote impact on the organization I needed to be faithful to my training, but start to learn about my colleagues. So who's the head of marketing, who's the head of HR, and what's their language? I actually stopped going to accounting conferences and started going to marketing conferences and started going to HR conferences, so that I could learn their language and speak and not do their job but I needed to be able to speak their language."
Business partners as nexus
This is the crux of business partnering, and it is the role that Cranswick sees as the future of the Finance professional. He sees himself as a "nexus" through which different vectors of information flow and are translated.
In particular, he stresses the importance not only of accurate information but of the skills required to parse and act on it. "Understanding 'why' is one of the most important things a Finance person can do," he says, and he is especially concerned that those in these 'nexus' roles should have some grounding in the statistical bases for the models and technologies being used in their organizations.
But this is not, as both Cranswick and his business partner Kalan Douglas point out, the same as devoting your career to Python. Douglas explains: "I'd argue that the best way to stay relevant for someone in a Finance Function is to focus on being an interpreter. Do you understand all pieces of information in a business? One angle you can put on that is to learn to code and to understand how finance interacts with technology and automation, ensuring that this particular path is smooth and works well. But being a general interpreter, in any sense of that word, is a good way for existing finance professionals to add value to their organization."
Objective, analytical
Cranswick agrees: "Someone with an objective and analytical mindset who doesn't have any vested interests, except for the success of the organization - that person can be such an important partner to the head of an organization. Asking questions and understanding why: why did we use this particular technique? Why did we design this system in this particular way? Why is my marketing person suggesting that we use Facebook and not Instagram? Why is my HR person suggesting that we need to focus more on succession planning than our knowledge management? Those types of avenues, to me, are so much more important for a finance person than actually being able to get in and do the coding."
Cranswick has some words of advice for all finance professionals, especially those choosing which path to follow in their careers. "I would encourage finance professionals to go to the marketing conferences, go to the HR conferences. The language with which they speak to the marketing person, the HR person, or the data scientists can be very technical. That will be very different from the language that they use when they're sitting next to the CEO and explaining things in layman's language. They must be able to do both." Those are the word of the data scientist. Not me. Are you sure you still want to learn to code?
If you want to learn more about Al's perspectives you can go and subscribe to his newsletter here (LINK).
This was the sixth article in my new series about coding. You can read the past article(s) below.
While you await future articles why not read my latest series about frontier technologies in Finance? You can read all the articles below.
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Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder and a partner at the Business Partnering Institute and the owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 10,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company Maersk. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger on LinkedIn with 80.000+ followers and 150.000+ subscribers to my blog. I am also an advisory board member at Born Capital where I help identify and grow the next big thing in #CFOTech.
Business Analysis | Data Strategist | Market Intelligence | Turning Insights into Tangible Results
2yVery interesting, I've been studying about tech (SQL and Python) not to be a coder, but to know how to make the right questions to the multi cross teams. That's the path I believe.
Founder, Willbless Logistics Solutions Limited
2yThanks for posting
📉Finance Business Partner 💹 | FP&A 📊 | Lead by Example🏆| 💳Fintech | AI
2yInteresting case study. As a business partner, finance should find a common ground with data scientists and IT professionals. I don't think learning how to code addresses the gap; but learning the foundations on data science might be the way forward.
If I could increase your cash flow and profits AND be the pill to remove your accounting and tax headache, would you be interested? | Simplifying accounting and finance | Accountant | Virtual CFO
2yAgreed. Business partners need to be able to take data and interpret it for business use. Learning detailed python and SQL should not be a priority. However knowing how these tools work will be useful.
Fractional Finance Director | Process Automation Evangelist | Transforming the Finance Function
2yAnders 💯. Finance professionals were always meant to interpret data to make decisions that impact the company's bottom line. Tableau, Alteryx, and many other report visualization platforms are proof that data is supposed to be readily available at a moment's notice. If finance personnel are spending their time investing in Python, SQL, or some other coding language, then I would venture to say those investments are sunk costs 😁