(Guest blogger Matthew Schwenderman is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, a Workday Services Partner, and leads the Performance Management Technology practice.)
As technology transforms existing business models and gives rise to new ones, the relationship between the CFO and CIO is becoming increasingly symbiotic.
CFOs rely on CIOs to oversee critical IT investments required to fuel growth and generate data-driven business performance insights. Likewise, CIOs collaborate regularly with CFOs on business strategy, cybersecurity, and innovation. In some instances companies have set up the reporting structure to have these two roles more aligned, with roughly 22 percent of CIOs reporting directly to CFOs, according to Deloitte’s “2015 Global CIO Survey”.
Technology spend is often a significant expense, but if invested in the right areas can be considered a revenue driver as well. In a recent Deloitte “CFO Signals” survey, CFOs cited efforts to improve strategies for managing IT, and for providing better data and insights, among their top agenda items for 2016.
Yet despite the many successes that can be attributed to CFO-CIO teamwork, there is still room for improvement in the way these two roles collaborate. As cited in a recent “CFO Insights” article, an informal poll was taken during a Deloitte webcast, and less than one-third of respondents said the CIO and CFO at their companies share a strong partnership characterized by a mutual understanding of their respective roles.