CFO magazine recently did a research study on business innovation to explore how finance works with the business to engage in new and better ways of driving the organization forward. This has been a very hot topic for both the BI industry and the finance world as organizations look to technology to help give finance a strategic seat at the business table. I was recently at a CFO event where the topic of the conference was how IT and Finance is partnering to provide stronger value to the business.  Questions such as; should your company’s finance team devote more, the same or less effort to activities such as finding and validating opportunities to improve operating performance, understanding the revenue, cost, and profit implications of decisions, understanding competitive dynamics, developing business cases for investment decisions, analyzing customer preferences and purchasing behavior, and preparing budgets, plans, and forecasts?

The study also shed light on the topic of collaboration and how companies are using a collaborative process to enable end users to generate better results. For examples, which impact have investments in collaboration had on the following attributes of your organization; quality of business insight and decision making, individual productivity, work group productivity, collaboration among employees and departments, development of innovative ideas, ect.

The research featured in-depth interviews with executives from companies such as 3M Company, Dow Chemical Company, Fidelity National Financial, Hilton Grand Vacations, U.S. Department of Labor and Wal-Mart

 

 Here is a link to the webcast that walks through the research.

http://www.cfo.com/webcasts/index.cfm/eventarchive/10641064?f=search