I’m writing this because I’ve spent the last fifteen years working with accountants, controllers, FP&A and other corporate finance professionals on the systems and processes that run their operations. Close, consolidation, planning of all sorts, software implementation and integration, reporting, the works. I’ve watched some of them get sharper over time. Others stall, despite genuine effort. Take two examples, one at each end.
At a life sciences research company doing drug development, the scientific department heads had to do their own budgeting — including allocating their researchers’ time across multiple year-long projects. The numbers mattered as much for project planning as they did for finance, but the existing process was a painful mix of Excel and a 20-year-old planning system. We rebuilt the workflow around what the scientists actually needed to think about. Every department head reported the new process was easier. A couple said it was kind of fun — which, from a scientist filling out a budget, is roughly the highest compliment available.
On the other end of the spectrum, an analyst I worked with owned the monthly depreciation workbook at a U.S. subsidiary of a foreign-owned oil and gas company. It pulled detail from SAP, combined a couple of other sources, dropped a number into the close. Technically straightforward to automate. She wouldn’t let it be. Every walkthrough stopped at the surface — “that’s handled elsewhere” — and it took her boss’s boss leaning on her before she’d explain what the workbook actually did. At a U.S. sub with a hard cap on internal promotion, that workbook was her job security.
That contrast plays out everywhere. The two organizations I described were in different industries, at different scales, working with different software — but the thing that separated them wasn’t any of that. I have opinions about what it was. Most of it, I think, comes down to how the human side of change gets handled — what’s often called organizational change management. What I haven’t figured out is a framework for it that works everywhere. Every company is different enough that the principles need re-translating. Every new conversation sharpens what I think I know.
I wanted to write this blog in part to force myself to think through more of the experiences that I’ve had, to gather an even wider set of experiences from new people that I haven’t met yet, and to hopefully contribute to everyone being able to do their jobs a little bit better or maybe just commiserate a little bit over the experiences we’ve all had.
Also, I love building tools to help people do their jobs better. Some of those tools are for the clients I work with now. Some might be things I build on my own later. Either way, what I keep learning is that the gap between a tool that helps and a tool that gets ignored isn’t usually about the tool — it’s about how the people around it think about their work. The more conversations I have, the better the tools I make.
A few things this journal isn’t: it isn’t a vendor review site, it isn’t a how-to blog, and it isn’t going to publish “seven reasons your ERP implementation failed.” It’s a record of how the people who work with these systems day-to-day actually experience them. Whatever conclusions there are to draw, I’d rather you draw them — I’ll mostly try to stay out of the way and let the stories speak.
Finally, I just like connecting with people. Listening to them tell their stories is interesting. Most of us spend an appreciable fraction of our lives at work, and I don’t know about you, but when I share stories about my work, any of my family or friends who don’t work in the same area have their eyes glaze over and nod politely. Anybody who’s done this work long enough has had the opposite experience too — at a conference, in a email or chat thread, venting to a peer over a beer, when you describe something specific about a system or a process and the person across from you laughs and says “oh yeah, I had one of those.” That recognition, however small, makes the work feel less lonely. That’s part of what I’m hoping this journal can do.
I’m aiming to gather stories and post on here every couple of weeks, so if you live in one of these systems — you’re a controller, a consultant, an IT admin, somebody in FP&A or AR/AP — I’d like to hear from you. A close that went sideways, a process that surprised you, a system that quietly works, a workflow you built around the tool. Conversations are recorded for reference only; nothing gets published without your review and consent. Names are kept out by default; you can opt in to being named for a specific post if you want to.
If you’re curious about a specific topic, drop me a line so I know what people want to hear about. And if you’re just here to read: thank you, and I hope you enjoy it.
Reach me at [email protected].