9September 2017the 37 professionals on my finance team to each provide one idea with respect to transforming, eliminating or investing in a technology. Perhaps by giving them some skin in the game, we actually came up with three times as many, 119 ideas, which we are currently prioritizing for impact and cost.Coming to FruitionOne seed of an idea that grew out of an earlier finance brainstorming exercise pertained to expense reportinga pain point on which we can probably all agree. Working with HR and IT, we launched a fully digital, fully mobile expense report systemin December 2016for all 1,500 EisnerAmper employees. Hearing the relief in the voices of colleagues who did their expense reports on a flight or during the train commute home because it made their lives incrementally easier was a wonderful validation of our efforts.We also tackled accounts payable. Our previous system was paper-based, labor-intensive and consisted of a dozen steps of transferring paper among our various offices. Our new electronic system is a digital 3-step process that offers better control and reduced staffing and storage costs.We re-tooled and globalized our billing system with expanded capabilities. This seismic change allows our firm to "follow the sun" and utilize our infrastructure from San Francisco to Mumbai to expand client invoicing from only eight hours a day to nearly around the clock. Other firm-wide technology initiatives include video conferencing, a more robust customer relationship management system, and a single HR system that replaced 14 separate ones. Each of these systems features apps for convenient use on a mobile phone or tablet.As the CFO, I feel a responsibility to look at the bottom line and consider initial resistance, but then to always look at how the aforementioned cultural shifts in technology would improve employee capabilities and experiences, and the firm's position over the long-term, which ultimately make our clients more successful. Goin' MobileA common refrain that I emphasizeis mobile capability. As most people already live on their smartphones, this was more of a soft sell than a hard sell, but it did necessitate a slight change in cultural mindset. When client-facing practitioners are untethered from operations, the firm can move at a much faster pace. As such, we hired an app development team to bridge data flows. This went far beyond convenience; mobility frees staff to give more thought to their clients, which contributes to the development of our firm of the future. The Verdict's InWhile the tenor of this article is a CFO beyond the numbers, there's certainly no escaping them. Thankfully, all of the technology we invested inpaid for itself via other cost take-outs, namely eliminating maintenance cost on legacy systems, reducing payroll, improved expense control and decreased location expenses. Perhaps, more importantly, we transitioned technologies that were formerly siloed and successfully integrated them across the entire firmagain, vesting people in the collaborative process. Other benefits included winning the "2017 When Work Works Award,"an increased Glass Door score, and a decreased attrition rate.What's Next?While we've made great technological strides over the past two years, we are certainly not resting on our laurels. My team will be working on a new, cloud-based, financial ERP system that will also be fully integrated across the firm. We'll continue to invest in data streamlining in order to make it seamless companywide. Also, analytics will continue to play a big role. Firms today have mountains of data at their disposalmost of which is vastly underutilized. We need to gain a better understanding of our data to, for example, benchmark performance for clients. Time for You to Make Some ChangesCFOs are uniquely positioned to leverage technological solutions that cut across the entire firm. Often that means being a champion for cultural change. (Lest I forget to mention that EisnerAmper has given me the tools and support to forge this change.) But the CFO's investment in time and effort to bring about that change can result in a virtuous cycle that perpetuates success. Mobility frees staff to give more thought to their clients, which contributes to the development of ourfirm of the future
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