Everywhere you turn there is an ongoing proliferation of articles and blog posts proclaiming the imminent AI takeover and substantial impact on jobs across industries – you know the articles, the “Is your job going to be made redundant by a machine?” or the doomsday predictions of the apocalyptic future of a world run by machines.
If you are like me, you love reading about and mulling over theories and hypotheses that push that limit between reality and a daring, almost sci-fi future. And that is great, it helps stretch your imagination and creativity and offer a different perspective.
Then the sun rises again, and the daily reality sets in. The reality that no matter the company, no matter the industry, the vast majority of corporate offices and specifically finance departments are grappling with much more basic, fundamental dilemmas. Long before worrying about AI taking over one’s job, one has to work out how to get to the figures they need in a fast, reliable, repeatable manner.
And then one day it happens. Inevitably, someone will chime in about what they’ve seen work in a prior job, or what they’ve heard their neighbor speak about, or a keener Googles some articles or white papers that talk about how successful various other companies are at harvesting data to their advantage. Soon enough there’s a groundswell and that almost forbidden excitement – do we dare to say it out loud? Are we going down the path of implementing a new system?
We’ve all been there – it takes no effort at all to get swept up in the glossy graphics and latest user interfaces that will have the executive suite believe a magic crystal ball may just exist out there in the form of a dashboard full of buttons and dials and colorful pie charts. Endless examples that speak of the new world uncovered by other customers once they’ve implemented this new, almost magic software.
And though not exactly enthused by the potential upcoming unknown and the disruption it is bound to bring with it, even skeptics start joining the exciting in-crowd that wants to bring about THE solution to all headaches, being cognizant that for now, they are still relegated to that spreadsheet that can barely open without crashing.
The enthusiasm is then continuing to snowball, fueled by customer recommendations and demos that leave people walking away thinking “how DID we ever keep this place going without all that in place..?!” Even nay-sayers can only contribute to the cause, having everyone around reinforce it – “Did you not see what we just saw?? That’s the future! That’s what we need! Imagine what we can do with that!” (Sound familiar?)
Making the decision to implement a new software is not (and should not be) an easy one, and it usually comes from a deep rooted need to enable flexibility and scalability. And for every group of people swept off their feet by the slick interface and pretty colors, there is always at least one that fundamentally understands the critical need of a (better) system. But that is never as cool nor as sexy as the glossy presentations and dials that move (in real time!), therefore it is often the afterthought: “of course that’s important” – while obviously captivated by that cool new graphic or chat feature. Between all this “cool new stuff” and the promise of this amazing future, the call to arms in the organization will be reinforced with language and visuals that everyone can understand and relate to. None of that “back end” talk about the effort and incredible discipline that stands between you and that glossy chart. It will all be a smooth ride.
And that right there is THE CRITICAL moment where the roads have the potential to split, and cause an ever-growing gap that can be painful and costly. The road of true understanding of that less glamorous back end, the configuration, the data definitions, conversions, etc, all the work and design required to have even a rudimentary setup – versus the road peppered with those smart, colorful dashboards that keep tabs on everything and know how to flag issues and prompt for action at just the right time. The ones seen in the demo, the ones that can be distilled into just one icon on the CEO’s desktop.
In spite of all that you may read, the magic is not quite here yet. There is no magic wand that will transform poor data quality into orderly, complete, pretty reports. There is no intelligence that does not rely on a foundation defined by the organization. At the end of the day, the good old saying of “garbage in, garbage out” remains as relevant as ever. That new software you are contemplating is not going to understand your organization any better than you are able to design it. It will not be able to enforce best-practice processes any more than the framework and parameters that you are defining.
There is no software that will solve everything.