By: Deloitte, CFO Journal Editor

What does it mean to run finance in the cloud? Workday’s CFO Mark Peek and CAO Robynne Sisco weigh in on being “customer zero” of Workday Financial Management, the company’s cloud-based financial application, and how having access to real-time financial data has improved the finance organization’s ability to support the business and enabled greater collaboration.

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Q: How does running finance in the cloud impact your role and that of finance?

Mark Peek

Mark Peek: A big part of the impact of running finance in the cloud is that my finance team simply has more time available to get more done. That means I have more time to focus on being a strategic partner to the CEO and other business leaders. For instance, when we expanded globally to support our multinational customers, I needed a lot of finance support in Europe to make that happen, so I asked Robynne to lead our finance organization in Europe while she retained her role as CAO and Controller. She spent the last two years working in Amsterdam and London while I, and the majority of her accounting team, worked out of our corporate headquarters in Pleasanton or in Salt Lake City, where we have our shared service center. While Robynne was overseas, Workday expanded into a half a dozen countries, and by the end of this year, we will have almost tripled our headcount. Without real-time access to financial data in the cloud, it wouldn’t have been possible to have myself as the CFO and the CAO working not only in different locations, but eight time zones removed from each other.

Robynne Sisco: Mark is exactly right. That real-time access to the data is critical. For example, if a finance team member was to log into Workday at 9 a.m. in London and look at the financial numbers, he or she would be looking at the current view of the business. This allows our people to work from wherever they need to be since finance isn’t dealing with various manual efforts and reconciling different numbers from different systems. There’s no worry about lag time or having to wait for someone on your team to wake up and fill you in on what’s going on, because the information you need is right there.

Also, having our systems and data in the cloud compared to a legacy system largely eliminates the offline processes, downtime, manual reconciliations, and other big process management issues around system change. So, for example, when we recently expanded into a new overseas market, setting up the new operating entity in our financial system took about a half hour. The set-up was just a matter of re-configuring the software, as opposed to customizing it and taking it offline to reconcile the different systems. On a legacy system, that would be a major IT project that could easily take six to nine months.

Q. Can you talk about what makes for an effective dynamic between the CFO and CAO?

Mark Peek: A big part of our ability to work so well together is having a great collaborative relationship. When I first became a CFO at VMware, I wanted a strong CAO to be my right hand. Having been a CAO earlier in my career, I had a lot of strength in that area. As CFO, however, I needed to focus on other areas like planning and business decision support. I knew that unless I felt totally confident in my CAO, I’d have trouble leaving my old job behind and focusing on my new role. Robynne fit that bill as a strong CAO, and more.

Q: Cybersecurity is top of mind for many boards. How can CFOs help their board become comfortable about having the company’s financial data in the cloud?

Mark Peek: CFOs running financials in the cloud can put their boards at ease by sitting down with them and making it clear that a lot of thought has gone into the security of the system. They should reiterate what the vendor’s security processes are and why that makes the data safe. Board members also appreciate understanding the internal processes that have been put in place to make sure the company is keeping information secure on its end as well.

Q: How does the cloud support your efforts to make finance a partner to the business?

Mark Peek: Since my finance team doesn’t have to devote so much time to spreadsheets and manually reconciling a legacy system to a new business intelligence tool, my team has more time to address business challenges. Having financial data in the cloud also paves the way toward a more collaborative relationship between finance and the rest of the business when it comes to planning budgets and new strategic initiatives. With traditional legacy systems, finance often has to act as the gatekeeper of the data. Consider the typical process: finance runs the data through the accounting processes, then through financial analytics software, and finally puts that data into spreadsheets that are distributed to the business partners. After that, the business will usually come back with questions. It’s really a long cycle.

With cloud-enabled applications, finance data is accessible and comprehensible to anyone with security access. I find that I can break that long cycle of getting from the data, to the insights and to decisions by putting the information in the hands of the people who can act on it much faster. And instead of having to spend time in the role of gatekeeper—reconciling data from different systems and building offline reports—my finance team can spend more time providing decision support, analytics and insights.

Q: What factors should CFOs and CAOs consider when moving finance to the cloud?

Robynne Sisco

Robynne Sisco: I think the biggest challenge is often breaking out of that mindset of not having choice in what you can do with financial data. Prior to cloud-based apps, there hadn’t been significant financial system innovation in 30 years. Now, all of a sudden, finance leaders are being presented with a new range of capabilities and opportunities to do things differently. So when I speak with my counterparts at prospective customers a lot of what I get is, “Does it really work?” and “What’s the catch?” As a CAO using these apps every day, I can speak their language to explain how well these systems work. It’s also a matter of being willing to change the culture of the finance organization to focus on what can be done with financial data.

Mark Peek: As expected, there are considerations about cost and time to deployment. One aspect that often isn’t considered is how Workday Financial Management fosters a continuous process of decision-making about the functionality the team has at its disposal. For instance, many organizations will transform their data, change business processes and consider the process finished. But when I go back to those CFOs and ask about their experience with the application’s mobile capabilities, they sometimes look at me with surprise, not knowing that it gives them access to a mobile finance system. Similar to consumer applications, new functionality and features are constantly being added, which means CFOs need to have a process in place that enables them to leverage the various capabilities and get the most out of their system.

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About I.C. Collins

Author, Educator, Trainer and President: Has One Simple Goal:  I believe it is my mission and purpose to remind you, that you are meant to have the best life possible! You were created with intention and purpose and I am here to simply help guide you through your life’s journey.

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Deloitte CFO Journal Editor