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6 technology

tips to enhance

finance business

partnering

Start with an overall goal, understand tech’s capabilities, and
benefit from collaborations that cloud-based tools allow.

By Andrew Kenney
A bout seven years ago, Raju suggested to his finance team member: “Let’s

Seeing the disconnect, Venkataraman
Venkataraman, FCMA, CGMA, was
working as the CFO of The Walt
partner with the business team.”
Disney Company in Southeast Asia.
As the two teams investigated the
One of the company divisions,
team began to see the problem. The financial
the Disney Interactive Media Group, was trying to assumptions built into the forecasts, the finance
incubate a new venture: video games for mobile forecasts weren’t strongly linked to data from the
devices in this region. But the business team and games themselves, and the finance team did not
finance team were running into frustrating know how to extract relevant information from
inaccuracies with their financial forecasts for the the system.
new games, and sometimes even on the reporting Venkataraman encouraged his team to
of actuals. partner with the business counterparts to start
“The forecasts and the actuals would not extracting more useful information. “ ‘Be
match at all,” said Venkataraman, now a relatable. Be willing to learn. Spend time with
consultant and leadership coach in Singapore. the business guys,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘Learn how to
“We, in finance, did not have an understanding of tap into the system. Let’s learn how to pull data
what factors [and] drivers they took into account from that.’ ”
in saying this game will generate so much The teams started building a bridge from the
revenue in the first month, so much in the games’ performance software to the company’s
second month … We would not know how to financial data systems. Soon enough, the finance
explain it; they would not be able to explain it.” team got to grips with this and was able to start

FM-MAGAZINE.COM October 2022 I FM MAGAZINE I 13