By Nancy Cooper

CIOs and CFOs face a new imperative to revisit the nature of their mutual relationships. Driving this imperative: A change in the basic realities of big business in today's environment. On the one hand is expanded governance legislation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. On the other are new competitive requirements to collaborate and respond rapidly to constantly changing market conditions.

As a result of these dramatic changes, CIOs and CFOs alike face a new set of demands. Enterprises demand better decision-making support. Wall Street wants better insight into company performance. And government regulators implement stringent financial reporting rules. Any gaps that may have existed and been tolerated between major corporate functions — such as financial oversight and IT management — are now not merely undesirable, but are in fact a liability.

Here at CA, I find myself in the midst of these changes. I work collaboratively with our CIO, Dave Hansen, and this interaction is critical. Since I lead the company's finance function, I bring an understanding of the economic structures and resources that are necessary to advance our strategic objectives. Dave, meanwhile, is in charge of designing an information infrastructure for the entire company. Yet we are constantly learning to speak one another's language. The financial vision and language that my department puts forth must be absorbed, manifested CIOs and CFOs face a new imperative to revisit the nature of their mutual relationships. Driving this imperative: A change in the basic realities of big business in today's environment. On the one hand is expanded governance legislation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. On the other are new competitive requirements to collaborate and respond rapidly to constantly changing market conditions. and implemented by Dave's IT group in the right technologies and applications. While both IT and finance can be highly abstract disciplines, there is nothing abstract about the bottom line and the final results.

Further, our CEO, John Swainson, is encouraging all C-level executives to have a seat at the boardroom table. Like many changes in business, this transition is not always easy. But we are definitely trying to get that alignment and make sure we're prioritizing the most important activities for the company.

And while it may sound trite to say that our focus is always on the customer, the needs of our clients and the requirements they have to be successful are actually what make it possible for CFOs and CIOs to establish common ground. In fact, these customer needs provide the context that ties our two disciplines to the business.

Because of this joint focus, Dave and I have also changed the metrics we use to manage our departments. Dave's group is shifting away from strictly measuring and tracking the performance of technical elements in the enterprise network; instead, his group is developing business-oriented metrics that more accurately capture the impact that technology-enabled processes have on the overall customer experience. And my group is implementing procedures aimed at helping the finance people spend more time on analytics, and less time on directly supporting routine transactions. This is the key for my activity to contribute maximum value. And it's obviously a shift that requires the support of our IT organization.

Within the finance department, we are also implementing an initiative called “Back to Basics.” We're focused on improving all financial processes, forecasting anticipated performance levels, as well as projecting the budgets needed to support these processes. This initiative, which launched in the first quarter of this year, has provided a rich opportunity for Dave and me to work together. It's also given us a chance to identify areas that we might have missed had we still been operating only in our own environments.

Key Lessons
The key lessons I've learned from the enhanced relationship our two departments have developed fall into three basic categories:

First, it's easy to get lost in your own jargon. This is as true for the financial types as it is for the IT folks. Second, having common metrics and a joint picture of what success will look like makes it much easier to define objectives and achieve meaningful results for our customers.

Last, to understand the nature of scarce enterprise resources, you must also have a complete understanding of who uses these resources, how they use them, how the resources are supported and how much these resources actually cost.

CIOs and CFOs can work together to produce a more comprehensive understanding of the complex array of moving parts that make an organization run. In fact, the more they work together, the more likely they'll be able to set a course that brings the company close to its customers.

Nancy Cooper is the CFO and executive VP of CA.