Simplify, Standardize, Automate, Measure

A multi-year rebuild of a finance organization, run as a sequence rather than as a structure.

As CFO for the Americas, I ran it in one order every time: simplify, standardize, automate, measure. Automating a broken process does not transform it. It runs the wrong process faster.

Decision context

Team development and culture were stagnant. Processes were manual. The systems were outdated across ERP, revenue cycle management and Gross-to-Net.

The tempting move is to buy software. It is visible, it is fundable, and it feels like progress. It is also how these programs fail, because automating a broken process does not transform it. It lets you run the wrong process faster, at a cost, with more confidence than you had before, which is the worst of the available outcomes.

My authority

The CFO seat, covering the Americas organization, with Site Services also reporting to me. Broad enough that the scope was real and narrow enough that adoption still had to be earned from functions that did not report to me.

The sequence

Simplify, standardize, automate, measure. In that order, every time. The roadmap expressed it in three phases: stabilize, then prepare and plan, then execute.

• Stabilize. Evaluate and design the change management approach. Organizational realignment through consistent messaging, rebuilding trust, and visioning. Cultural work through real job descriptions and an engagement survey. Process improvement starting where the pain was worst.
• Prepare and plan. Establish and maintain trust, and open the workstreams: financial planning harmonization, a Gross-to-Net assessment and new launch model, procure-to-pay, travel and expense, contract management consolidation, government reporting and pricing, a program management office build-out, and the people initiatives.
• Execute. The deployments, once the organization could absorb them.

What we built

• A program management office from nothing, giving the function strategic planning and governance, a common language, real resource management, and a place where project artifacts lived after the project ended.
• A standardized process bank covering GMP, non-GMP, workflow and JSOX.
• An accounting and reporting stack built on FloQast, SAP function build-out, Readsoft into accounts payable, ZOption for posting, and smrt for lease contracts.
• A planning and analysis stack built on Vinyl for project and purchase order tracking, Planful for master data and scenario planning, and ICyte for Gross-to-Net accrual management.
• Commercial systems, with Model N for contract pricing and rebates.
• A rebuilt travel and expense model on JTB and Concur, with a benchmarked policy and audit flagging.

Accountability, adoption, and resistance

Accountability came from making work visible rather than from reporting on it. Talent development came from giving people the part of the problem that was slightly beyond them and staying close enough to catch it. Cross-functional adoption came from arriving with a shared view of a problem rather than a mandate.

The resistance was to the word automation, and it was rational. People hear it as a judgment about whether their expertise is still needed. You do not answer that with reassurance, you answer it with specificity: what is changing, why, what higher-value work becomes possible, and where human judgment remains decisive. The teams that struggled were the ones where I had explained the what and skipped the why.

What I would do differently

See The Leak I Built. The thing I missed was not in the roadmap.

Control and compliance were never in tension with any of this, because standardization precedes automation in the sequence, and a standardized process is an auditable one.

Former employers and products referenced are matters of professional history. The views expressed are my own and are not made on behalf of any current or former employer, and no commercial outcome for any named product is attributed to me personally. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.