Digital transformation is still a top priority for companies looking to foster growth or entice new generations of tech-savvy talent, but as firms continue to invest heavily in emerging technologies like generative AI, it’s important to remember digital transformation is a moving target, said Razzak Jallow, CFO of workflow automation software provider FloQast.

“I don't think it's something where you do it for a year, and hands down or hands off, it's all done,” Jallow said in an interview. “Your business is constantly evolving. The world is constantly evolving, there's constantly better tools.”

For CFOs — who are being tapped to lead such initiatives at their firms with greater and greater frequency — that means when it comes time to shell out funds for new tech or software, they need to ensure they are buying a solution and not a feature, he said.

Hitting a moving target

Jallow has served as finance chief for the Los Angeles, California-based FloQast since 2021, the latest step in a career steeped in the financial technology space. Jallow held top roles for technology and software giants including Apple, Google and Adobe Systems as well as fintechs such as LendingClub, before hfinding his “home” in B2B SaaS with Looker, he said — a data analytics startup acquired by Google for $2.6 billion in 2020.

When it comes to fostering technological innovation at a company, the CFO is uniquely placed to help drive such initiatives effectively. As one of the executives that gets a holistic look at the ins and outs of the business, the CFO can work with other leaders to best tap such knowledge to prioritize investments and projects, which will really drive value for the business, Jallow said.  

“Part of strategy and prioritization is saying ‘no’ to some things, and so by working with business partners, the CFO can provide that long range ROI analysis to help prioritize some things or provide the downstream costs that often aren't seen in a lot of actions that are developed in a silo,” Jallow said.

Having that collaboration and accountability at play in the C-suite is critical; without that coordination, many digital transformation initiatives easily fail, according to a recent KPMG study.

Jallow pointed to the example of someone in a market function potentially coming to him and asking to purchase a $500,000 piece of software that would improve their teams’ effectiveness. The CFO can come back around and say, “okay, now all of your team's quotas are going up that $500,000 next year, because that's going to drive value,” he said—ensuring both that the team believes in the value and efficacy of the tool as well as establishing accountability.

“For me, it's shifting it less from a, ‘no we don't have the budget, to a ‘yes, if we're actually going to get the revenue from this,’” he said of conversations surrounding digital transformation.

Finding the software sweet spot

To drive transformation effectively, CFOs also need to make sure they are waiting for the opportune moment to invest. With business models becoming more complex and capital intensive, it’s important not to invest too early or too much in enterprise software. At the same time, finance leaders facing a critical shortage in finance and accounting talent can’t wait too long to bring in emerging tools and technologies that can take some of the pressure off often overworked staff.

“I do think if you wait until things break, and then you try and implement a new system or digitize, you're too late, because the person that you've been breaking for the last six months, is at their tipping point, they've got more work than they can handle, and it's broken,” Jallow said. “And now you're asking him to keep doing all that work as it scales.”

One of the common ways integrating new software can go wrong is by purchasing something with a long, 18-month implementation period — by the time you get to that 18-month milestone, “half the people that started on the project aren't there anymore, it never gets implemented [and] becomes shelfware,” he said. “No one has 18 months of patience to see a project through, and it just doesn't work.”

Another common misstep is purchasing the cheapest option available — while that ostensibly saves the company money, oftentimes it takes as much time to utilize or maintain the software as it would to just do whatever process it’s meant to replace manually, Jallow said, negating much of the benefits of the cheaper price.  

“It’s finding that sweet spot of software that is solving a big pain point, is quick to implement and drives real value without a lot of maintenance,” Jallow said.