Comments on: The Gap between Finance and IT

By: Mike James

Mike James — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:26:03 +0000

“And I’m not saying that accountants some SQL knowledge = IT professional” omitted the word Plus after “accountants”, – I typed a plus sign…:(

By: Mike James

Mike James — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:24:35 +0000

Isn’t this what systems accountants do? You and I and Stephane-Robert obviously work as S/A’s, straddling the “accounting-IT divide”.

In my experience plenty of accountants acquire adequate relevant system skills, but fewer IT people acquire adequate relevant accounting skills.

And I’m not saying that accountants some SQL knowledge = IT professional.

By: Filling the gap between IT and Finance « Stéphane-Robert Langer

Filling the gap between IT and Finance « Stéphane-Robert Langer — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:54:00 +0000

[...] Data Management, Business Intelligence, Accounting — Stéphane-Robert Langer @ 7:53 am A recent post at Accounting Mechanics suggests accountants should do anything necessary to fill the gap between [...]

By: Stephane-Robert Langer

Stephane-Robert Langer — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:24:30 +0000

Thanks for the link to David Carter’s story.

I agree accountants should do anything necessary to fill this gap and have actually spent quite a few years doing it myself. It does raise a few issues, though – let’s call them “positioning” issues:

* Old-school finance people might see you too much like an IT resource

* IT will most definitely see you as competition;-)

* The added value is obvious once you’re part of an organization and start to deliver results, but it’s difficult to “sell” that particular skill set without sounding too much like “an IT guy”

* You run the risk of ending up maintaining systems instead of using them to answer the very questions you built them to find answers to in the first place

Oh well. Back to my EOM ETL jobs, SQL-based cost allocation processes and OLAP cubes…