The stereotypical CFO may be seen as someone who doesn't understand technology's value in the organization and too often forces you to stretch the IT budget past the breaking point. But as new enterprise-wide technologies are deployed in both the finance and IT departments, the chiefs of these realms are discovering the benefits of mutual understanding.

At least at IT services provider TradeCard, that is. The CTO and CFO at TradeCard are finding themselves collaborating more often, in part to better understand the mindset of CTOs and CFOs at their client companies, reports Roy Harris at CFOWorld.

The growing need for transparency in business is a main motivator behind increased collaboration among CIOs and CFOs, according to George Westerman, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. "What we've found in our research is that the number one way to improve operations is to create transparency about performance," he said. "CFOs understand transparency and the discipline that can grow from it."

As businesses depend more on cloud-based services, a partnership between the financial and technology chiefs becomes more important as well. The two disciplines are required to work together on the enterprise resource planning system and other systems that permeate the business. 

One area in which TradeCard's CFO Steve Ford and CTO Nestor Zwyhun collaborate is data security--which is an offering the company aims to provide its customers as well.

"In the old days you had security through obscurity," Zwyhun said, noting that it used to be challenging trying to figure out what was happening in different units within a company. With a single cloud-based system serving an entire organization, data is accessible throughout, which raises security and management challenges. If data isn't accurate, it affects everyone, but at the same time it can be detected and fixed quickly.

When both the tech side and finance side of the house see things from the perspective of the business, the result is mutually beneficial. "Getting that meeting of the minds is an extremely powerful place," he said. "In essence, budgets and software are mostly controlled within those two groups."

For more:
- see Roy Harris's article at CFOWorld

Related Articles:
CFOs should be more involved in security planning
To get priorities funded, understand the CFO's worries
Survey of CFOs says they're encroaching on CIOs more
CFOs explain what they want from IT