The Buzz 1: “Change management is a critical skill in today’s c-suite… Change management is a challenge for every organization.” (Dave Sutton, toprightpartners.com)

The Buzz 2: “Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.” (Philip Crosby, 1926–2001, aka “The Fun Uncle of the Quality Revolution”, author: Quality Without Tears and Quality is Free)

The Buzz 3: “Change before you have to.” (Jack Welch, former GE CEO, named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine)

The Buzz 4: “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed!” (Peter Senge, organizational learning expert, author: The Fifth Discipline)

As finance and risk teams embrace technology more quickly than they did in the past, change management has never been more crucial to facilitate efficient adoption and effective implementation.

With more organizations moving towards modern technologies for Finance – including automation and artificial intelligence (AI) – there is often resistance to change as well as fear of being “replaced” by computers.

As business conditions and business models change, finance and risk teams need to transform their own organizations to take advantage of technology advancements – while ensuring the human element remains at the center of their strategic decisions.

For these reasons and more, change management needs to focus on best practices and comprehensive organizational planning for change, from executive buy-in on changes in technology and business processes, to the communication of the what, the when, and the why of a change.

We’ll ask Birgit Starmanns at SAP, Jason Roling at Delaware Consulting and Ross Wilson at Accenture for their take on Enabling Intelligent Finance Transformation with Change Management.