The term ‘SoMoClo’ – the coming together of social, mobile and cloud technologies – represents the possibilities unleashed as these rapidly developing technologies begin to overlap and interact with each other.
So far finance and accountancy’s adoption of SoMoClo has been less marked than in other functions, but cloud applications are growing. These applications enable remote working, which in turn encourages social interactions.
What is clear is that the growth of SoMoClo can be neither resisted nor ignored. CFOs now need to take a leadership role in this area. Below are the imperatives for finance:
- Learn from both the mistakes and successes of early adopters in other functions.
- Engage and interact across corporate silos to combine data and expertise.
- Offer insight to enhance decision making not just data.
- Facilitate innovation in the business rather than using the extended reach of SoMoClo to police it.
- Move finance professionals into the business using mobility and cloud.
- Automate wherever possible to concentrate on added value.
- Dream about new ways for finance to add value: SoMoClo makes so much technically possible that imagination is now almost the only limitation.
