Top financial executives at IBM, Adobe and Delta Air Lines say their roles have changed, and will change more, as the speed of data and decision-making increases.
"We are acquisitive," Schroeter said. IBM just completed its $34 billion acquisition of open-source software company Red Hat. Schroeter said IBM historically has sent in multiple teams to conduct due diligence on deals, sometimes over a period that lasted weeks. That led to situations in which a rival "walks in the day after [our team] left and offers 15% more than we had just."decisions more quickly by analyzing risks, workflows, synergies and other factors.
"There are incredible tools today to make data analysis easier and more accurate than ever before. That's great, but more than a few CFOs have told me that their organizations now suffer from analysis paralysis. Once CFO told him that her board wanted to run 40 different scenarios for a potential acquisition. Forty! And, by the time they were ready to move, it was too late. Just because you can run 40 scenarios does not mean you should.