‘Accountants like spending money’: How tech leaders can win budget

NSTA’s joint CFO and CIO has unique insights into blending tech and finance

The North Sea Transition Authority’s CFO and CIO are the same person. Here, Nic Granger explains what her role looks like - and how to win funding for IT leaders that aren’t so lucky.

Are you an IT leader who dreams of holding the purse strings? To take direct control of budgets, and speak to the board from a position they trust?

Perhaps you, like the North Sea Transition Authority’s Nic Granger, can take on joint CFO and CIO roles.

She says the positions blend together more easily than most people think:

“Both professions are looking at giving people data to make better decisions, or helping people do things in a different way; whether that's through automating processes or through digital tools.

“So actually, the two parts of that portfolio blend really well when you actually think about the outcomes and what you're trying to deliver, which is data and ways of working.”

Nic was already working across both sides of the business, but officially took over as CIO when John Seabourn left NSTA to join APEM Group last year.

The NSTA – which regulates the UK’s oil and gas, offshore hydrogen, and carbon storage industries – holds more than a petabyte of data. Most pertains to geological map and rock information, with “not much” being financial or commercial data.

With more than 95% of that data being in the public domain – usable by anyone who wants it – it needs to be easy to navigate and secure.

Nic says that means both the financial and geological data involve "lots of the same competencies,” with data driving decision-making in both roles.

Whether Nic is acting as CFO or CIO, her job comes back to transformation. That might be directly, in terms of making sure infrastructure is up to date and streamlining manual processes, or taking a strategic approach to ensure funding is available.

“I sit on our board with my CFO hat on, and that enables us as an organisation to look at things in a digital way... When I'm at the table I'm not purely talking the finance, I’m talking across the topics that the board cover, and I'll be making sure that digital, data and tech is really high in terms of that agenda.”

She adds, “Certainly in a government body, you don't always have your CIO on your board, so it's an opportunity for me to make sure that the organisation is actually doing what it said it would do, which was be data-driven - and that it has the funding in the right place for those digital tools and the transformation, whilst also making sure that transformation goes across the piece and everything that we do.”

Speaking the language

Being both CFO and CIO gives Nic a unique insight into how IT leaders can talk to finance teams. Though her advice seems, on the surface, a little counterintuitive:

“When you're talking about data and digital, and particularly trying to get finance for data and digital, my first piece of advice is ‘Don't talk about data and digital.’”

She explains:

“If you're talking to the board, or other people that are approving funding, they're not interested in data itself, or digital technology. They're interested in what it can deliver, how it can help the strategic aims of the organisation.

“There's a myth that accountants don't want to spend money. Accountants do like spending money, but they want to spend it on the right things. So, if people start talking in a really technical way about something that someone doesn't necessarily understand, you're going to switch off.”

“Those examples bring it to life for a board

The most valuable thing you can do, then, is explain what you’re going to do, rather than exactly how you’re going to do it. Focus on outcomes and how they meet the business’s strategic aims.

Examples can be a great help. Nic shared one of her own, from when was looking to raise the quality of NSTA’s data.

Most of the information the regulator collects is geological map and rock data, so you’d expect lots of images of...maps and rocks. But, that’s not the only thing that makes its way into the system.

“We found that the European Championship team listing for one year was submitted as a piece of geological data. Clearly not going to help us understand the subsurface.

“We've also had some lovely photos of someone's garden submitted as a piece of data. Again, not going to help you understand their geology of the Marine Basin.

“Those kinds of examples bring it to life for a board. If you say, ‘I've got bad data quality,’ they don't know what you mean. If you say, ‘We're expecting data about rocks, and I've got data on flowers,’ it brings a bit of humour to the room, but it also means that people start to understand what you're talking about.”

Have you found that talking about outcomes, rather than outputs, helps those funding conversations?