Datarails: Nearly 300 sign petition calling on finance teams to 'stop being clones'

'Not a clone movement' unites 10 CFO tech companies, finance leaders and influencers 

NEW YORK, May 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CFO tech companies and business leaders have launched a new movement today urging finance departments to unleash their strategic value rather than acting as 'poor clones of themselves.'

The 'Not a Clone' movement has been organized by Datarails, the FP&A solution for Excel users. The movement unites 10 tech companies who sell to CFOs, alongside CFOs themselves, and finance influencers.

An online petition to 'Make finance teams strategic leaders, not poor clones of themselves' has already been signed by nearly 300 people including CEOs, COOs, and CFOs.

The movement comes as 88% of finance leaders say they are held back from having a greater role in driving innovation in their companies (Microsoft, 2023 Future of Finance Trends Report). In addition, 81% of CFOs believe they suffer from the most intensive daily manual work compared to any other role in the C-suite.

CFO Tech companies who have added their voice to the campaign include Chargebee, Tipalti, Mesh, PayEm, Beebole Vertice, and Quolum.

Signatories include Anders Liu Lindberg, Partner, and COO at the Business Partnering Institute; Paul Barnhurst, a former FP&A leader at Amex; Aliyyah Abdullah, a finance leader at Recycling Council of B.C, Soufyan Hamid formerly a finance leader at telecoms company Proximus and Deloitte, and Christian Wattig, an ex-Unilever FP&A leader. Together these finance influencers  have more than 375,000 LinkedIn followers.

The movement will include billboard campaigns, social media promotions and a new video advert.

The ad released today shows a CFO bogged down in manual tasks who 'clones himself to address all the mundane tasks'. The Frankenstein's monster clones include a clone for data consolidation, payments and invoices, and another to figure out which Excel budget is the final version.

On social media, supporters are also being invited to 'clone themselves' through a user generated image portal. This shows the user in a range of roles including  'Excel Officer', 'Data Chaser', 'Consolidator', 'Data Enterer' and 'Formula Checker'.

Datarails CFO Zviki Shimon says: "Everyone who has ever worked in a finance department faces the same situation. Despite great intentions to be strategic we can sometimes end up becoming poor clones of ourselves. This can mean chasing data or not having an accurate read on trends due to enormous time spent on repetitive manual processes. This movement aims to put an end to low value clone work by getting finance departments to automate duplicative tasks and unleash their true strategic value."

Charlotte Wright, Financial Controller Vertice, adds: "Finance leaders have a million things to do — we shouldn't be spending time on manual processes like negotiating and contract management. If we can leverage technology with the confidence that it is doing these tasks as well or better than we could, it allows us to put our energy into the things that really matter."

CEO and co-founder Yves Hiernaux of Beebole, adds: "We don't have the luxury of consuming our resources and time with manual data processing, so if companies want to stay competitive, it comes down to how (and how quickly) we can process and analyze the facts before us."

Rob Israch, President, Tipalti adds: "Skilled finance teams shouldn't be spending their time on manual payment runs and data entry. By automating the entire payables process, you can reduce your workload by 80% and put your team in charge."

To join the movement (or sign the petition) go to https://www.datarails.com/notaclone/

For further information, contact: Jonathan Marciano, Datarails, Director of Communications, +972586135342 or email [email protected]

SOURCE Datarails