Finance DevOps: gain autonomy thanks to low-code /no-code tools

In today’s fast-paced technological environment, corporate finance departments face significant challenges: keeping up with rapid market and regulatory changes and dealing with aging technology systems. The solution to these challenges may lie in a transformative approach: Finance DevOps.

Many enterprises struggle with complex IT systems, lengthy implementation times, and difficulty in meeting specific business needs.

By combining DevOps principles with the power of low-code/no-code platforms, Finance DevOps empowers finance professionals to gain autonomy, accelerate the implementation of new functionalities, and improve process efficiency and data quality – as well as time to market!

The emergence of citizen developers and low-code/no-code platforms

At the heart of this revolution is the emergence of “citizen developers” and the democratization of no-code and low-code platforms. But what does this mean in concrete terms?

Citizen developers are professionals who, without having received technical training in programming, are able to create applications and software solutions. They achieve this thanks to no-code and low-code platforms, which offer intuitive, visual interfaces to develop applications and interfaces.

This trend responds to a critical need for information systems agility and autonomy from traditional IT departments.

In the context of rapid and frequent change, waiting weeks or months for a functional software update is no longer a viable option.

Finance DevOps: what is it?

Finance DevOps is a collaborative approach that empowers finance teams to take ownership of their systems.

By providing them with the tools and skills they need, Finance DevOps enables them to develop and deploy applications more quickly and efficiently, without constant reliance on IT.

The main pillars of Finance DevOps are:

• Business empowerment: Finance teams are equipped with tools that enable them to develop and deploy interfaces and processes themselves, without having to constantly call on IT teams.
• Automation: development, testing and deployment processes are automated to the maximum extent, reducing manual errors and accelerating development cycles.
• Collaboration: Business and IT teams work together throughout the project lifecycle, fostering a better understanding of needs and improved quality of deliverables.

The aim of the DevOps approach is to eliminate the friction between the “Devs” who need to make changes and the “Ops” teams who manage the platform and prefer that it remain unchanged.

DevOps enables companies to deploy software updates more frequently and with fewer errors, while improving system stability.

The benefits of Finance DevOps

Cost reduction

• Process automation: Automating repetitive, manual tasks, can significantly reduce labor costs and increase productivity.
• Optimization of resources: thanks to a better allocation of resources, Finance DevOps optimize resources by reducing the amount of back-and-forth during development, as well as by reducing test phases and latency.
• Accelerated time to market: By reducing development and deployment times, DevOps Finance helps to generate a faster return on investment.

Improving data quality

• Process control: By being directly involved in application development, finance teams have a better understanding of business processes, and can implement appropriate quality controls.
• Customized processing: Financial teams can customize treatments to suit their specific needs, ensuring a better match with the data used. It also enables them to ensure that the company’s standards are properly applied.
• Data governance: DevOps Finance promotes more rigorous data governance, defining clear rules for data collection, storage and use.

Increased agility

• Reactivity to change: Finance DevOps enables finance teams to adapt quickly to market changes and new regulations.
• Rapid development of new functionalities: Thanks to low-code/no-code tools, finance teams are significantly more autonomous and can rapidly develop new applications or interfaces to meet specific business needs.
• Reduced time-to-market: By speeding up development and deployment cycles, Finance DevOps reduces the time between identifying a need and satisfying it.

Autonomy of finance teams

• Empowering finance teams: Finance teams can now develop and deploy their own applications, reducing their dependence on IT teams.
• Faster decision-making: Finance teams can make decisions faster by having access to reliable data and the tools they need to analyze it.
• Empowerment: By empowering finance teams, Finance DevOps fosters a sense of responsibility and commitment.

The risk of shadow IT

It’s essential not to confuse Finance DevOps with Shadow IT. While the latter can result in fragmented, undocumented and unmaintainable solutions, Finance DevOps favors a controlled, integrated approach. By enabling finance teams to develop their own solutions while integrating them into the overall information system, Finance DevOps avoids the risks associated with Shadow IT and guarantees data consistency.

The main criteria for differentiating the Finance DevOps approach from Shadow IT are:

• Governance: Finance DevOps is part of an IT governance approach, guaranteeing the security and compliance of developments.
• Integration: Applications developed as part of Finance DevOps are integrated into the existing ecosystem, avoiding silos and redundancies.
• Maintainability: The solutions developed are documented and maintained, ensuring their longevity.
• Collaboration: Finance DevOps relies on close collaboration between IT and business teams.

The AFAH solution: Finance DevOps in action

Axway Financial Accounting Hub streamlines and automates financial processes, making them more efficient and reliable. This allows finance teams to focus on strategic initiatives and deliver greater value to the business.

With AFAH, finance teams can automate, speed up and make more reliable their closing processes by:

• Independently configures interfaces between the company’s various business and financial applications, and rapidly integrates data from different sources (ERP, CRM, etc.).
• Defining and adjusting financial data transformation rules
• Greater autonomy to simulate, test and deploy evolutions
• Accelerating deployment in production
• Manage the entire configuration lifecycle, from creation to production release

Axway Financial Accounting Hub is unique in its ability to seamlessly integrate developments by finance teams into an automated process organized in collaboration with IT.

This ensures that the innovations developed by the finance teams fit seamlessly into the company’s overall technological ecosystem. The benefits are tangible:

• Drastically reduce implementation times for new financial requirements
• Improved data quality through better understanding of transformations by business experts
• Free up IT resources for higher value-added projects

Towards more agile and autonomous finance

Finance DevOps is more than just a technological evolution. It’s a paradigm shift in the way finance departments interact with technology and manage their processes.

By giving finance teams the tools they need to become active players in their own digital transformation, Finance DevOps paves the way for a finance industry that is more agile, more responsive and better equipped to face tomorrow’s challenges.

However, this increased autonomy does not mean a total absence of control. On the contrary, it is part of a collaborative framework in which IT and finance work hand in hand to guarantee the security, compliance and coherence of information systems.

At a time when data is at the heart of all strategic decisions, Finance DevOps appears to be an essential lever for transforming finance departments into true strategic business partners, capable of innovating and adapting in real time to market challenges.

A solution like Axway Financial Accounting Hub gives finance professionals the means to take control of their information systems and become true players in the digital transformation.