Blockchain: How this technology could impact the CFO

02 Sep 2019 by svet

FYI: This group's Friday night light reading consists of the 12-pager tagged "Blockchain: How this technology could impact the CFO", which was manufactured by my favorite group of "professionals" - corporate consultants. This time I'm talking about E&Y's ones.

For those who can't really tell the difference between PWC, D&T, KPMG and E&Y I can explain that E&Y has always highly priced itself for being "methodological" and, even, "scientific" in its "consulting approaches".

Basically, E&Y partners love selling to their corporate "buddies" the idea that everything in their businesses must be meticulously described in terms of "business processes", compartmentalised, staffed to / with expensive mainframes, reduced to various types of KPI's "dashboards" and then periodically "re-invented" with the imminent help of, you know, E&Y.

Consequently, this report begins the following way: "(CFO) roles comprise six segments: trusting the numbers, providing insight, getting your house in order, funding organizational strategy, development of business strategy and

communication to the external marketplace."

Then, of course, it proceeds to explain how "the Blockchain" will help CFOs to excel in all of those noble "segments" simultaneously. Alas, space and time limits prevent me from digging into each of those six underlying "reasonings" proposed by E&Y consultants, and I'll provide you with two extracts only.

First (citing): " ... Blockchain could impact future (business) strategies by enabling new transactions and altering entire business models ..." Even if this (and the following) "phraseological units" are supposed to convey some useful information E&Y clients are, probably, supposed to be charged for it being revealed to them.

Second (citing): "The CFO must represent the company to external stakeholders,

and blockchain technology could provide added transparency for interested parties." Yes, and because of that E&Y proposes to spend about $10 million (currently, an average cost of implementing "corporate blockchains") to "provide added transparency" to about ten or so "interested parties".

We can, of course, understand that E&Y's target auditory are 45+ y.o. "generalists" - corporate departmental chiefs, mostly - which spend their lives competing for the attention of their superiors or hunting for the next "executive job opportunity" in the "hottest" Fortune 500 company. But even for this type of clients that "report" is a bit shallow, I guess.

Link: https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-blockchain-in-action-privacy-in-the-digital-age/$FILE/ey-blockchain-in-action-privacy-in-the-digital-age.pdf