Very brief article, which although short, did serve as a reminder of the importance of technology, HR and political forces are when developing business strategy. 

In my experience, from manufacturing, access to tools such as big data and being able to listen directly to customers through social media have been two of the greatest leaps forward we have made in business in recent years.

The drawback we are currently experiencing is the finance function is often required to source, record and store this data.  It often isn't used by other functions and due to an ever decreasing number of staff on the "shop floor", there are very few to act on any conclusions we may draw from the data.

This is in part thanks to automation and failing to replace staff in order to protect overhead inflation.

In my industry, we are seeing the rise of "partner" functions who have started to perform this role, but who are far too skilled to act upon or perform regular tasks.  Often they are left "handing out" recommended tasks to already overworked departments who pay lip service to the information, but spend most of their time drowning under more immediate challenges.