Have you ever tried to make a change to your chart of accounts?

It's not as easy as it sounds. Large companies often use vertical software solutions designed to meet the needs of independent business units within the larger company. For example, a services company and a real estate company might be owned by the same parent, but the services company will rely heavily on project management software, while the real estate company relies on leasing software, listings, and so on.

These vertical solutions depend on data from the general ledger, but the data is not often shared or governed effectively. Making a simple change to your CoA will affect these downstream systems in often unpredictable ways. I once worked on a cloud conversion project that created over 750 "invalid departments" because of unanticipated data clashes.

When things like this happen, companies often hire expensive consultants to build data governance systems. But here's a piece of advice, as a finance executive with various healthcare companies for over 20 years: Don't let consultants build things for you that Oracle has already built and will maintain and enhance.