Finance has been about transparency, seeing the patterns in the complexity and taking actions. However, when businesses went global, in terms of continent, currency and regulatory jurisdiction, it became more difficult to retain that clarity. The transformation to real-time data and cloud-native analytics has transformed the way treasury and finance functions are performed, connecting technology and decision-making in a manner that is more instinctive and immediate. The core of the change is established by professionals who are able not only to interpret the numbers, but also to organize the mechanisms behind the numbers. Karunakar Grandhe is one of them.
During the last two decades, Karunakar has transformed into an Associate Director of Technical Product Management in charge of data modernization of treasury in the cloud, having worked as a hands-on SAP Financials consultant since the early days. His development is a reflection of the larger development of enterprise finance, where manual reconciliations and monthly closings gave way to automated data pipelines and insights. Having an accounting and audit background and the official qualification of a Chartered and Cost Accountant, he adds richness to every system he creates. He added, “The best technologists are translators; they bridge what business needs with what technology can make possible.”
The expert has skills in finance, tax and treasury with an amalgamation of process knowledge and technical prowess. He was exposed to ERP underpinnings, particularly SAP Financials, HANA, and Business Warehouse, which led to his perception of the behaviour of enterprise data. With time, he has accepted the change towards the AWS-based ecosystem and has come to understand how cloud-native pipelines can transform stagnant reports into data streams of intelligence. This culture transformed the exposure interpretation, cash flow management and risk assessment of treasury teams. He assisted in changing the trend of financial analytics moving forward instead of backwards by aligning data pipelines with daily operations.
This philosophy is expressed in his projects. In one project, he combined various data sources of finances, SAP systems, tax engines and external systems into a single reporting system with HANA views and Power BI dashboards. This enabled the teams to track VAT, payments and receivables under one reliable eye. He used automated management dashboards instead of spreadsheet-based management fee calculations in another case, improving visibility and reducing manual oversight by delegating the allocation logic to dozens of entities. Both of the implementations merged accuracy in financial reporting with conciseness in architecture, showing how technology could be used to increase transparency without complexity has to be introduced.
Some of his more innovative works include the application of automated language translation to data ingestion pipelines. Through the use of translation services in the normalization of the data, the strategist has managed to fix the long-standing problem of inconsistency in bank and counterparty names used in the global systems. This minor enhancement increased the accuracy of dashboards and reports, and beauty in design can be found in little things. He also pioneered the creation of insurance and treasury dashboards where real-time financial data was modelled to give insights into exposure, liquidity and asset coverage, transforming a frozen inventory into a breathing risk profile which could be accessed by decision-makers at the beginning of each morning.
However, outside the area of technology, what makes the innovator’s approach is the way he develops the business process for the outside. He does not ask teams to increase their flexibility to new tools, but rather recreates the tools that teams work with, be it FX trading desks, controllers, or audit reviewers. His point of view is the linkage between the technical and the human, that enormous data systems do not only provide numbers; they provide insight between departments that might not necessarily think alike, but who strive towards a common objective. The future of digital finance rests on individuals who will be able to integrate enterprise knowledge and engineering accuracy.
The future of treasury and risk management tools will be based on real-time intelligence, the ability to normalize data in multiple languages, and predictive capabilities that learn throughout the transactions. This direction is what Karunakar in his work demonstrates, i.e. the future, the future financial systems which think faster, are more connected and can make business decisions in an instant. His adventure makes us remember that data transformation is not all about technology, but also about rethinking how finance itself comes to know the world.