So to my mind a "Push" is giving the CFO more power than they have. It is more like CFO saying revenues are down. Marketing saying "Well, if we add DRM, we can capture those phantom sales." CFO may have his/her people research the impact on the balance sheet, but more likely it goes to Marketing/research who then say "This brand of DRM is the most widely used and generally gives the greatest lift." They then propose back to the CFO that, if they spend X dollars it should generate Y sales. CFO's people determine if there is that money in the budget and/or determines if it can come from somewhere else.
See, I don't see Marketing as even being involved at this point. This is a Sales issue. There is some overlap between Marketing and Sales, and I'm sure it varies depending on the company, but Marketing is more about creating demand and Sales is accommodating the demand. Even assuming Marketing and Sales are the same group, the impetus or push is still coming from the CFO, in that there is money left on the table. In your example you even have Marketing proposing back to the CFO after the CFO said we need more cash. If he/she had no input on the matter then why would bother asking him/her? CFOs are not simple bean counters anymore.
Finance might be helping along these ideas, but is by no means PUSHING them.
but your initial supposition was that the Finance/accounting teams were in some way causing (either by push or drive or whatever) an increase in DRM initiative. And for most major companies Finance wouldn't be doing anything of the kind. they may be involved in the decision, but I would by no means think of them as motivators in the process. Nor even key stake holders other than the fact that you would have to get their buy off to make sure that the money is there. Hence "Finance".
That maybe what might have happened 20 years ago, but the times are a changing.
http://businessfinancemag.com/article/evolving-role-todays-cfo-0806
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/19/chief-financial-officer-leadership-managing-governance.html
http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/...talyst-in-building-a-high-performance-culture
The trend these days if for CFO's to leverage their resources to drive strategy across the whole company, because they are in the best position do it. If the sales are not what they expected, I'm sure they would go to Sales and/or Marketing and find out why, and how to improve them. Thats pushing in my book. The motivation first and foremost is revenue, right? That comes from up top. CFO's role is only going to get more involved in the future.
As for if my experiences are identical to every company across the board, probably not. But I have worked for 5 large companies over the last 20 years and every one of them work more or less like this. I have also taken classes in Business finance and they do not involve PUSHES as you describe. Now, are there maybe one or two innovative companies out there that blend roles? Possibly, but I would bet they are REALLY SMALL companies where everyone wears three or four different hats at a time.
I work for one of the biggest companies in the US, and therefore the world. Possibly bigger than the last 5 companies you worked for put together. Not a penis measuring contest, but just stating the environment in which I stated the example. CFO and Finance in general have a big impact on our company. CFO interpreted SOX in such a way that it effected what we could do with software and even hardware post sale, and why we charge for various things. Accounting dictates how we go about many things around here. This has led to mini Marketing and PR issues with the public, but thats what they do.
What I'm not clear on is how much of it is other groups leveraging Finance, or Finance themselves, but I get the impression when someone says "Finance/Accounting says we need to do this...", its coming from them. That has included stripping out features, even changing our release schedule so we can release in specific quarters. Its usually a variation of "Accounting says...", "Marketing says....", "Sales says...", "VP says...", etc, and thats where I assume the push is coming from.
I suppose it depends on whether or not Marketing and Sales are one in the same. Its much easier to visualize Sales demanding DRM to pick up their numbers without a need to get a push from Finance. Marketing, on its own, makes less sense. A products sales can be a measure of Marketing effectiveness, but DRM has never been shown to be embraced by consumers. I don't recall DRM accounting for an increase in sales on their own. Usually its some form of price reduction or other incentive.
the example you give more or less highlights this. The CFO understood how the money was being spent and said something. I don't know specifics of where you work, or what happened, but I would bet that he/she said something like "We need to increase our profit margin and the first place to start cutting is DEV." Then people got together and started brainstorming how to do more with less. the 'Driver' part of this was that the CFO controlled the money. Not that he/she told the company what new products or procedures they needed to follow, only that they weren't getting as much money anymore. Or so I would guess.
but the bottom line is, the CFO and/or finance department are not saying 'We need more DRM in video games." They may say, we need to capture the phantom sales. But it would be the marketing folks and or the market research team that came up with "More DRM".
And by this admission, the driver, or one who pushed the process, was the CFO, correct? You seem to be arguing semantics, which we can do all day. I could easily says Marketing doesn't implement any code, so its Engineering thats pushing DRM.
In my example, Marketing didn't come up with DRM, that was already in play in other parts of the company. Engineering just leveraged it. Marketing didn't design the transaction infrastructure (and DRM), it was designed by one of the Sales groups. Don't quote me on that though, because our Sales and Marketing groups can have their own engineering resources.
What Marketing did do was work with Sales on a different pricing structure and consolidation of features with Engineering to give a perceived value to potential and existing customers. (And I assume Finance was on these meetings as well, as upper level directors are known have input on just about everything underneath them. I do not know this for a fact though) They work around the DRM issue to ensure people will still want to buy the software. But without Finance saying we needed to do more, Marketing and Engineering wouldn't have done anything differently.
In essence it is like blaming the road construction team for Speeding ticket revenue. yes, they are involved. But no they aren't causing people to drive faster in any direct or motivational way.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here...fines assessed for speeding in a construction zone? Or fines funding road construction?
I understand as much as I did before this post. Specifically when looking at Ubisoft, I don't see why Marketing would push DRM (unless Marketing and Sales are one in the same). It goes against their core function. So they are going to implement DRM, which I'm sure every marketeer knows ticks off consumers in one way or another, even though the high level purpose of marketing is
"the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships, in order to capture value from customers in return"? Seems counter intuitive. I've seen Marketing tickle every part of a product, but never to antagonize the customer. It would seem more likely to me that the CFO or CEO would push this to appease shareholders. The Marketing team is probably the ones who got them to get rid of the DRM.
The one way in which this might make sense is when I think about EA's online pass. That seems like something someone in Marketing would have come up with, which is a somewhat clever form of DRM. But then thats DRM against Gamestop! hahaha And its starting to move into douche territory, which again, seems like greed on the CFO/CEO level.
