Technology means little without a team that knows how to use it . As healthcare grows more complex, finance leaders are rethinking how they build teams that are prepared for the future. At THMA’s recent Vice President of Finance (VPF) forum, Northwestern Medicine revealed their strategies to empower finance leaders through tech-driven solutions.
Recognizing that collaboration fuels innovation, Northwestern created a Finance, Transformation, and Technology Department within its finance division — a centralized hub connecting finance and IT. This team leads automation efforts, manages citizen developer training, and serves as subject-matter experts for emerging tools. Their work has strengthened partnerships across departments and accelerated digital transformation in finance operations... A key success has been their 12-week “citizen development” program, which upskills finance leaders to design and manage automated solutions. A tiered responsibility model distributes roles across teams based on skill level, ensuring agility and scalability. To ease initial resistance, Northwestern launched low-risk pilots and emphasized hands-on learning — building trust and demonstrating clear ROI early in the process.
The results are tangible: through retirements and natural attrition, Northwestern reduced its FTE count by nearly 30%, redeploying four employees to form the new Transformation and Technology Department without additional costs. Automation also unlocked new discounts and rebate opportunities.
Key Takeaways
Build business-led automation with IT guardrails Northwestern empowers finance “citizen developers” to design, test, and deploy automations,, while IT ensures standards through a Center of Excellence (COE). A parallel proof of concept for statement reconciliation was completed in about four weeks compared to roughly six months via IT alone.
Address resistance with accountability and documentation Finance mitigated IT concerns by taking full ownership of builds and maintenance, using standardized documentation (e.g., Visio flowcharts), and engaging in COE reviews. An upcoming ERP upgrade will “stress-test” these documented processes and reinforce their value.
Drive cultural change through small, high-ROI wins Early, tangible successes from citizen developers converted skeptics. Teams adopted a “win or learn” mindset, , and embraced diverse upskilling paths across a workforce spanning ages 21–70.
Build transformation capacity and a talent pipeline A dedicated Finance Transformation & Technology department (one manager and four FTEs) partners with IT, runs a 12-week program (at ~20% participant time) covering Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate, and hosts an internship blending finance and computer science talent. This department scales skills across ~130 finance FTEs, with ~30 already trained.
Scale responsibly through tiers, mentorship, and access control A four-level capability model—Explorer, Operator, Maintainer, and Builder/Architect—paired with mentorship helps teams determine when to use bots, deeper automation, or BI/SQL. Access to advanced tools like SQL is limited to select users, while a gamified Power App is planned to encourage continuous learning.