FINANCIAL FUNCTION TRANSFORMATION IN THE INFORMATION ERA CASE STUDY INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS GROUP

The global economy and society are experiencing a transformation from the industrial era to the informational era. In this digital environment information flow is accelerating affecting the change in business operations and creating pressure on the organizational structure. In this paper, the transformation of the financial function was presented using case study of one of the world's leading hotel corporations InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The traditional duties and structure of the financial function were analyzed and an insight into their transformation was presented with a special attention drawn to the role of new technologies. The IHG case study reveals the ways to determine the operational efficiency of the most important financial and information systems in hotel management. A special consideration is given to the role of information technologies in the control function within the financial sector. Since the paper presents a case study of a single corporate chain, it leaves research space to test the model on the transformation of other corporate chains, as well as on independent hotels.