Why Multinationals Are Turning to Product Thinkers in Finance IT

As global markets grow more complex, the finance back office has turned into a front-line battleground for efficiency and strategy. Multinational corporations face a complex array of challenges, including currency volatility, tax compliance across multiple jurisdictions, real-time reporting demands, and an ever-expanding maze of regulations. Traditional IT projects often struggle to keep pace, delivering piecemeal fixes that soon buckle under the weight of scale. Increasingly, companies are seeking a new kind of leader at the intersection of finance and technology: the product thinker.

One of the clearest examples of this shift can be seen in the career of Karunakar Grandhe, Associate Director in Technical Product Management, who has spent more than two decades reimagining the way finance and technology converge. Grandhe represents the archetype of the product thinker in Finance IT, someone who not only understands balance sheets and tax codes but can also design scalable, data-driven systems that meet the demands of global business.

“Finance leaders don’t just need reports anymore,” he explains. “They need integrated products that can anticipate risks, support compliance, and scale across markets. That requires a mindset shift from projects to ownership.”

His expertise spans core finance processes, record-to-report, procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, treasury, and tax, while extending deep into technical ecosystems like SAP S/4HANA, Oracle, AWS, and advanced analytics platforms such as Power BI and Spotfire. This blend allows him to translate highly complex processes into actionable and intuitive products.

For instance, when leading treasury transformation initiatives, he replaced cumbersome spreadsheets with governed applications that automate service fee allocations and withholding tax calculations. “Spreadsheets break down at scale,” he says. “But with governed applications, you get repeatability, control, and auditability. That reduces operational risk dramatically.”

The impact is significant: faster financial close cycles, reduced manual reconciliation, and improved accuracy in forecasting, critical advantages for multinational firms operating across volatile markets.

One of the hallmarks of product thinking in finance IT is enduring ownership. Instead of the “deliver-and-disappear” approach typical of traditional projects, he emphasizes the importance of lifecycle stewardship.

“I see the roadmap as a living asset,” he notes. “That means I own backlog prioritization, enhancements, governance, and cost control long after go-live. This reduces technical debt and ensures real return on investment.”

This philosophy is evident in his work on VAT and tax analytics pipelines, where he built compliance-ready data flows that consolidate ERP ledgers with tax engine outputs. These pipelines now serve as a single source of truth, accelerating tax filings and audits for global entities.

The products Grandhe has shaped go beyond back-office efficiency; they enable strategic decision-making. In one case, he led the creation of daily cash alignment and bank exposure dashboards that gave treasury leaders near real-time visibility into foreign exchange risk.

“FX exposure can shift in minutes,” he says. “Having front-to-back analytics available daily, not monthly, changes how treasury manages counterparty risk and hedging strategies.”

Another example is his work on multilingual, multi-system data ingestion using ETL workflows, AWS S3 storage, and translation services. By standardizing counterparty names and transaction data across geographies, he helped enable consistent global reporting across dozens of currencies and languages.

Beyond product delivery, he has been instrumental in global template design, blueprinting ERP processes for intercompany transactions, period-end closing, and new general ledger configurations. This has allowed multinational clients to roll out finance systems consistently across countries, reducing both cost and complexity.

“Consistency matters as much as innovation,” he reflects. “Without a standard global template, every country becomes a one-off project, and that’s neither sustainable nor scalable.”

While the technical architecture is critical, Grandhe stresses that collaboration and stakeholder engagement define success. He has built his reputation on clarifying high-level business requirements and translating them into design choices that finance leaders can own.

“It’s not about the flashiest technology,” he says. “It’s about creating tools that a CFO trusts and a finance analyst can use without frustration. That’s where adoption and impact come from.”

As finance IT continues its shift toward product-centric models, Grandhe sees both opportunities and challenges ahead. Regulatory complexity will only deepen, and the demand for real-time risk insights will intensify. At the same time, technologies like AI-driven forecasting and blockchain-based compliance are poised to disrupt the landscape.

“Product thinkers will be central to navigating this future,” he predicts. “They bring the ability to connect regulation with architecture, strategy with execution, and data with decisions. That’s how multinationals will stay resilient.”

For Karunakar Grandhe, the work is far from over. His vision is not just to modernize finance IT but to build systems that empower businesses to anticipate, not just react. “Finance technology should give leaders confidence,” he says. “Confidence that they can meet today’s obligations and tomorrow’s surprises.”