Ep. 83: Sandhya Sriram - Strategic Planning, Prioritization, and Motivation

Contact Sandhya Sriram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyasriram2005/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In,  IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I'm here to bring you episode 83 of our series. With most finance professionals looking to make sense of the current economic climate, my cohost Rouba Zeidan speaks with Sandhya Sriram to find out more about where certain priorities lie in business. In this episode, Sandhya shares her expertise on strategic planning during a pandemic and how professionals can best balance organizational priorities while managing their teams, particularly remotely. With so much changing in business on a regular basis, it's important to strategize, prioritize, and stay motivated. So now, let's keep listening for some practical insights on how to do just that.

Rouba: (00:57)
So let, let's get right into it with, with all companies around the world, migrating to remote work, more specifically work from home, major compromises that have to be made that's ensure that business continuity is done under extremely limited data security circumstances. So that being the case of staff connecting from home, what are some of the best practices you have identified within your practice to protect company data?

Sandhya : (01:26)
So, I think there are different aspects of remote working. One is how do you secure access to your network when people are connecting remotely? How do you secure access? Now, both of them is not a COVID thing, it was existing pre-COVID as well. But what has really changed is the scale. . Now I am for a minute, not talking about knowledge workers who work with sensitive data, so where they have to be, have to have restricted physical access, you know. Some of these KPOs where people can't take their mobile cant take pictures because they deal with  really sensitive stuff. Now I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about operations in general. I think the new aspect of remote working, which was also there before, but has significantly amplified, is who else can potentially access your data. So everyone is working from everywhere. So your employee could be in a PG. The person in the adjacent room or the adjacent bed, as she or he can afford may have access to the phone calls that your employee makes. Maybe they have access to the data that he or she is viewing, and therefore the level of what can be compromised is what is maybe worrying companies or what they're faced with. Now under normal circumstances, physical security used to give that extra layer of comforting. Yes, it's all within my office. But now what most companies are doing is that they've heightened the security checks, they perform. A lot of companies are doing self testing, vulnerability testing, where they are creating like a Trojan. They are creating circumstances of compromise and they're trying to affect their systems themselves to see where the system can be compromised. They're also heightening the, governance or the control that they have on the data leakage tools that they have deployed. So like you are aware most devices, most laptops, desktops have data leakage tools, depending on the nature or the sensitivity of the work that you do. For example, some companies do not allow say pen drive or any drive to be attached to the laptop. Some companies do not allow, from your phone to be able to, share data into a WhatsApp or your Gmail. Some companies do not allow upload into public server. So they're are a lot of data leakage techniques that exist, and what companies have started doing is to start monitoring the noise that comes out of this, these data leakage tools, because these are continuously looking at data, that's passing through the network and are continuously flagging alerts, saying these are the type of activities that are happening with the data. So they have strengthened the monitoring of these alerts that go. But this is a evolution. You know, there are a lot of tools that are there, deployment and enhancement will be to what people specifically need, but they have to build more tools as well. So for example, what prevents me working from home, taking a picture, no matter what security you put on my laptop, I can still take a picture from my mobile ofmy laptop screen. And I can still, you know, compromise a particular data element. And therefore then companies are looking at how do I look what activities happening on the camera. Now, when companies start looking at your camera, then are they breaching your privacy? Then that becomes the next question. So there is a evolution also that is happening in this space on where companies will draw a line, and that line  will be dependent on what level of security they need from their operations. But if you ask me personally, it is a problem that will solve. It's not an answer. It's not, for example, if you ask me today saying when will economies recover? You know, I don't think that is an answer to that problem yet today, but this is a problem that will solve. People are solving it as we speak. They will enhance and upgrade their solutions to what their needs are, and they will figure answers. Now, some answers may come at a price like compromise of personal, of privacy or, you know, enhanced monitoring. Some answers may come simply with y like more costs, you know, utilization of better tools, and therefore there may be a cost impact of that, but answers will  come

Rouba: (06:30)
It's ongoing. As you said, that's, by the minute, there are ongoing developments that are unfolding, changes in decision making amid this pandemic. What are some of the top priorities that organizations need to consider in your view and what are some of the measures that they can take to manage them?

Sandhya : (06:50)
So, first really, first priority of organizations is to ensure safety of the people. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, everyone should continue to work from home, because in some cases  for certain business outcomes, certain people have to come out of their homes, but we need to find that balance. And more importantly, organizations need to make the whatever will be the working environment for the employee, whether it is in home or outside their homes, safe so that they can perform their roles in an effective way. That's the first priority for any organization, and especially in countries like India, where, the number of cases have significantly increased. It's extremely important for companies to ensure safety of their employees. The second priority, according to me is to have an Eagle eye on cash. Now this is the time where revenue profits, all the 20,000 different dashboards that people make are subservient to the cash that the company has in its bank account. If the company is not going to be able to pay its bills in the next quarter, then it's going to be very difficult for companies to find way forward on the business. So immediate action is how do they conserve cash? How do they create adequate measures to keep bringing cash into their bank account? And that means they have to continuously assess how they can build resilience and sustenance in the way they work. The third one for me is adaptability. You know, there are many, many that are seeing significant downturn, but there are pockets that are opening up. We saw Lam making face masks, you know.  There is a saying that says that only the grass that can bend with the wind can sustain the force of the wind. You know, so there is a burning need today for companies than ever before to be adaptable to what is relevant in today’s climate. andHow they can make them sense have a piece of the small pie that is available. The last for me, there ...