Ep. 120: Jeffrey Dailey - CFO Strategist for Data and Technology

Jeff Dailey: https://www.prometric.com/about-us/leadership/jeff-dailey

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Hey everyone, welcome back for episode 120 of Count Me In. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Our featured speaker for today is Jeffrey Dailey. Jeff is Prometrics Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and he joined my co-host Adam to talk about data and technology. During their conversation, Jeff addresses the challenges associated with mass amounts of data, how to make decisions based on data and how the CFO's role has changed because of data and technology. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now. 
 
Adam: (00:47)
So Jeff, data is becoming more and more important each day whether it's your latest smartwatch, a smartphone, your internet, things on your refrigerator, or your washing machine. It's getting thrown at us from every direction and even more so in business and for you at Prometric, how are you facing that challenge with all the data that we have in business and how have you adapted as an organization to meet those challenges? 
 
Jeff: (01:12)
Thanks Adam. Yeah look, I think the role that I play in Prometric as the CFO is really going to be leading to driving data-driven decision-making. And in order to do that, we really leverage analytic capabilities, not just within the finance function, but across the business. Our business relies heavily on understanding volume and capacity, of our clients and global candidate base for those taking tests in our test centers, as well as new modalities around remote assessment. So we're constantly looking at opportunities to gather and understand data, but also to use that to be quicker and more agile in our decision-making, it really becomes sort of foundational to us driving, data-driven decisions across the organization, it helps enhance forecasting, it helps us understand how we're allocating resources across the operations, as well as our technology investments. 
 
Adam: (02:11)
So if you look at your technology roadmap that you're looking into the future, what does that look like for you? 
 
Jeff: (02:18)
Well, right now we're in a unique disruption coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And I say that it's created opportunity in some ways, given all the disruption to our clients and frankly to all of the candidates that we support. One of the areas from a global technologies we've gone from what was traditionally largely a brick and mortar business model, to enhancing our remote assessment capability, to offer assessments and opportunities for candidates to sit from any location has been key when you're going through national and regional restrictions around social distancing and access to traditionally facilities where we have tested candidates. So operationally or product, we have deep investments that we're making across the technology platform to enhance both functionality, as well as expand in those areas of key features. Within our finance organization, we've actually also taken this as an opportunity to really invest in more, I'll call it cloud native systems and financial reporting technologies that are going to enhance our ability to streamline our close that are helping us in terms of forecasting and helping drive, more data-driven insights across the business from the finance organization, so we've not only had product investment, but also investment in our core ERP platform during this time. 
 
Adam: (03:45)
So what were some of the drivers for the decision to enhance your ERP solution? 
 
Jeff: (03:51)
Yeah, so I think first off is we have for several years looked into opportunities to consolidate multiple platforms that we had that had evolved both over time in different regions as well as, you know, take advantage of what I think now is really, truly a much more secure, fundamentally sound and feature rich opportunity, in what you're seeing in the cloud native ERP platforms. We see this as an opportunity to not only attack technology as our focus for the investment, but also process improvement and there are a number of areas that are features that we're rolling out that will be further automating the closed process, automating the financial reporting and forecasting process, and also just really trying to drive process improvement in business intelligence deeper into the finance organization. 
 
Adam: (04:48)
How has it been trying to do an implementation while having, probably your workforce working from home? 
 
Jeff: (04:55)
Great question. I think we have certainly been working remote for the most part, since the onset of COVID-19 about a year ago, but that being said, I think we have a global team and we've always had deep resources in Asia, as well as here in the US. We're using new collaborative tools. Certainly we've done a lot with remote video conference, we've got consultants dialed in they were helping us with that implementation, but I think the key has been having really deep sense around understanding of our current operating model and really having developed sort of the objectives collectively, while we're working remote, but to see where we needed to have opportunity for better access, as well as enhance the security and performance overall of the system that we're investing into. 
 
Adam: (05:53)
Circling back to data across the business. Why is it important for the finance function? Cause usually the finance function looks at their data and all the numbers and make sure everything makes sense. Why does it make sense to have the data connect across the organization? 
 
Jeff: (06:07)
Sure, great question. I think for us it really starts with understanding our client programs and the candidates that we support on their behalf. Our business is relying on volume and managing capacity through a global network and I think as I mentioned, that includes both the brick and mortar global channels supporting our candidates in center testing, to anywhere else from pop-up events that we run short term and then ultimately, expansion of our remote assessment capability. When you're looking at managing that level of capacity and the different modalities that we serve, it really has become critical from an operational decision-making and performance management capability to have a deep understanding and a deep base around analytics for the business. We are, you know, obviously each day kind of managing into the changing capacity restraints for coming out of COVID. We have had analytics that have provided us more insight into candidate behavior in terms of return to test centers, in our case. We've had certainly a large increase in candidates who are opting to take large-scale global national certifications and licensure exams online through our remote assessment tool, and understanding what's driving those decisions for candidates is critical for us to both enhance the product and the modality for them to have access to our content. When I look from a pure finance perspective, it really has been about harnessing data to help us understand more quickly more accurately what the business is performing during what's been a really disruptive time. We have used this as an opportunity to enhance what we do on a week to week basis in terms of our flash reporting. We have invested heavily in terms of pivoting how we do forecasting for the business. We are deeply connected using data from across operations, IT and our technology and product teams to really help us understand and allocate resources appropriately so that we can manage wh...