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Contact Laura Boyd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-boyd-2598a853/Hunter Douglas: https://www.hunterdouglas.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Adam Larson and this episode, “Business Partners Developing Their Soft Skills”, is number 128 of our series. Laura Boyd, Vice President, Corporate Controller at Hunter Douglas joins us to talk about a topic not addressed enough among accounting professionals, the softer skills required in the profession. Everyone assumes accountants are all about the numbers and they are, but without the ability to collaborate across departments, they cannot be true business partners to the organization. Keep listening to hear about the specific soft skills required and how to develop them throughout your career.Mitch: (00:51)So our conversation today is going to focus on the soft skills and everyone typically assumes accounting and finance professionals, they're all about the numbers and we know they are but, I think everyone's starting to realize accounting and finance professionals really must possess and further develop these soft skills. So can you kick us off by sharing your perspective on this and let us know why you think that is?Laura: (01:14)Sure. Well, I think technical skills are obviously very important in our role as accountants and finance professionals. Our ability to analyze numbers and apply technical financial guidance, whether it's cost accounting or manufacturing accounting, or U.S. GAAP, IFRS otherwise goes a long way to supporting success in our careers. However, too much emphasis or rather not enough emphasis on developing and possessing these softer skills will really limit an individual's ability to properly support their business and develop their career in accounting. When we say softer skills, what we're really talking about is our communication style, leadership skills, team building skills, ability to make decisions, et cetera. Many of these skills are people type skills or interpersonal skills and since nearly every accounting role requires engagement with others in some way, shape or form, these become critical qualities to possess as your career progresses. In addition, people don't always think of accountants as customer service professionals, but in some way we are. Our business partners are our customers. They're on the receiving end of our hopefully quality work and we have an obligation to not only support them, but work well with them. And it takes several soft skills to be able to listen to a business partner and really collaborate with them. All of these things make finance professionals more well-rounded partners for the business, which is what our ultimate goal should be as accounting professionals. Well-rounded partner is an ally for the organization. If I could make an accounting pun, a well-rounded business partner is an asset for the organization. So while the technical side of our life is incredibly important and critical, it's becoming more and more clear that the softer skills are just as important for us and for our business’ success.Mitch: (03:29)So you already named a few of them. We talked a little bit about communication and teamwork and things like that. There are many soft skills and they're all important. But when it comes to being a business partner and really taking that step forward as a leader, which of these soft skills do you believe are most important for accounting and finance professionals, and why might that be?Laura: (03:51)Well, if you research around there's many resources out there from many folks that are much smarter than I am that'll tell you what's most important and why and what the right order is, et cetera. For me, in my experience, I think the three most important soft skills are interpersonal skills, communication and adaptability. So for interpersonal skills that's kind of a broad category, but it's a very important one. When I say interpersonal skills, I really mean the ability to build and maintain relationships and develop rapport with business partners and colleagues. Having good interpersonal skills is incredibly important when you're building a team, you need to have a strong foundation of trust and accountability for accountants and finance professionals this is invaluable. We should strive to be seen as an authentic partner for the organization and a person on whom people can rely upon and trust. Without that, we're just a bunch of number crunchers. Another important skill I think is communication. I think many people know there's many types of communication. There's verbal, written, and nonverbal like body language, facial expression, et cetera. But I think the one piece of communication that people really miss is listening. When people are listening to others, this is a fairly obvious statement, but you actually hear what people are saying and what they mean. Without strong listening skills, communication is really just a one-way street and probably not very effective. The better finance professionals are at listening, the better we are business partners because we're that much closer to the pulse of the business. And then finally I think adaptability is critical. If we've learned anything from the COVID pandemic, it's that we need to be flexible and adaptable. Now, traditionally accountants are not usually the most flexible people and I can say that because I am one. But, the ability to pivot and react to an ever-changing environment is critical. Our businesses are making fast and drastic and dramatic decisions practically every day. So we have to be able to switch gears and change direction as needed. In addition, I think it's important to be able to handle tasks and responsibilities that are a little outside the norm. By demonstrating a willingness to get involved even if you don't have all the expertise that's required. It's a changing world and I think accountants are a smart group of people who can contribute beyond the numbers if they're willing.Mitch: (06:57)You know, we at IMA, we have a leadership academy and we put out all these leadership development courses and we focus a lot on these softer skills. We just did one that focused on listening and listening skills, because it truly is so invaluable to just take a step back and make sure you're paying attention, you're listening and really absorbing the message that's being shared. So I can truly appreciate that and we've seen that become more and more important with our listeners here, obviously, but, with the organization as a whole in our members. With these skills, these skills that you identified as being most important, I guess my next question for you is when are they really most necessary or required? You referenced a lot about being a business partner, demonstrating these skills, at what career stage do you typically recognize somebody or maybe whether they do or they don't possess these softer skills?Laura: (07:51)Well in reality, these skills are really necessary from day one of your career. Most people in entry-level accounting roles have the necessary technical skills to do their job as required, or at least they have the requisite education beneath them on which they can build. And in addition, accountants will do continuing education classes or sit for an exam that gives them some credentials that are important down the line. And that is all fine and good and definitely necessary, but the fact of the matter is most accountants don't possess these softer skills right out of the gate and that's unfortunate. As I said earlier, good interpersonal skills are important for accoun...

Contact Carmen Rene: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmen-rene-a063546/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00) Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to introduce you to our guest speaker of episode 127, Carmen Rene. Carmen is the Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller at Salt Health. She is a passionate leader who focuses on and emphasizes team management, multidisciplinary work groups, and coaching through obstacles. In this episode, Carmen talks about what it takes to be a leader and build teams around trust. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now. Adam: (00:46) Simon Sinek said, “a team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other”. What does that quote mean to you and how you interact with your team? Carmen: (00:57) Sure. This is one of my, certainly one of my favorite philosophers, if you will, on leadership, but certainly one of my favorite quotes by Simon Sinek, because of what it really says to me is just because you are surrounded by a group of people and just because you work with a group of people, you don't necessarily have a shared vision and a common goal and a shared interest in being successful. And so without all of those things, I don't really think that you have a team that is focused on the same thing. And my belief is that, that objective or that dynamic comes when you trust each other. If you have a group of people who you know have your best interests and a common objective in mind, then I believe you have a team and you have an opportunity of being successful. Adam: (01:53) So what I'm hearing with that, what you just said is having that common objective, having that common mind, you know, how do you get to that common mind? That seems easier said than done. Carmen: (02:05) It's always easier said than done, right? I mean, I think that's a big part of what leadership is about all day long is a constant reminder and communication and check in about what we're looking to accomplish. It's often referred to as the why. What are we looking to get out of what we're accomplishing? What are we looking to accomplish? What are we trying to get and why? And if everybody understands the why, which I believe is a common interest, but, you know, oftentimes I work in accounting, right? It's very easy for people to go, we have to close the books, or because we have month end reporting, or we have investors, we believe we work for a company that we believe in, we're working towards an objective that we believe in, we have a team of people that we care about and we want them to be successful. So our why, is not the journal entry, our why is not finishing the books, the why isn't even for the most part the day to day. The why is where are we going and how do we know when we get there? And then we all understand that what I'm doing today is a step in that journey so that we can achieve, or, you know, land at the destination at some point. I think that's that common interest. And in many cases in business, we don't know what it is, right. If the common interest is I need a job because I need to pay my bills. That's not a common interest, that's Carmen's interest. But if the common interest is to leave mankind better than it was when we got here, because we work for a company that's working on a health solution or a cancer cure, or we're looking to have renewable power so that we can save the planet, right? Then all of a sudden we have a why that means something bigger than the journal entry. But my role in that big why is this team will be successful to ensure that this company has the financing that it needs in order to continue the projects down the path to achieve the objective. And if everybody on your team and keep in mind a team is very often multi-disciplinary, right? It's not just the, in our case, the team of accountants, the team of FP&A analysts, a team of treasury management, right? It's our executive team. It's our supply chain team. It's our friends on the manufacturing side of the house. It's our, everybody who manages the shipping and receiving departments, right. If we all understand the role that we play in that greater objective, then we show up to work, ready to give people the benefit of the doubt, ready to trust that we're all here at the end of the day to accomplish the same thing. Then I think you have a team, not just a group of people that you hang out with all day long. Adam: (05:17) You mean that makes a lot of sense. And you don't always work in with people who are doing the same thing you're doing. Many times there's people from multi-disciplinary groups who come together within a group and it seems like the things that you were just describing would work very well for that group, that multi-disciplinary group would have to understand the why in order to work well together. What are some steps you've taken to make sure that these types of groups are successful? Carmen: (05:47) You know, I think that the most important thing that you can do is be curious. And what I mean by that is, for example, I just put into place, purchasing policy. Kind of boring, right? But as part of that process, I spent some time with the, Ph.D. scientists who worked in laboratory, and we were having a conversation about how they use pipettes. I’m sorry pipettes and pipette tips in the laboratory. Now, as I mentioned, I'm an accountant, right? I never used a pipette tip in my life, but as members of the supply chain, I've ordered them before. So I was sitting with them for a day, observing them in the laboratory about how they use pipettes and how the process in an experiment is impacted or how the results are impacted by the process and how clean they can keep the sample. So literally every time they would move to a step to a next step, they would change the pipette tip. Now that seemed a little excessive to me for a minute. But then later in that day, or sometime later that week, I was reviewing results of something that had come out of the laboratory, product that we had to scrap, right, we had to throw it away. And I asked the question, well, why are we throwing this stuff away? What happened? They said, well we had some contamination in the processing. And it connected me back to that exercise of watching them prepare samples and changing the pipette tips. So all of a sudden I understand a whole lot better why we need pipette tips, why we need so many of them and where contamination can occur. And I brought that back to the purchasing policy around how do I set up a policy that enables them to have a blanket purchase order, right. A standing order for pipette tips, because they use them all day long, every day, all month. Right? So, because I understand, I have a much better understanding of the why, and this is a very small example, but I have a much better understanding of the why and how these products are used, so I can understand how I need to design a process that accommodates, not just me who happens to hate blanket purchase orders, but I can accommodate my scientists who wants to know that there's just going to be a constant stream of product being delivered to their laboratory so that their experiments aren't in any way altered or impacted. I hope that makes sense as a how you can bring multi-disciplinary teams could together to just have a simple conversation. So why their day to day is impacted by my day to day. Adam: (08:51) It's a simple conversation of being able to turn off your perspective and point of view for a moment and look at things through somebody else's shoes for a moment, and then suddenly your w...

Contact Bob Kolodgy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-kolodgy-a5849214/About Bob Kolodgy: https://www.bcbs.com/about-us/leadership/robert-kolodgyBob's Interview for Forbes CFO Network with IMA's Jeff Thomson: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffthomson/2020/02/07/the-finance-leader-in-health-care-an-interview-with-the-cfo-of-blue-cross-blue-shield-association/?sh=418e829169acBCBS: https://www.bcbs.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome to episode 126 of Count Me In. Thanks for coming back and listening to IMA's podcast. I'm your host, Adam Larson and today's expert guest is Bob Kolodgy. Bob is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, a national Federation of 35 independent community-based and locally operated Blue Cross Blue Shield companies. In his role, he is responsible for the blue's federal employee program, oversees the national employee benefits administration, and has overall accountability for Blue Cross Blue Shield brand management, and the associations finance, licenser, enterprise information technology, and information security areas. During his conversation with my co-host Mitch, Bob discusses the role of the CFO in building organizations ready for the future. Keep listening to hear his perspective on innovation, data, and value. Mitch: (01:02) So for our conversation today, we really want to emphasize the role of the CFO and making sure that they are capable of building organizations ready for the future. Now, innovation certainly is a term we use often in accounting and finance as organizations seek to create and increase value. So to start off, I would really like to know what innovation means to you. Bob: (01:31) Yeah, thanks Mitch and thanks for the opportunity to address IMA today, it's a great group and I love to be part of your events, so thank you for that. You know, with respect to innovation and accounting, let's put it in perspective and I've always said this at the beginning of innovation conversations with finance people. It's like, well, we don't want you all to be all that innovative, I mean, your accountants after all. And you need to be careful, right? So there's all kinds of, accounting principles and things like that. And we don't want you to be creative with that now, maybe be creative about how you do what you do, right? And so how can you as an accountant, or a finance person in an organization, actually innovate in a way that creates value. And so, when we try to take that apart, I look at value as the sum of three things, cost or efficiency, quality, and service. And so anyone can apply those principles to what they do I think, and add value. And so for me, innovation, particularly in accounting and finance in those disciplines really is focused more on those things and keeping them in balance, right? So innovation can accelerate any one of those things and as long as it does that without detracting from the other two, it's adding value. So for me, it's kind of that simple. And, when you look at what we've been in for the last, 14 or 15 months with the pandemic, it really sort of dots the eye on the need for innovation, right? We had to pivot in so many ways that we never would have expected so quickly and, you know, true innovations have come out of that in many forms and now its a matter of advancing those and in some cases bringing them to scale. There were certain things that came out of the pandemic that were really innovative and they're going to stick whether we expected that to happen or not. The time after the pandemic will be, not like anything we expected or planned on our prior trajectory. Mitch: (03:37) Yeah, I completely agree, among these different conversations that I have, I've certainly seen many organizations who have explained that they will be adapting some of these ongoing principles moving forward and making it part of their business, because of how they had to pivot and adapt in the last year plus. My next question, continuing on this topic, as far as innovation goes and the different components that you spoke about, what is specifically the CFO's role when it comes to initiating this change, enabling innovation and driving the anticipated results, evaluating those results, where does the CFO really make an impact? Bob: (04:16) Yeah, I think innovation and enabling new thinking and so forth is really an area where the modern CFO can differentiate themselves from the more traditional financially focused leader, and if it's done well, the CFO can become the corporation's architect for business value. I saw an article recently from Accenture on this, and I found it very, very interesting and poignant. CFOs are uniquely positioned if they apply certain levers that they have access to, to be able to create this differentiation and be the architect of business value. And just to list off the levers quickly, visibility of the whole enterprise, the CFO typically because they deal with all parts of the company has a view into what is going on in all those parts and the ability to see where synergies exist across those verticals, the ability to do analytics and have access to data across the enterprise is really critical. CFOs, not only have access to financial data, but now more and more operational and market data and, a variety of things that they can bring together to bring insights that are actionable to the organization. Understanding enterprise risk is a critical role that the CFO or critical conversation, or are part of the conversation the CFO can bring, because they can measure risk and they know that you may be able to take risks in one area of the company and balance that off with some protection and hedge and the other areas of the company. The CFO can and should have a strong relationship with all the C-level executives in the company, right? So there should be good working relationships there and the CFO's ability to mentor and discuss things with his or her peers in a way that brings to life this greater business value. And finally the financial authorities, I mean the CFO obviously has a financial authority within the organization and can reinforce the economic basis for investment decisions, right? So the CFO can bring voice to somebody else's idea, in a way that that person may or may not be able to do. And so, these things can really be exploited by better collaboration with C-level peers, by leading in with unique insights, whether it's based on data, unique analytics, perspective on risk, or what have you, and then taking ownership for ensuring that value is extracted from all of the new technology and data platforms. These things are proliferating coming up all over the place. And I think it's the CFO's responsibility to make sure there's a value equation attached to each of those, or if not, make sure everybody else understands that and make sure that expectations are aligned along those vectors and CFO needs to be able to cultivate a good commercial awareness and stay ahead of the curve of the industry, right? So whether it's regulatory change, federal policy changes, the business environment, changing the competitive landscape, changing or just trends and particularly important, I think is understanding what the potential disruptors are. You know, I'm in healthcare, there are disruptors all around our industry, whether you're talking about health plans, providers, pharmaceut...

Contact Professor Orpurt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-orpurt-phd/"Spruce Up Your Learning", Strategic Finance (January 2021): https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/january-2021-spruce-up-your-learning-skills/Telling Ain't Training by Harold D. Stolovitch  and Erica J. Keeps: https://www.amazon.com/Telling-Aint-Training-Expanded-Enhanced/dp/1562867016FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Hey everyone! Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson and this is episode 125 of our series. How can you spruce up your learning skills and why should you? Well, Steve Orpurt, Clinical Professor of Accountancy at Arizona State University joins our show to talk about how you can become a better learner and the benefits of doing so. Professor Orpurt teaches corporate governance, ethics, and sustainability reporting. His recent research focuses on the statement of cash flows with top tier publications and presentations to the international accounting standards board. His conversation here with Mitch was inspired by a recent article he wrote in IMA’s strategic finance magazine titled, Spruce Up Your Learning. Whether you're a seasoned professional, a young professional just starting out, or a student preparing to embark on an accounting and finance career, keeping current on your learning is imperative. So let's keep listening to learn how. Mitch: (01:08) So we started talking based on your article, Spruce Up Your Learning, in IMA’s strategic finance magazine. My first question for today is how did you really become interested in learning about learning? Steve: (01:20) That's an interesting question. I had an opportunity quite a long time ago 20-25 years ago to work at a startup company that worked with Stanford University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, London School of Economics, called younext.com. And when I joined that, they were trying to build an online MBA program and they hired a number of instructional designers. I had never heard of an instructional designer and I ended up working elbow to elbow with them and they taught me a lot about their profession, which is learning. So I've always had an interest since then. And as you know, I'm an academic accountant so I had no background in that area and I've just kept reading and one of the more influential books that I read over the years was a book entitled, Telling Ain't Training by Stolovitch and Keeps. The title kind of undersells the book because it really focuses on learner centered learning, not the teaching. And so that's been a substantial influence on what I do in a classroom. And so from there I just started reading all the research on learning and just kept going. So that article that I wrote was more to help students and others who are interested in improving their learning, most of that material is actually written to a teacher or an instructor to use to help students learn, but I thought it should be put in the hands of the students themselves to improve their abilities to learn. Mitch: (03:05) Following up on that and making a connection to our listeners. Why is it so important? Why do you think it's so important for someone to improve their own learning skills? And like I said, particularly for the management accountant? Steve: (03:17) Well I think learning, which is a skill, is just becoming much more valuable today than perhaps even a decade ago. If you stop and think about the management accounting role, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it would be fair to say that it was kind of a departmental role, but now it's an enterprise wide role. And you can think of some reasons for that. We can look at things like artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, process mining, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, enterprise risk management, cloud computing, mobile computing, sustainability reporting, sustainability reporting standards. These are all topics that we didn't talk about much 10 years ago or so, and now they're front and central for our management accounting and they require substantial learning. So I think that the role of a management accountant has really moved from kind of a departmental role into an enterprise wide role. And it just requires a lot more learning and learning well, so it's just a more valuable skill. So one of the reasons I wanted to write that article was simply to say, we can learn faster and better. Mitch: (04:38) It's a great point. And, you know, particularly from the IMA perspective, all those topics you just addressed are things that we are certainly pushing out there and are very interested in upscaling or rescaling in order to learn the necessary skills on the job and for the profession, the industry at large. For our listeners who, whether they're familiar with the article or not, when it comes to improving your learning, do you have any recommendations or what's an important learning strategy that you advocate for? Steve: (05:11) Well there are a number of them. I think the, one of the most valuable and one of the easiest to implement, because you can do it right now is to ask yourself questions before you start looking at the learning material. Most of us will pick up an article or something we're learning from, we just start reading and a better approach is to take a minute or so and think through what questions you have about that material. Because when you ask questions, you engage your mind and you read more actively to try and answer those questions. Continuing with that then as you read, you create more questions that you are looking for answers for and so it just creates a more active involvement with the learning and obviously that means you'll learn better, but as it turns out, most of us that have tried this would say you learn not only better, but faster because you remember material, you can apply it better, and if you want more extensive material, you know what you're looking for. So I think this notion of asking questions before you start reading something, and then actually while you're reading it, is easy to implement and extremely valuable habit to build. Ironically, I've had really good success by asking questions before I read articles, because it's led me to actually set aside many articles that once I start questioning, I realized I'm not going to get that much out of it and I'm not that interested in it. So it's actually been a time saver just in terms of organizing material that is valuable to me. And, so again, I think even at the most basic level, this is really easy to implement this idea of asking questions and, very, very valuable in terms of time management, but also in terms of just improving your learning. Mitch: (07:18) So I know myself as a learner, one of my go-to strategies, and I think this goes for many people is, as you said, you just start reading and you start highlighting, you start taking your own notes. How does asking questions in advance and really engaging your brain? What are the benefits above and beyond taking notes and highlighting and simple learning strategies that I'm sure many of our listeners frequently do? Steve: (07:46) Something that almost all of my students do. It's extr...

Contact Andrew Warner: https://legendarypodcasts.com/andrew-warner/FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05) Hey everyone! 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 this is episode 124 of our series. What happens when marketing, finance and data analytics collide? Well, in today's episode, Andrew Warner CEO at Marketing CFO uses his unique mix of experience in both finance and marketing to help explain how companies can combine these efforts to create a sustainable business. Hear him speak with Adam about bridging accounting and marketing as we head over to their conversation now. Adam: (00:43) Now Andrew, I've been really looking forward to speaking with you as, I been wanting to know what is a Marketing CFO and how did you get to this place? Andrew: (00:53) Sure. So, Marketing CFO is really something that, is something that I've kind of invented just because of the unique need that I've seen in the market. I think as you know that, there's a lot of data in finance and it's very easy to approach that from an analytical perspective and that's how a lot of accountants and finance people typically will approach most problems. But nowadays in marketing, you're getting to where you can track so much spending and the results and there's so much there that it's almost to the point where it's more of a finance type role than a creative role. And if you can kind of combine those two sides of the world, the marketing side with the finance, there's a lot of potential that gets unlocked for the companies that you work with. Adam: (01:40) That really makes sense how marketing and CFO kind of collide. How did you get to this role? Andrew: (01:46) Well to be honest, it was a bit of an accident. So I started out in the finance world and I was working in a accounting firm, probably like a lot of your listeners work at, and on the side I had some e-commerce businesses mainly focused on drop shipping products and there's a lot of digital marketing involved and so I actually had tempted to leave the finance world to go into that industry. I had a small exit with an e-commerce store that I owned and started consulting on the digital marketing side, but what kept happening was that a lot of my clients, even though it was supposed to help them with the marketing, I kept getting pulled back into the finance world. They didn't know if their advertising campaigns were profitable. They didn't know what their business goals were and what campaigns fit into those and which ones didn't. They had cashflow constraints and inventory issues. And so I kept fighting it for a while, I was trying to avoid going back into finance, but about three years ago I just accepted it and have been serving in that role as kind of being the bridge between those two worlds. Adam: (02:52) That's interesting how I think we all kind of fall into our profession by accident a lot of times. So many times, accountants, marketing is just another line on the income statement, but a lot happens to get it there on to the income statement. As you just mentioned, how you kind of fell into the Marketing CFO, you know, how can a CFO better connect with their company to be more effective in making sure that everything is connected? Andrew: (03:24) Yeah, that's a great question. And what's so cool is that 20 or 30 years ago, if you'd asked me that question, it would have been a much different answer and it would've been really tough for a finance person to understand everything that's going on in the marketing world, but nowadays there's so much data and there's so much information available and it's very, it's moving more and more to being quantitative where you still, it's still great to have that creative and qualitative and understanding of the mind of your customer, that's still really important for marketing, but you can also start measuring your metrics. And that's one of the things that I do a little different than most CFOs, is that just like you said, instead of marketing expense being an expense on the income statement, I normally start with the, before getting to the revenue, looking at how many users are you getting, how many new potential buyers, how many leads are you getting, and what's your conversion rate at closing those? And I think that that's really where the story needs to begin and that really hasn't. Traditional finance hasn't had a good system for tracking that and catching it. And so I think that's something that you can't really rely on the double entry accounting built in the 13th century to really help with that. But I think it is something that's essential for a CFO to focus on. Adam: (04:40) So that’s not the first time I've heard you mention like the double entry 13th century accounting, when you and I were talking before we started recording, you'd mentioned it a few times, is that still the foundation of what management accountants will face today or is, are things changing? Andrew: (04:55) Yeah, I think the cool thing for management accounting is that it really does change a lot and it really, instead of having that standard financial reporting that is, you know, gap or whatever else, when you're on the management side you're really trying to help the business grow and there's so many other pieces there. I think that the principles have stayed the same. You always want to find your constraints. You always want to try to, maximize efficiency, maximize the return on any investment that you're making. I think the big change has been that there's more data to tell you what your return is, what your investment has put forward. And I think that you have to go a little bit beyond the traditional accounting world to be able to do that. And I could probably walk you through some examples, to really show that in a different light, but the, it is really cool, that the 13th century bookkeeping system has really just with a few slight tweaks, has continued to serve our world so well. I'm not against that system by any means, but I do think you need to add some other pieces on top of that if you want to have a holistic picture of modern business. Adam: (06:07) Well, can you give us some of those examples to help illustrate that for the audience? Andrew: (06:12) Yeah, sure. So I think that, a few things you can look at, so a lot of times people will focus on the constraint of inventory, right? And so that may be something if you're in a manufacturing company and you're trying to focus on where's the constraint, and it's almost like you might have a constraint first approach to resolving that. You could also do that with the marketing side of your business. A lot of times I see people that they're really great at getting traffic to their website for example, but they do a terrible job at converting those visitors into customers, but they continue to focus on just getting more and more people when the real constraint is that conversion rate. And I think that that's something that's really a key component that a accountant could really understand well and that they can, they have that mindset to where they could really serve a marketer or just serve the business in general to better understand where is that constraint. Maybe even get more specific into specific areas, specific web pages if it's a website, specific customer targets if it's more of like a traditional Salesforce type system and then I'm starting to track that over time and seeing what the trends are and trying to determine what the levers underneath that data you can pull to really help improve that over time. I think all that's some great examples for how you can take the principles from trad...

Contact Tracy Jackson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracydjackson/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00) Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong and I'm here to bring you episode 123 of our series. Many businesses have had difficulty and/or needed to adapt to the way they onboard, train, and culturally integrate new hires following the lockdown and virtual shift to the business landscape. To explain how organizations can overcome these challenges and better help their employees become and remain part of the team, Tracey Jackson joined my co-host Adam for a conversation about the training and culture gap. Tracey is an engaging and energetic financial and accounting executive who serves as the CFO at CVR Energy. With over 25 years of experience across corporate finance, risk management, accounting, IT, and FP&A, she has developed extensive team building and change enablement skills. Keep listening for her insight as we head over to their conversation now. Adam: (01:03) Onboarding is something that can be very difficult with or without a lockdown. How has that impacted entry-level employees, especially? Tracey: (01:18) I think it's been another challenge on top of something that's already very challenging for organizations. Organizations, some do this very well, although not many, and some have continued to struggle with it even though there've been so many studies that show that getting someone hooked into the organization and integrated into the culture is part, the first step in successful retention. And I think the pandemic just gave us a curveball on something that was already very difficult to achieve. I can say that we've done some things very well and we've continued to fumble in a lot of different areas and the prep work that I did for the podcast actually gave me a lot of things to think about in terms of what we can do better. Specifically, a lot of our new hires come in on day one to the office even though quite a few of our employees are still at least on a split schedule, 50/50, and there was a lot of appreciation for that moment where they're in the office and they can see what the home office looks like, get their badge, hear about the company's goals and objectives in an onboarding session that HR hosts, meeting with their boss, if their boss is in the office beyond that, when people have received that initial landing, sending them back out over the last 12 months to work from home for an undetermined amount of time is where we really had to swiftly adjust. And I can say across the entire organization, we've done some of that well, and some of that not so well. The things that have been successful, I used to do a monthly luncheon with all of our new hires. It doesn't matter what level of the organization you are, I just felt like it was important to sit down with me and demystify the executive leadership team a little bit and talk about us as people and how we feel about the organization, what's going well, talk about our industry and I had to transition away from that obviously, and what I replaced it with was a webcast, that we do. And we haven't really been hiring as many people, so we haven't done it every single month, but every other month or so we get all the new hires are invited to a webcast with me and they can ask whatever questions they would like to ask of me about my personal life. I'm very, I'm an open book so, and I'm a divorcee and I have three cats so I might be a crazy cat lady, but, you know, really just making sure they know that we're all human and that we're real people because they don't even see us now. At least before I could go down to one of the floors that my folks were on and wander around and they could lay eyes on me, but now all they hear is my voice. If we talk on a conference call or on the phone for something, and then quarterly at our town hall meetings, which also had to change format, we used to do those in person and now we do a webcast for those. So lots and lots of challenges with just helping people feel like they've actually joined a new company and a new culture and understanding, why we do what we do and what our values are. Adam: (04:52) Yeah it's gone from having that personal touch of the face-to-face to a phone call or seeing somebody's face in that little box on the screen, you really lose that human connection. So you have trouble feeling like you're a part of the organization now. Tracey: (05:05) Now one of the comments that I got from someone was that they, now that they're back in the office, this individual has their own office so they can shut the door on and so they feel safe, so they're here quite a bit and then as the staff that are in cubes have been rotating in and out, they've been trying to introduce themselves to these people that they've maybe never seen before and they've been startled to find that these are actually individuals, some of them, that they've had extensive conversations on projects, but they had no idea what they looked like. So it's definitely changing the way that we interact with each other and form our persona of people because when you only have a voice paint your own picture, and when you see somebody in person, you have so many more cues as to what really makes up that individual. Adam: (05:57) You know, you've already mentioned some of the things that your organization has done. What are some of the things that you can do to help these employees? Because even when you're in person, we lose the facial cues because our faces are covered up by a mask. Tracey: (06:12) Right, and this gets to just a personal philosophy. I have found that our productivity shifting from a hundred percent in the office to nearly a hundred percent out of the office was not negatively affected. If anything, we may have been more productive and my personal opinion about why that is, there's less water cooler talk, which is not necessarily a good thing, but it sure does take away from wasted time. And you, we didn't have hardly any HR issues over the last year like we would have had in the past, because we didn't have cube mates bickering over things and we didn't have silly HR scuffles that we had to deal with. They were bigger picture issues about caring for a sick loved one and how did that impact their work schedule when they're at home. And so anyway, my personal opinion is that we have to make this adaptation on a permanent basis because efficiency and productivity and lease space and all of those things, companies are going to figure out, I can save a ton of money if I don't have to lease five floors in a building. And so, things that we can do to help bring them into the fold, I think really fall to the individual's manager and the individuals commitment to come into the fold. A lot of the past has been the expectation that companies feed new employees, copious amounts of opportunities to learn and integrate and interact and become a part of the culture and do networking events and volunteer events and that dynamic, that entire landscape is gone now. And so one, we have to train our managers better about the importance of bringing someone into the fold. And two, we have to express our expectation that the employee has an obligation also to buy into the new way and be willing to do, whether it's webcast events with their entire teams. And we all, I think at this point, everybody has a camera. Whether it's on your computer or not, you still have your phone and nearly everybody has a phone with a camera on it at this point. So participate on webcasts and help demystify what people look like. Don't get on a webcast and not show your face because we don't know what you ...

Contact Arno Wakfer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnowakfer/Arno's Articles:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/make-everyday-value-creation-day-arno-wakfer-ca-fmva-/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/finding-your-value-creation-opportunity-gap-arno-wakfer-ca-fmva/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-finance-needs-ask-questions-getting-closer-arno-wakfer-ca-fmva-/ FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00) Hey everyone. Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to bring you episode 122 of our series. Today's conversation features Arno Wakfer, a former CFO with over 15 years of commercial finance and general management experience. He is now a coach and trainer focused on upskilling managers and professionals through learning programs in Power BI and business finance literacy. In this episode, he talks with my co-host Adam about value creation and how finance and accounting professionals can get closer to the business through insight and storytelling. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now. Adam: (00:51) So Arno, what are some of the value creation ideas that the finance and accounting team can use to set reminders and form habits? Arno: (00:59) Thanks Adam, thanks for the question. I think before I go into that, I'd just like to share my own view on what I think it means to drive value in a business. To simplify these, that I think whatever finance does will contribute towards increasing the value of a business for its stakeholders. Any business, any stakeholder business, wants an asset that increases in value and I think finance should be there to help increase the future value of an asset, which is the business. Alright, so looking at some ideas around finance creating value, some ideas around that. So the first thing I do is looking at financial analysis. So what they can do is they can perform business off assessments and troubleshooting risk areas. The second one is cashflow improvements, you know, working with businesses to improve strategies, to improve the cashflow. There's many strategies that you can use to accelerate in delayed cash flow coming in and out of a business. And we all know cash is King and it keeps the doors open so we need to protect our cash. The next one is cashflow forecasting. A lot of business is done with forecasts, when it comes to cashflow I think it's vital. You need to do at least 12 weeks of cashflow forecasting and try and at least have a safety of margin of at least three months of your fixed overheads, just to give you a little bit of buffer in the time that the business struggles. So that's another way that you can create value. Maximizing profits, monitoring all the key drivers in the business that generate profits and measure that in real time if you can. And then, any early warning signals when anything's off track is not on track that management can address. The next one would be, I think where we can also add as early is auditing spreadsheets. I think a lot of managers use their own spreadsheets to make decisions on, and we come across spreadsheets that can have errors in them and those errors lead to poor decisions. So I think finance can be more involved in analyzing and checking those spreadsheets for correctness. The other idea is to, for finance to get more involved in data analytics, you know, being able to use it’s auditing data into analysis and to be able to analyze underlying transactions or key activities that drive business. For example, if we want to analyze where we bleeding on profit margins on a specific customer, on a specific product, on a specific location, I think finance should be able to analyze and give that intel financial intelligence to key decision makers, which will assist the future planning and strategy. And the next one is data visualization, which is becoming a hot trend skill in finance and accounting is being able to turn data into storytelling. Most of us are visual learners. When we see a picture it explains a story to us and I think instead of just pushing out financial reports, we can spend more time on actually visualizing and storytelling the performance. And with that, you can use business intelligence like Power BI, which is the top-rated business intelligence platform in my opinion, by Microsoft. The next one is finance literacy training. I think finance can help educate non-finance people in business about the numbers so that they can just make better business decisions. Finance speaks a foreign language to most because we understand the numbers because we've been taught that and we work with it every day, but non-finance people don't. So we need to be able to remove all the technical jargon and try and simplify the numbers for different levels of management so they can just help make better decisions. The next one is business metrics and KPIs. I think we need to work with business units through finance business partnering, to be able to define what metrics they use to make decisions. Every person's got different inputs that they need to put the full cost and their budgets together and draw strategy. So work with the business units to develop the business critical KPIs and then have regular interaction with those people to monitor those KPIs. Then we can also do businesses systemization. So, I mean, that's processes systems, improving those to create efficiencies and automation in business. Businesses want more, they want to do more with this and I think finance can help create those efficiencies in business. Alright, so that's kind of like, the key value creation ideas after I liked it that I think would add value to business. Thanks Adam. Adam: (05:31) Yeah, so I think those are wonderful ideas and now that we've kind of covered those ideas, what are some of the challenges that can prevent those same professionals from delivering value creation? Arno: (05:43) Yeah great, great question. So, the obstacles I see finance have in terms of driving value creation. Cause it's easy to say let's drive value, let's do more, but it's, for me, it's a change of a mindset. And what one is to focus on first is the need to find ways to speed up the month-end reporting process. I think before finance looks again, they're spending time on reporting again, and then when they finished the next reporting cycle starts. And reporting is looking backwards, it's not looking forwards. So, I think we need to look to find ways to do more frequent recons, to be planning and eliminating bottlenecks in the month-end reporting process, so that's the first thing. The other thing is the obstacles you'll face is the company culture, its that people don't necessarily like change. And when they do happen, they're not supported by the right people. And then people are not very clear while they're being implemented and they don't really understand the benefit to them in the business. So typically what one would need to do is cost versus benefit and being able to negotiate and be persuasive as to why we need to make changes to drive value creation. Next one is not having the right finance team. You can put all these value creation activities in place, but if you're not driving, if the leader of the team is not driving the right behavior and getting a mission statement of the finance team that's aligned to the bus...

IMA's website: https://www.imanet.org/International Management Accounting Day: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/international-management-accounting-dayFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back everyone and happy International Management Accounting Day. Each year, IMA celebrates International Management Accounting day on May 6th. This global day of recognition commemorates the important role management accountants play within their organizations. Around the world, finance and accounting professionals work to bring insight and help their organizations realize untapped opportunities and operate more efficiently. While this work happens every day of the year, on May 6th management accountants are publicly recognized by IMA. So to celebrate and support the public recognition, Count Me In has a special bonus episode for you featuring IMA's President and CEO, Jeff Thomson. Jeff spoke with Margaret Michaels, IMA's Manager for Brand Content and Storytelling about the future of finance and accounting. Keep listening to hear them discuss the valuable ongoing efforts of management accountants and the race for relevance in a digital age. Margaret: (01:03) Digital transformation enabled by automation, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies has been the headline story when people talk about the future of finance, but you often bring up the fact that these are really not new technologies. Can you elaborate on that theme and talk a little bit about how the foundational concepts in competing on analytics and other texts laid the groundwork for the transformation we see today? Jeff: (01:41) Sure Margaret. Great question and two related, but somewhat different concepts. So these technologies have been around and developing for some time. Artificial intelligence, has been around for some time, blockchain has been around for some time. But what's different is that all industries have been impacted by these technologies and the applications have been exploding. You know blockchain, for example, the use cases for blockchain were just a few several years ago, but now blockchain use cases have absolutely exploded. You know, blockchain was something we've heard about several years ago, primarily in the financial services industry, but now blockchain applications are permeating many, many industries including education, non-for-profits, and when we think about artificial intelligence, it's not just artificial intelligence in certain industries, it's artificial intelligence in many industries and many applications, so the question is our ability to leverage all of these wonderful uses of these technologies. Now, and then when we think about, RPA robotics process automation, robotics process automation has actually been around for nearly a decade. So when we talk about new technologies, the technologies really aren't that new, but it's the application and comprehensiveness of these technologies across industry verticals that are new. Now, moving to your other question competing on analytics, it's actually the book, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, by Thomas Davenport and Jean Harris. It's actually a book in 2007 that really laid the groundwork for the transformation to data analytics that as you said, we're seeing today. And when you think about it, imagine it was written in 2007 and when you think about the science of winning in the marketplace, what do you think about? You normally think about cool apps, things that consumers see in front of them. Like I said applications, products and services, things you can touch and feel. You don't think about nerdy things like analytics, but if you fast forward today, analytics is the thing we're talking about. Data scientists, data scientists are the number one sought after job because data analytics is how we get to know our consumers and their needs and their wants. They’re how finance team professionals offer insight and foresight to their CEOs, to their boards of directors. So that is the competency and skillset that we as finance team professionals must really aspire to and really accelerate our competencies.   Margaret: (04:59) Great. Now you often say the race for relevance to describe the current iteration of digital transformation in accounting and finance as technology evolves faster than the skills of the people who need to use it. What are the skills finance and accounting professionals need to focus on to keep up and what competencies really stand out to employers in a time when skills are increasingly commoditized?   Jeff: (05:28) Yeah so another great question Margaret you're on a roll today. Yeah, so there's going to be the infamous hard skills and the softer skills, so we are in an absolute environment of disruption. In fact, we often talk about the VUCA world that we're in, and no it's not a Hungarian goulash, it's VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, VUCA. And we were actually in that environment before COVID-19 tragically struck the world with non-traditional competition, climate, and I can go on and on. So when I think about behavioral characteristics for finance team professionals and CFOs, I think about agility and I know we're going to be talking about agility perhaps in a bit later. I think about adaptability because if you don't have the ability to deal with new situations, stressful situations, totally unexpected situations that your best planning could not have possibly anticipated then you're not going to be able to adjust and deal with the situation from a risk management perspective or a planning perspective. So agility, adaptability, but also being anticipatory. Having that radar at ability to plan the best you can, so from a behavioral perspective, what I call the three A's; agility, adaptability, anticipatory skills. From a harder skills perspective, and again this is for the finance team, strategic planning, strategic thinking and then of course data analytics, data science, everything data, data transformation, digital transformation. Now I don't want to lose sight of the table stakes because as we thinking about the progressive CFO and the CFO of the future, we have to be clear that there are table stakes. There are things that the CFO team must do with excellence that are expected. Things like risk management, internal controls, an ongoing and continuous commitment to ethics, leadership, executive maturity, executive presence, and the like. So we can't lose sight of what got us there and that's a unwavering and relentless focus on, as I said, ethics, internal controls, accurately and fairly representing the financial condition of the enterprise. And then we can offer that insight and foresight and having, enabling the organization to do great things and create great products and services that will change the world.   Margaret: (08:38) That makes a lot of sense and I'm glad you mentioned agility and resilience because COVID has certainly highlighted the need for leaders to help their people become more agile and resilient. How do you define agility and resilience? How equipped are finance and accounting professionals to deal with uncertainty while continuing to innovate and improve processes?   Jeff: (09:04) So agility is, and again, this is a, perhaps a Thomson un-scientific definition, but maybe those are the best. They're not particularly scientific, but agility in my mind, Margaret is the ability to quickly move employees and resources, human resources, and other types of resources, technology resources into new roles or areas of the organization to support cha...

Contact Ramesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramesh-shettigar-9ba1243/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Hey everyone and welcome to Episode 121 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Adam Larson, and I'm pleased to introduce you to today's featured guest, Ramesh Shettigar. Ramesh is Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer at Glatfelter, a leading global supplier of engineered materials. He joined my co-host Mitch to talk about ESG and its importance across the organization. Keep listening to hear about the finance team's role in ESG, prioritizing ESG over return objectives, and strategies to make ESG truly sustainable. Mitch: (00:47) So in your perspective, how have recent events increased the importance of ESG in business? And obviously for our listeners, we would like to get your perspective, particularly for the finance function. Ramesh: (01:00) Sure Mitch, I'm assuming by recent events you're referring to the pandemic, climate issues, social injustice, and corporate governance matters we've seen play out in 2020. If so I think companies play a very important role in representing to employees and their communities where they stand on these topics. The pandemic for example, has highlighted the importance of ensuring the health and safety of our employees and the communities where we operate. With regard to climate, corporations I think need to be responsible stewards of the environment in the geographies where they operate and need to abide by all local and federal environmental standards so that we can all preserve humanity's long-term health and sustainability for generations to come. We're seeing this play out in broader mega trends. For example, this move from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources or the plastics free movement. Working for an engineered materials company like Glatfelter, I feel incredibly proud that we have focused heavily on natural and bio-based feedstocks in our manufacturing process and our product innovation efforts are heavily focused on minimizing synthetic materials in the products we make. As it relates to social topics, employees need to know where their employers stand regarding racial, gender, and socioeconomic disparities in the workplace and if their companies are playing an active role in facilitating an environment that welcomes diversity, equity, and inclusion. Glatfelter for example, has made it very clear through an internal message from our CEO that treating people of all backgrounds fairly and consistent with our core values of mutual respect, integrity, and social responsibility is of utmost importance. We have committed to enhancing compliance training that focuses on diversity and eliminating unconscious biases. Also a meaningful portion of corporate giving will go towards causes that address social inequities and racial injustice. From a governance standpoint, I think ensuring that there is adequate board diversity in terms of experience, gender, and race is very important for investors seeking reassurance that company leadership exemplifies and values diversity. So bringing all this back to the finance question, which I think you're trying to get to, I think the long-term returns of these initiatives and the stand we take regarding ESG will ultimately be positive and rewarding for the company, its employees, and society. So I think that's how we think about what ESG does for us, particularly for the finance function. Mitch: (03:56) That really was beautifully said and thank you for taking us through step-by-step, I think it was a perfect response. Its great to hear those kinds of initiatives put in place and you know, your organization really taking a big step forward in making sure that everybody within the organization is on the same page. I think that clear communication is vital for making sure these ESG initiatives are effective, really is what it comes down to. And you talked about the finance function, the long-term returns. I think it's been a year now with this pandemic that you brought up and obviously there is a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. I think some people are starting to see it as businesses seek to return to their normal and that obviously has a different definition than it did a year from today. But how do you prioritize ESG in relation to these return objectives that you mentioned within finance? Ramesh: (04:53) Sure. So you know, the pandemic has clearly appended organizational priorities when it comes to ESG and I think you said it well, right? We've we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We've been through this pandemic now for a year, organizations have flexed and adapted to the marketplace and what the pandemic has brought about. But if anything, the pandemic I think has elevated the social aspect of ESG, which was already gaining momentum, keeping employees safe, facilities operational, and servicing customers are high on the priority list I think for companies and in a way represent the duty of care that businesses broadly commit to as part of their ESG focus. Therefore, I think ESG should not be seen purely from a return objective, because ESG initiatives are simply the right thing to do. Yes, companies of different sizes and complexity operate in different places along the ESG continuum depending on their resource allocation to this important endeavor. And as you know, the ESG evolution is a journey and some are further along than others, but that progress should not be driven solely by ratings outcomes or objectives. It should be guided by a company's core values and commitment to social responsibility. Businesses seek input from various constituents like investors, employees, customers, and suppliers to better understand expectations and what it means to be responsible stewards in the community and that feedback guides their actions and priorities. Mitch: (06:36) What exactly is your method for communicating these ESG objectives with stakeholders and ultimately how do you make sure they understand your efforts and get the buy-in from them? Ramesh: (06:50) Sure. So our primary method of communicating our ESG objectives with stakeholders is through our sustainability report. You know, in late 2019 we formed a cross-functional ESG steering committee within Glatfelter with a primary role of overseeing the sustainability and ESG strategy for the company and providing implementation support to Glatfelter’s businesses and facilities. We worked with a third-party consultant to conduct a materiality assessment to identify our ESG priorities. Particularly since we went through a meaningful strategic transformation as a company over the last couple of years and we wanted to make sure our latest priorities aligned with the new Glatfelter. Our materiality process included peer and industry research, internal stakeholder interviews, ESG team workshops, and application of best practices. We also took into consideration the expectations and recommendations of leading ESG ratings organizations and sustainability standards such as the SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board), the GRI (The Global Reporting Initiative), and UNSDGs (The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals). We evaluated topics based on their potential impact on Glatfelter, the company's ability to impact them, and our stakeholder’s interest in these topics. And we finally settled on seven priorities which are organized along the ESG pillars. Those seven areas are environmental management, innovation and environmentally responsible products, occupational health and safety, product safety and quality, community and employee engagement, corporate governance, and ethics...

Jeff Dailey: https://www.prometric.com/about-us/leadership/jeff-daileyFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (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...