Count Me In®

Contact Jason Pierce: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrpierce/ About Jason Pierce: https://edelsteincpa.com/our-team/jason-r-pierce/ Forensic Accounting Video, "Does my balance sheet balance?": https://edelsteincpa.com/does-my-balance-sheet-balance/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back to episode 87 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson, and I'm excited to introduce you to our featured guest, Jason Pierce. Jason is a partner with the firm Edelstein and Company in Boston, Massachusetts, where he specializes in financial forensics and business valuations. In this episode, he talks with my co-host Mitch, about how a background in audit lends itself nicely to forensic accounting and business valuations. He also explains how the emergence of data and data analytics has played a major role in his job today. To hear more about fraud forensics and financial valuations, keep listening for upcoming conversation. Mitch: (00:45) So, Jason, I know you have a very interesting background and I'd like to start this conversation with you just kind of explaining how you started off in your accounting career. Jason: (01:01) Yeah, thanks Mitchell. So I'm a military brat, which means we bounced around the country, from place to place, which I also think kind of helps with fill in with this, forensic accounting stuff which we'll talk about in a little bit just from looking at things as an outsider, but where we landed when I graduated from high school and college was an in Tennessee. And so after I graduated, I was looking at, at the time, going through another year of school due to the 150 hours necessary to get my CPA. But meanwhile, my dad had shipped off to Alaska and I would go visit in the summers and see how awesome the summers were up there. And it just kind of drew me up to that place. Those of you who have been there, know exactly what I'm talking about. So after, after graduation, then I moved up to Alaska, started working at a small CPA firm up there, and I did specialize in auditing for about 10 years before I jumped into this forensic accounting and business valuation area. Mitch: (02:10) So how exactly does auditing turn into forensic accounting and your business valuation? Jason: (02:16) Yeah, for me, it was, it was overtime, you know, so if somebody would have asked me in college, like what would I be doing today? You know, forensic, accounting side of things. I wouldn't even have known what that was. So, so just for the listeners, let's defined forensic accounting. The easy definition of that is really the art and science of investigating people and money. Or I think a lot of the misconception is, is just kind of chasing the money. But once you figure out the people's side, then the money side becomes easier to figure out. So there is a relationship between the two. But so how it happened for me was, as I said, being a staff auditor in Alaska meant a lot of trips out to the rural communities, which we call the Bush, right, where there's no road system and, but I'd be out there and every now and then there would be a situation where the records are gone, the former managers are gone or that the city administrator, what have you and so those audit then turned into a forensic investigation. And, sometimes that meant just kind of figuring out what the heck happened. And it also, sometimes it meant like people made off with some money. And so we had to just kind of figure out, what we call like pick and shovel sort of methodology is understanding what happened and when, and how that translates to the financial statements at the end of the day. Mitch: (03:48) So, with that in mind, you know, can you kind of tell us what it means to have a forensic mindset and how you were able to kind of apply some of, you know, your auditing and accounting background into what you were doing with forensics? Jason: (04:00) Yeah. You know, it's interesting with the, with the forensic mindset compared to what one would traditionally think of as an auditor, that in an audit you're looking for matching. So like uniformity, consistency, you know, does, does the check or purchase order or invoice agree from the date, the payee or the vendor, the amount and the expense or whatever account code do all those match with what's going through the general ledger. And so on the surface, you have this forensic or the audit mindset where you're digging through the general ledger, making sure that the financial statements agree in all material respects and all that good stuff, but what the difference is from a forensic side of things is you're looking for differences. In other words, whereas on one hand, we're looking for that uniformity where on a forensic side, we're looking for, let's say there's a $2,000 dual signing  check limit where in other words, if there's two check issued for more than say $2,000, it requires dual check signers, but lo and behold, there's a lot of checks for $1900. In other words, if we're looking at things where we have the ability to look to see if is there round numbers, is there what we call like, there's a technique called Benford's law, where you could look to see from the placement of the digits in whatever sort of metric you're looking at, there should be some uniformity to it. And without getting into that there's ways where you can test from a risk based approach to identify like the nice round numbers, or there's a lot of checks that start with say threes and that's disproportionate to what would be expected. So there's ways to look things from a forensic perspective, that are different from say a traditional audit mindset where you're just grabbing 40 to 60 cash disbursements and kind of checking those against the general ledger. Mitch: (06:16) So now you have these two different mindsets and you've got experience with both, but today I know you do a lot of work on business valuation. So how do auditing and forensic accounting mesh and ultimately allow you to come up with these business valuations. Jason: (06:34) Yea well, surprisingly or not surprisingly, there's a lot of accountants that are in this field. And I think primarily is because we know how things flow through the general ledger. We're also detail oriented folks, and I think that...

Contact Mitchell Powell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchpowell2/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05) Hello and welcome back for episode 86 of Count Me In on your host Mitch Roshong and I'm happy to bring you another engaging conversation on this accounting and finance podcast. Today's guest, Mitchell Powell, joins my cohost Adam to talk about financial performance management. Mitchell is the CFO at HJ Russell company, construction services, business, specializing in construction program management and property management. In this conversation, he introduces the concepts and uses for financial performance management software, and he also offers insight into how it can benefit your operations. So to learn and hear more, let's go over to the full episode now.   Adam: (00:51) So can you give us an overview of what financial performance management software is and how it is beneficial?   Mitchell: (01:03) Absolutely. So, I could talk all day about this stuff, generally, you know, in tech, finance generally and financial performance management particular, because, let's see, I probably started using this about 15 years ago and it has continued to evolve in terms of the sophistication and capabilities as well as pricing. So, you know, these products are now available to, you know, wider variety of companies that used to could afford them if you will. But for me, it's, you know, it's kind of financial performance management is just, you know, kind of one tool in the toolbox. If you think about all the tech involved in the finance operations, obviously the ERP systems to Excel, you know, whatever, this is just another one of those tools, but it's, it's kind of a critical one because it's kind of the glue that pulls everything together. And I guess as we talk about it, I'll illustrate with some examples, but it's funny, I actually came up with an analogy just before this call, and it's kinda like a carpenter, right? So all carpenters have their tools and there's some basics, right? So there's some fancy gizmos, not all of them need, but you know, you've got to have a hammer and you’ve got to have a saw. And so to me, it's like, if you see a carpenter with a handsaw spending all day, you know, kind of sawing wood and I show up and say, well, why don't you get an electric buzzsaw circular saw and you can do in 10 minutes, what you did, what's taking you all day. So it's really applying the right tech to what is a pretty complex operation, ultimately trying to pull together a lot of information in one place. You know, as I look back over the three years, I've been with my current employer and, you know, close to 10 at the previous, butwe do and I have to credit financial performance management applications with this, probably twice as much work if you will, in terms of, reporting and information provided, but we do it with less people. And so in the transformation that can be enabled through the appropriate application of technology in general, and in the case of this conversation for financial performance management properly implemented, it's a tool that really pulls together, all of your information in a single database. And so maybe what I should do is just give you just a broad overview of kind of what performance management software is and how it works. So, you know, many of your listeners have probably either had some exposure or have heard of some of the brands out there. There is Anaplan, Oracle, Hyperion, Adaptive planning. We use IBM Planning Analytics, which used to be called TM1 And it's subsequently been rebranded as IBM Planning Analytics through our acquisition, but that's the class of software that this is, and, you know, properly implemented, it pulls together in one place, all of our actuals from our GL and pulls together or budgets. And so you have a one place, the ability to kind of drill in and report with an agility and flexibility that you just couldn't, if you either had your data sets and different disparate places like budgets and Excel and all your actuals in your ERP. So this enables that kind of flexibility. So that in a nutshell is what financial performance management software is. Maybe what I should do is let me give you a kind of an example. It is, financial performance management software is a multidimensional database. So you, when you, when your data comes in, it's categorized, according to the typical ways you typically think about it in your business. And I'd say probably the five usual suspects, are of course the entity or company, the accounts, the period versions, whether that's a budget or a current forecast or actuals or whatever, more on that later, because that's a very powerful capability. And then lastly, the measure, he's talking about balances, activity so forth and so on. And so when data comes in, either through your budgeting process or your ERP, it's already, pre-calculated internally, according to the hierarchies you set up in those various dimensions. So obviously we have hierarchy set up for periods often for the companies and consolidations, obviously there's an account tree. And so to put all that in one place and then kind of categorized in those ways enables quite a bit of flexibility. So that, that's one of the two components generally in terms of how these various packages work. Is it's based on dimensions. and it's a typically called a multidimensional structure. The second is it's kind of like a blank slate.. So there are various BI packages that you can often buy. Some are associated with the various ERP systems. Some are offered by third party vendors, and often they are directed at a particular industry vertical or a particular solution. The class of products I'm referring to on the Anaplan, the IBM Planning Analytics, Adaptive planning, those are really more of a blank slates. So if you think about opening up an Excel spreadsheet, you have a blank slate. You can do anything you want to with it, and so these are products that you can, the sky is kind of the limit in terms of the kinds of things you can do with it in the same way as you think about an Excel spreadsheet. So it's extremely flexible to set up however you want to meet the needs of your particular business. So in terms of, you know, typical uses for these, I'd say there's probably two main things that they're often used for, reporting is a big one. I mean, it's a great reporting package. People struggle with reporting the export data to Excel and manipulate it, and so, you know, once your data is in this system and categorized correctly, and especially if you have, if whatever product you end up with operates through Excel as a reporting interface, which I think most of them do, certainly the one we use.Then you have a very flexible reporting interface, a very agile, and you can do some great ad hoc reporting. So reporting is number one, and then budgeting and planning, forecasting is the second kind of major category that people use these products for. And so I could talk all day about, you know, kind of the things that it will help you do to streamline your budgeting process, but maybe we'll talk about that a little later and then some other benefits besides those two main buckets, we have found that to be a tremendous benefit in streamlining our monthly close. We have found it to be a benefit in, various, consolidation exercises, ad hoc query and drill downs, great for that. And it's lastly a great, great control mechanism, both in the monthly close, as well as I could go through a whole list of stuff I probably will later. And it's also a great control mechanism. So in a nutshell, it's the place that everything comes together. It's kind of the glue that pulls your disparate data sources together and gives you a great deal of flexibility and agility on your reporting&nbs...

Contact Sangeeta Sumesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeetasumesh/Sangeeta's Website: http://sss.coach/"What the Finance" Book: https://www.amazon.in/What-Finance-Easy-learn-entrepreneurs/dp/1645467961FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is Adam Larson, and I'm your host who will be introducing you to our bonus episode's guest speaker, Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh. Sangeeta is a chartered accountant and management accountant with over two decades of experience, including leadership positions with multinationals across geographies, and most recently serving as executive director and CFO of Dun & Bradstreet Technologies. In this conversation by cohost Rouba Zeidan talks with Sangeeta about various aspects of being an influential woman in finance, including gender equality, rising up the corporate ladder and the importance of leadership and career optimization amid COVID-19. So to hear more, let's head over to their conversation now. Rouba: (00:59) So good morning Sangeeta, and thank you so much for joining us on Count Me In’s podcast this morning. Sangeeta: (01:07) Very good morning Rouba. It is great to connect with you, and pleasure being on your show. Rouba: (01:13) So I have so many questions for you because India is one of our biggest regions for IMA globally, and we're very keen to learn more about your experience as a seasoned finance professional and a woman. So women in finance in India represent a mere 11% compared to 16% globally. I personally find these figures a little shocking and an indication that much work, I mean, even on the global stage, don't get me wrong and that much work still needs to be done to establish gender equality within the finance sector. But what comes to mind when I mentioned this to you? I mean, what is your takeout from this. Sangeeta: (01:50) To be honest I find it ironical and surprising as well because you're right to say that the percentage is pretty less, but you know, if you look at women, I think woman are actually so good with money management. It is woman who are actually running them,  how big or small the budget, maybe, you know, they like to fit everything in within that, and it's so beautiful and they're so efficient and they don't even need assistance there. To come to think, logically speaking, there must be a lot more women in finance, which I find it surprising that it's not the case. But having said that I think  there are a lot more of the women who are a lot younger who want to get into finance, and I think there are  already quite a few of them in the finance domain compared to lets say a you know few decades ago. So in that way, it's kind of promising, and I think it all it needs is I think most women have to overcome this mental resistance. I think some of them tend to get bogged down because if you look at the CFO's nominee, you know the number two position, you know right hand of the CEO and stuff like that, so woman need to come out of this mental resistance and at the same time, I think they need a lot more motivation and they need to be encouraged by the seniors, the male colleagues, and definitely their family as well. Rouba: (03:08) From your personal experience. Have there been any particular challenges that you faced when it came to promotions and climbing up the corporate ladder? I mean, as you mentioned, it's important to have a support system at home, as well as within the companies that you work in, but for you personally, how has it been? Has there been a limitation and you know, the, the facilitation of you're climbing up that ladder, professionally? Sangeeta: (03:31) I think I have been really blessed, you know, because the kind of mindset my parents in calculating within me when I was younger was that gender has never been an issue. So it's either that you are capable of achieving what you want to achieve or not. So it was like, you know, coming down to my individual cells and I think ignorance is bliss because, you know, during my growing up years in, especially in my career, it was not this so much stops on this gender equality and all that. So, and coming from this background and the mindset, so it was more like, you know, am I capable of achieving this? Can I do this? Can I grow? Can I balance my family and my career? It was always those types of thoughts. So I strongly believe that, you know, a person, I mean, male or female, whoever is able to add value. I think, you know, all the promotions and everything else becomes secondary. So firstly, you must have the confidence in you. You know, I always say, when you want to start off your career, you should just take a pause and ask yourself, why do you want the career for yourself? What is it? Yes, yes. So you need to first be aware and clear of why you want to get up. And of course, if not, you can always explore other options, like, you know, work from home or entrepreneurship or anything like that. So I think this gender thing, you know, I think a person must remove doubt and, you know, focus on adding value. And what is it, how are you contributing to the organization. Then I think your growth becomes quite automatic. In my instance, I think I was really, really blessed. When my son was born, I was promoted as assistant manager, my daughter was born, I was promoted as a manager. You know, everything happened at the same time and yes, I must admit, yeah, it was actually overwhelming because I was a new mom and the new responsibilities at work, and you already facing the postpartum blues as well. So it was a bit of a challenge that way. But I think, you know, once you're able to tide over that and you know, you have your set career goals, your own self. And go by that, I think that's a lot better. Rouba: (05:42) Brilliant and very empowering advice, by the way, in the Arab world, we have a saying that every child comes with his own fortune. So I guess that manifested in the promotions that you are in Sangeeta: (05:53) Yeah. Rouba: (05:53) So you've done really well in your career and as a leader in your industry and amidst such a turning point in history, not just on the Indian economies platform, but also globally. So what kind of leadership transformation are you looking to implement or at least propose and suggest and facilitate within your organization? And is that something that you're working on currently in your capacity? Sangeeta: (06:19) Right, before we even dive into this.. You know, I want to talk about this wonderful experience that I had. So I'm also a high performance business coach. So I think about a year ago, I conducted a leadership workshop for some of the CXOs. You know, we have a CXO club here and I did like a workshop on leadership. So it was all very senior leaders from different industries were present. And what emerged the end of the workshop was something so beautiful.  They came of with five very important aspects for any leader. This will get more out of self realization and everything, and the reason I want to share this here is I think, you know, in respect to the current crisis,  or anything you know as a leader, I think these are very valuable things. So the first thing that they said was, you know, the listening skills. Many times leaders, you know, we're so caught up in our own things that, you know, we don't even listen to what the team members feeling, what are they viewpoints? Yeah, so that becomes very important. So it was surprisin...

Contact Russell Porter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russporter42/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back for episode 85 of Count Me In I'm your host, Adam Larson and today's conversation features IBM's Vice President of Finance and Global Business Services, Russell Porter. Russell has been with IBM for over 20 years, serving in roles spanning most financial disciplines in business units. He is a strong leader with a high aptitude for merging strategy and operations. In this episode, he really focuses his insights on how to lead and manage remote teams during these ongoing times of uncertainty. Russell explains IBM's current status and upcoming plans, as well as what he has done along the way to keep his team motivated and achieving. Keep listening, as we head over to this very timely and valuable conversation. Mitch: (00:55) Many leaders were faced with a task of quickly adapting their management strategies to remote work following the coronavirus pandemic. What were some of the strategies that you implemented in the beginning of this for the whole work from home environment, and how did you go about keeping your team together? Russell: (01:13) Mitch, in any situation, you know, one of the best things we can do is provide some clarity for our people. Discussing what we expect to happen, what we know, what we don't know and, and how we're going to make decisions as we all work through the issues that face us. In addition, one of the things we did was reinforced clarity around our organization's mission, and tried to make sure that each person continually understood their role in that overall mission. That helps people to stay connected and engaged, as we went through, you know, the, the vast uncertainty of those early days of the pandemic. We also noted that we needed a greater focus on empathy. You know, our team members all face different situations from those who are suddenly homeschooling their children to others who are concerned about aging parents and some who were cut off from the bulk of the social engagement that they had by not being able to go to work. You know, there's a saying that everyone's fighting a battle that we know nothing about, and we need to keep that in mind as leaders when we're working with our people, especially when we can't be physically with them, as much as we're used to.  That led us to realize we also had to be more flexible. You know, the work getting done is more important than exactly how it gets done. So at IBM we've got existing flex time programs that we just leveraged across the board. You know it allows people to attend to their daily needs while getting work done at what some would consider off shift hours. Now, not everything can happen that way, but to a great extent, our teams could modify their workdays to be early in the morning, late at night, or even split into pieces based upon all the other priorities they had to address. That took some creativity at times, and we had to change some structures like the workday times or some job design. And it was a great time actually to tap into our team's creativity, because they helped us develop some of those solutions to address the individual’s responsibilities and the individual's requirements and the job environment. The biggest thing we did though was communication, communication, communication. We were fortunate in IBM, we we've implemented agile methodologies in a lot of our work within finance and operations. So one of those, one of those methods is a daily standup meeting, and that really provided us a great check-in opportunity for our leaders and our teams to share those experiences and their concerns, and to make sure that our teams remained engaged in the work, but also that we could talk to them about what was going on outside of the work environment. That regular communication has really helped us to communicate both vertically and laterally across the organization. So a regular checkpoint with the team is key. But also as, as I've seen lots of people talking about the one thing that's missing in this virtual environment is the impromptu run into the hallways connection. That time when you're just walking down the hall and you see somebody and you think, oh, I meant to talk to them about an idea. So reaching out and keeping up networking and your contacts within your organization and outside, and being able to communicate across the small teams that we work in, that was also a big thing. And that was enabled by the technology and tools that we had adopted already. We were already doing video conferencing with WebEx and instant messaging, which we adopted with Slack earlier this year. Cloud based file repositories. All of these went from being ancillary to becoming like the primary mode of communication around the, around the organization, and I think the fact that we are already progressed with those tools, or at least had started with them, helped us adopt and adapt very, very quickly to what became a full time virtual environment. Mitch: (05:14) That's great that you had so much prepared and were able to implement so quickly, you know, I'm sure during this rapid change, and it was certainly a lot of uncertainty for everybody, even with plans in place like this, there must've still been a lot of questions from the team members, right? So what were some of the main concerns that you were hearing from your team while all this was going on, and how did you as a leader, go about addressing them? Russell: (05:40) So I'll tell you the number one question I kept getting was when are we going back to back to the office? And here again, knowing individual circumstances, I've got extroverts and introverts on my team, and the extroverts, you know, when they heard that we are going to be working virtually for a while., they wanted to get back to the office as quickly as possible. And, and working from home, working from bedrooms or living rooms on their own was really driving them a little nuts. So a lot of people thought it was going to be a one or two week closure of the offices to get past a peak period. But as the days turned into weeks, that question of when are we going back to the office became more and more insistent. You know, again, the best we could do was provide the clarity that we didn't know. And, and I'm in the Northeast. So, you know, in the Connecticut, New York area, and we had to tell our people, we didn't know. It was dependent first firstly, upon state regulations, but then also upon, the company's way that they wanted to approach coming back to the office, given that we've never had a time when the virus wasn't somewhere in the IBM office offices, or in the environments, I should say the States where, IBM operates. So, number one question was when are we gonna get back to the office? And we gave as much clarity as we could. Number two, job was, well, how are we going to get our jobs done the way we're used to doing them? And the answer was, we're not. We’re simply we needed to adapt to this new virtual environment there, wasn't going to be, you know, printing of documents, and, and there wasn't going to be the huddling in a physical conference room to go over charts, to go over analysis, to, to present ideas. Suddenly we all had to go virtual and that required a little bit of change, and the way we did things and the way we shared. It wasn't marking up and standing in front of a screen. It was, you know, trying to point at something with your, with your mouse and a little arrow on WebEx. but here again, it was adoption of the technology that helped us adapt and, and continue to be productive as a finance and operations organization. And what we actually found was within FNO, we really didn't skip a beat. We were able to modify the way we did th...

Contact Jason Krantz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkrantz/Strategy Titan:www.strategytitan.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/strategytitan/about/"Data & Analytics in the Boardroom: Raising Your Digital Quotient" Video Series: https://www.strategytitan.com/blog/data-analytics-in-the-boardroom-raising-your-digital-quotient-video-seriesBuild out your “business and finance” centric data and analytical skills with our practice dataset. Perfect for accounting and finance pros looking to develop their data skills: https://www.strategytitan.com/blog/titanized-real-world-dataset-to-develop-your-analytics-musclePodcast: https://anchor.fm/transformationnationAdditional Work: Using data and analytics to make business decisions with confidence during times of uncertainty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentdykes/2020/04/29/why-your-business-must-double-down-on-data/#6e180f597a68FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. I'm here to bring you episode 84 of our series. Today's feature presenter is Founder and CEO of Strategy Titan, Jason Krantz. Strategy Titan is a strategic management data and analytics advisory firm, and Jason is a business professional with over 10 years of business analytics, data science, and strategic leadership experience. In this episode, he shares his perspective on data, analytics and strategy and explains how these functions of the organization need to ultimately drive your overall business strategy. Jason talks about the products that have great opportunity to increase your firm's revenue by connecting these strategies, and how aligning your businesses strategies helps mitigate risk. Keep listening and will now head over to a very insightful and analytical conversation.   Mitch: (01:05) Alright, so Jason we just were having a brief conversation before we started here and, you know, we were talking a lot about the importance and the value of this conversation. So to start us off, why is a data and analytics strategy so important for innovation today?   Jason: (01:21) Yeah, in my mind, really what it does is it gets down to identifying opportunities. They're going to move the needle strategically and financially ever. All of us have financial goals, revenue, goals, growth goals, whatever it may be. I'll just give a real example. I like to use examples to illustrate these concepts, to move them from fuzzy to concrete. I used to work for a company $2 billion company. We are an industry consolidators. We acquired numerous companies. We had everybody on different ERP platforms, something I'm sure a lot of people can relate to. Each company really had a different behavior profile on the way that they did things. So, me being in analytics for practicing this company, one of my first jobs was to consolidate all this information and start looking at it, look for opportunities. Now we had pretty big, EBITDA growth goals. We were tightly focused on EBITDA growth as, our strategic objectives. And so as we're looking through this, we find out that we have well over $10 million in uncollected freight. Now this was freight that we're owed. You know, we just had not gone out and collected it. And as we looked at it, started asking questions saying, Hey, why is it that we do this? Like, Oh, well, you know, it's in our contract that we can do this, but we typically let it go. Or, you know, it's just, we we've done it this way for so long. So every company was doing it a different way, but the common theme was this freight recovery. So as we looked at it, we're like, you know, we can actually make about $14 million if we just collect the freight that we're owed. Not only, let's not even account for freight increases for gas, whatever it may be surcharges. And as we brought to some management team, they're like, how could this be? And this is, we got everybody aligned behind it, they said, this was a serious opportunity. This is a process improvement opportunity. This is real money that will impact the bottom line and help us meet our objectives. Now, the reason I share that story is analytics by itself didn't do anything. We didn't actually collect that money or drive that force forward. But what it did is it served as a tool to identify the opportunity that if we never went, I would have gone through that process. We never would have identified that opportunity. We would not have socialized it and gotten everybody to see, wow, this is something...

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 ...

Contact Ben Jackson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmgjmba/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00) Welcome back for episode 82 of Count Me In. I'm your host, Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to bring you another conversation about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's guest is Ben Jackson. Ben is a Certified Coach, Speaker, teacher, and trainer, and he's also the managing partner of Ben Stu LLC, a business and leadership consulting company. Ben joined Adam to talk about the importance of internal controls, and having the proper policies in place to manage the emergence of AI and RPA in the accounting world. He addresses some of the risks presented, particularly with the recent remote work environment and how to overcome additional challenges when looking to lead the finance and accounting function. Let's go ahead and listen to their conversation now. Adam: (00:58) So with the advancements of technology, such as AI and RPA across the accounting space, can you discuss your thoughts on internal controls and the new policies and procedures that should be implemented because of these new technologies? Ben: (01:13) Well, you know, with the new technology that's going on, I don't really think that the internal controls really need to change. What I think they need is they need to be updated. See one of the things that we talk about with internal controls is who's responsible. When you have AI and you have, you know, the automatic accounting processes that are working, you need to establish who is that responsible person to make sure that they're working in the best way. So once you establish that responsibility, then you have to go back to where the next step is segregation of duties. Somebody is responsible to make sure that it's working the way it's supposed to work, as in the program. So whoever's that programmer needs to validate it. That the program is executing as expected, and then you need to add in the controller or the accountant who needs to come in and make sure that before you post an action, an action that it's reviewed. So you're really adding a couple extra steps to ensure, but you changed what goes on. So I think that you need to add some testing procedures to make sure that'd be for execution that it's there, and then also as you let these things automatically run, you need to have some spot checks and audits internally that bring forth those changes and then you'll know whether or not something is wrong. Adam: (02:51) So that makes sense. So you're saying that you don't need to change anything. It just needs to be maybe brought into the new age of what's happening around us. Cause internal controls aren't going to change, but we need to make sure that people, the right people are in place to make sure that the they're responsible for doing their duties in essence Ben: (03:10) Correct. You know, one of the things that happens is, you know, when you think about the top six things that happen with internal controls, you know, the first two are really talking about establishing the responsibility, and then segregation of duties. The next thing becomes documenting the procedure. That is a very important thing with internal controls is having a documented procedures. When you have those procedures documented, it makes it easy for somebody to take on a role. For example, if you have change in, people. People changes always make things difficult. Well, if I have AI and you know, automatic processing running, then I need to give the new person who goes and sits in those seats, what really happens and what they need to check for. So if I don't give them what the documented process is, then they're sort of stuck and they don't know that something's automated running in the background, and then they don't know how to fix it, how to look at it, if there's a problem, and who do they go and talk to. So that becomes very important, you know,  in the next step. So, you know, when you talk about AI and you talk about automated processing and letting things just run, you know, we've already established who was responsible, between a tech person and an accountant, to make sure that those two roles are responsible. We've segregated who's really responsible for whatever, and then we have that next thing, which is a documented procedures. One of the things that I like to do when I look at internal controls is to create a RACI. Who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted and who's informed. So that actually helps with internal controls because then you know exactly who you need to go to if something is wrong or when you noticed, things during an audit, you can go, okay, you should know who, who entered the, program for the automatic entries. Now, the problem with AI is AI is always thinking, and because it's always thinking you sort of control the parameters, that it looks at, and that control will always be a consistent review. And again, it doesn't change the fact that the internal control is there. It changes what the internal control should be. Adam: (06:12) Definitely. So do you have some examples maybe you can give of, maybe updating internal controls, or some of the things you've been talking about, some specific examples that you could share? Ben: (06:24) For updating internal controls, I recently consulted with an organization who didn't have a lot of internal controls. And, during the process, I noticed that there were open system users that had the ability to do some things that they shouldn't be doing. So we put in plan in a place where we actually created a table for what the internal control could be or should be based on their current platform. So in doing so, what you do is you sorta look at their current processes and then you assign someone in the finance group to monitor what's really going on. Because the system, the company is a small company. So a lot of people wear many hats. So locking down the system is not a great idea. The better idea is saying, okay, I know what my parameters are. How do I validate that everybody is doing things correctly? So when you do notice an error, we you bring it up to the CFO and the management team and make some decisions on what do we need to change in a process and how do we correct some things so that consistency is improved. One of the things that you do with these controls as you're growing your company, you want to make sure that they're in place so that everybody knows the rules and that it's not risked, there's no risk to the company. So in implementing this, we also identify what the potential risk is. If somebody doesn't catch it, and that becomes important for the stockholders, and when I say stockholders or the stakeholders, it's who we have to report to, because it could be on any scale of company, who you're giving these reports to. They have to know that they could be confident in the data, and that accounting is really looking at what's transactionally happening, whether through systemic processes or manual processes. Adam: (09:05) You mentioned that there are always risks involved with any internal control, knowing that the main risk is what if the internal control fails? Are there some pitfalls that people can look out for as they're looking to maybe update their internal controls or looking to make them more holistic? Ben: (09:23) Are there things that people can do to mitigate risk? Of course. One of the things that I suggest is having a quarterly review, and sort of keeping the scorecard from the review to see how many errors were caught, what were the risks? So it's like doing a risk assessment, and in doing the risk assessment and you sit there and you say, okay, did this control work? You know, how many, how many purchase o...

Contact Andrew Royer:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/royeraccounting/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/royer-accounting/Royer Accounting: https://www.royeraccounting.ca/Andrew's Recommended Readings:Tim Ferris, 4-Hour Work Week: https://fourhourworkweek.com/Mike Michalowicz, Profit First: https://profitfirstbook.com/Dave Chilton, The Wealthy Barber: http://www.wealthybarber.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back for episode 81 of Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm happy to share another conversation with you about various things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's conversation features Andrew Royer, Founder and CEO of Royer Accounting in British Columbia, Canada. Andrew is an entrepreneur who uses the tagline, “Transform Your Business from a Cash Eating Monster to a Moneymaking Machine.” He loves working with other entrepreneurs to help them see cashflow issues and showing them how growth and profit go hand in hand. In this episode, Andrew shares a perspective on various accounting software options, and how it can enhance work productivity to ultimately lead to a more profitable business. For a further explanation on what it means to be efficient and effective in business, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.   Mitch: (01:01) So from your experience working with accountants and clients, what are some of the advantages to utilizing a desktop accounting software?   Andrew: (01:09) Okay, well in some cases you don't really have a choice. If you're in an area that's got a slow or unstable internet connection, you're not going to be able to use an online application. Another benefit is that the, the applications, the desktop versions that are installed on your computer tend to be a lot more robust and have more features available to them. And a couple other, you just, you'll, there's a onetime cost option, which you don't get online generally, and, you have more control over the upgrades. You can decide, you know, when you're going to install it, you don't have to worry about them installing it when you're, you know, you're busy with something.   Mitch: (01:52) That makes sense. And then I guess the opposite here, the online accounting software, what are some advantages to utilizing some of that?   Andrew: (01:59) Yeah, I mean, the, the biggest advantage is that you're not tied to your computer. So a lot of the software, you can access it on your phone. Take your laptop, you sit on the beach, not that you want to be working on the beach, but, it's better than working in an office. But yeah, I mean if you get a call at home, you're able to look information up thats, and enter information when you need to. You don't have to worry about like, so the benefit of the desktop is that you, you get control over the installations, the downside, or the benefit of the online,you don't, have to worry about the installation. Somebody is doing the installations, they're backing up the software, they're installing the updates for you. It's also easy to give access to your staff. You give access to, accountants and bookkeepers, whereas on a desktop version, unless you're getting into a really expensive enterprise kind of options, it's hard to get multiple people involved. And the online makes that, you know, the interconnectedness  is very powerful. You can also make up, so the shortfall of the online, which I had mentioned before was that you have less power than the desktop, but, with the online, you can actually integrate with thousands of apps that will increase the power of the online. So there's a lot of benefits you're not closed and tied to what the desktop gives you. You can add whatever features you want.   Mitch: (03:21) So I guess a lot of it sounds like, you know, there are pros and cons to both of these, for those who are interested in, you know, looking at different software options, whether it's desktop or online, we'll start with desktop to stay consistent here. How do you go about determining which desktop software is right for you?   Andrew: (03:40) In my opinion, it's, it's largely preference. I've used.,I've used most of the different options out there, the big names anyway. So, the primary options are QuickBooks Desktop, and then the Simply Accounting or the Sage version. So those are, those are the two main competitors. There may be some advantages to one or the other based on the size of the company or the particular industry that you're in. But otherwise I find that it's mostly preference. I find more technically minded tend to prefer the Simply Accounting and, the QuickBooks, if you're just getting started, QuickBooks tends to be simpler, easier to use. So a lot of people start with that.   Mitch: (04:21) Then what are some of your options on the flip side? Like I said, what are some of the ways that you can choose the right online accounting software and what are some of those examples?   Andrew: (04:31) Yeah, I think so picking the right online software is probably a little tougher. For our firm, what we've done is we've gone just to be consistent. We've gone with QuickBooks online, just across the board for everybody. This is QuickBooks has been in the market the longest and online,aAnd so they have the most integrations with other software out there. They're, it's easier to find people that are more familiar with it and able, so it's easier to find people in, to work with it and so there's less training involved with that. And, I mean, it's not, it's not perfect. I'd like there's issues with it that drive me nuts, but it's kind of, I can say it's the worst system until you consider the alternatives. So then we look at, like Sage has started the game a little bit later. I think they were digging their claws into the desktop version and really just didn't want to let it go. And so they joined the game a little bit later and, they have a lot less integrations thanthan QuickBooks and otherwise I think between the two, it's more of a, just a preference thing. And then the last one, the one that I've been keeping my eye on a lot is XERO. So they never had a desktop version. So both QuickBooks and Sage, they were basically competing with themselves, trying to create some of the same features that they had in the desktop version. XERO didn't have that liability. So they were able to just create something from scratch, make it the way that they wanted to, with an online interface. Some of the issues that they ended up getting into with that is that, people are used to doing things a certain way with all other accounting software and they've kind of done just something completely different. The biggest benefit with XERO isit works great with the foreign exchange transactions, which can be tougher in both, you know, QuickBooks online and Sage. And really, the only reason that we haven't moved everybody over to it is it's really lacking in the Canadian sales side. So the sales tax handling, they're working on it, but, until that's done, I can't even, consider it, but we're definitely keeping our eye on that one is potentially a future leader in this industry.  Mitch: (06:50) So you've said it a few times where it really come...

Contact Michael High:linkedin.com/in/michaelhigh Michael High in the Media:https://www.afponline.org/ideas-inspiration/topics/articles/Details/bridging-the-gap-between-it-and-finance/https://www.afponline.org/ideas-inspiration/topics/articles/Details/the-power-of-diversity-in-finance/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=May20_week2 Michael High Articles:https://www.afponline.org/ideas-inspiration/discussions/afp-conversations-podcast/Details/shell-oil's-michael-high-on-the-challenge-of-bringing-fp-a-to-deepwater-drillinghttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-vacuum-cleaner-youll-replaced-one-michael-high%2F/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/senior-management-do-your-best-leaders-have-ax-grind-michael-l-high/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back for episode 80 of Count Me In I'm your host, Adam Larson, and this is IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's episode features Shell's, Deep Water Gulf of Mexico Business Unit CFO, Michael High. Mike is passionate about thought and people leadership, diversity and inclusiveness, digital transformation and personal development. In his upcoming conversation you have with my cohost Mitch, Mike highlights the different states of going digital, finance's role in business transformation, and what it takes to effectively lead a business transformation. Thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.   Mitch: (00:49) For a little background and context and this conversation, can you please tell us what finance digitalization is?   Michael: (00:57) Thanks for the question. So in terms of what the finance digitalization is to me, I like to start a bit with a kind of vocabulary for me, at least a lesson that I learned on this journey, and there are three terms that seem to get thrown out together at the same time, and sometimes try to mean the same thing, but I think they have a bit distinct meaning. So the first one for me is just this idea of digitization, which I think is something we've experienced mostly through our lifetime. This is that switch from analog to digital, where we went from filling out paper forms to doing so electronically. And so for some people, when they hear digitalization or even finance digitization, they're, they're thinking about that element of it. And for me, that's at a minimum step one, and then most places were far beyond it, but there are still pockets where actually this is an important part of digital transformation. The second one is digitalization, which for me is kind of a second phase to that. And this is where we're for me thinking about the current ways that we do work and how can we make those current ways and this current business models more productive or perhaps simpler, or make it a little bit easier to collaborate, but it's, by and large within the paradigm of the existing way that work is done. And the third phase for me is this concept of digital transformation, which is actually where you're opening up entirely new ways of doing business, perhaps even new business models, new ways to even approach the market and fundamentally different ways of working. And so, for me, that's where the most value ultimately lies is in that, and I think it's also where you get beyond things like just looking at the IT cost or even the IT side of the equation to actually looking more fundamentally at a minimum data, but also process and also business models.   Mitch: (02:39) So with all those considerations, what is the role of finance in the bigger business transformation for an organization?  Michael: (02:48) I think are some of our foundational skills, even around understanding value management, understanding cost management, these, these core skills actually come to the forefront. And it's really important that we help our business colleagues let's say frame the decision appropriately and evaluate it  appropriately. I think it's kind of easy, especially if you're thinking about digital transformation, just simply from that digitization or even digitalization perspective, the kind of first and second steps that are referred to that, you only think about the first order cost effects of this. And I often have found myself in conversations where it's challenged by, well, Excel is free, so why would I possibly spend more money to do something? And of course, when it's framed that way, it is hard to actually talk your way out of that argument. But when you actually step back and say, actually what we're after here is a fundamentally different way of doing business. You start to realize that the cost side of the equation is actually only a ver...

Contact Rob Mars: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-mars-3738402/CMA Certification Overview: https://www.imanet.org/cma-certificationIMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/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 today I'm sharing with you another bonus episode in our series. As hopefully you've recently heard on our podcast IMA's Senior Vice President of Certifications and Exams and Content Integration, Dennis Whitney, joined us again to talk about how IMA responded to the challenging times, brought by COVID-19 and share some updates on sitting for the CMA exam. In that conversation, he also mentioned how CMA's have been able to help their organizations, weather the storm across the globe, which is a perfect segue for today's episode, where we will hear from Rob Mars and experienced financial executive and proponent of IMA CMA certification. Rob talks about the value of having a CMA and validates many of the points made by Dennis in our previous episode. Rob referred to the CMA as your global passport. So keep listening to hear what that means and other insights from this experienced management accountant. Mitch: (01:09) When we first spoke, we Identified the CMA as really being this global credential. So in your opinion, how has the CMA really helped you from the start of your career to where you are now? Rob: (01:23) Long time ago in the eighties, I started my finance career with Borg Warner. I joined this American multinational as a financial analysist in the European head office in Amsterdam. It was a great organization to work for. Plenty of room for development, with young people, senior jobs, and a strong emphasis on financial reporting, performance analysis and forecasting. I do still recall we put lots of hours into variance analysis and filling up the ROI chart. One of the seniors in the finance division in the US was the key promoter of the CMA, and Borg Warner was also a corporate supporter of IMA. I decided to go for the CMA. At the time, it was still a five-part exam. I had to travel to the US. I remember driving with our Finance Director to Columbus, Ohio, to attend the exam together, and it went well, and onthea way back, you know, I was tasting my first root beer. That was a different taste. I was keen to study for further develop, but a full postgraduate study, found to have it. So CMA was a good choice for me. It gave me a good overview of relevant topics. It gave me training and practical tools for my work, and it gave me more understanding of the US context. In our company we had many CMAs, and the fact that we had gone through the same training also helped us to work across borders and communicate. We had a common language and understood each other better when we discussed things like breakeven, contribution margin, variable costing, absorption costing, financial analysis, etcetera. And if we got in doubt, we could either refer to the same textbooks. So it was a good way to, to work across the borders. Mitch: (03:21) So that leads us very nicely into the next question here. You know, you referred to the CMA as a passport. So what do you really mean by that and how is this really, an international credential? Rob: (03:37) Yeah. What, I worked for seven years with Borg Warner after I joined Nedloyd, an international shipping company. And after two years in the Netherlands, I moved to Tokyo with my family. Later, we moved on to Hong Kong, London in Singapore and South Korea as well. So we enjoyed working and living in Asia and Europe and meeting new people and learning from different cultures. But when it comes to CMA at the time, it was all very different in my home country. When I did my CMA exam, there was no Netherlands chapter, no CMA exam site at all. I got my CMA in 88. To get a university, free university in Amsterdam, we managed to start an exam site first as a trial, and then they started a CMA review course. It's great to see it for more than 25 years, they have run it successfully. And now over two separate CMA training courses, one in Dutch and one in English. Amsterdam is the largest chapter in Europe. Right now, you can find chapters in many more countries. It's a good way to meet like minded finance professionals and network and learn from their experiences. All those countries didn't have them when I lived there. Now more than half of IMA membership is outside of the US. They are fairly active region offices, Amsterdam, Dubai, Singapore, China is truly global now. This is an incredible achievement, and I'm glad to be part of this. Mitch: (05:11) What exactly do all of these chapters have in common when it comes to management accounting, and what are these professionals have to offer with their CMA that really add value to their businesses? Rob: (05:25) What I find with the CMA, it's a part I like, you know, I always love to work on management accounting sideof finance. I have a great respect for all those who are experts in statutory and financial accounting, but I enjoyed the business part role more. I find it important to have people in the team who are experts in both fields. I saw that we could add value to the business with things like decision support and quotation tools, financial analysis, customer product profitability, performance measurement, etcetera. With this we could help steer the business and create more value added. At the time in my team, many people were trained in CPA, local CPA, mostly. And the benefits of those is that you learn the statutory texts and, financial reporting, focused on your own country. The difference with the CMA, you know, business and management, accounting, financial analysis is very of global. It's very international. Mitch: (06:39) So what additionally, working with IMA and the different chapters that holding the CMA, you know, volunteering all the work that you do. Now you're a global board member. What personally do you want to share as far as your perspective on IMA and everything that it's done for you and your career? Rob: (07:03) Good point. So another aspect I enjoyed very much being part of this IMA family. As I mentioned before, IMA  was in my early days, pretty much US focused and centered. Now with a substantial presence in the regions and more than half of our members live outside the US and IMA Board we also have now a more diverse and international members. To meet up with chapter leaders, and members from countries all over the world during conferences is great and I find very valuable. Apart from such networking, I also believe that as an IMA volunteer, gives you an opportunity to train and practice leadership skills, it is an intangible benefits, and truly rewarding. You can start in a local chapter or getting involved into regional or global board or a technical committee. There's a lot to choose from if you want to put yourself into a volunteering role . I  really get delighted to hear from young people, students, young professionals, how CMA is helping them in a career developmet. It's very encouraging. They could improve their harness skills by being part of his IMA community and connect with like minded people from the world. It's great to see this happening. Closing: (08:17) This has been Count Me In IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like, what you heard, and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and financ...