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Contact Marwan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marwan-al-suwaidi-01189828/Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development: https://www.khalifafund.ae/Khalifa Fund Mission: "To raise Entrepreneurs and SMEs efficiency by building capabilities, unlocking financing and service options, integration with different stakeholders and advocating the entrepreneurial culture."FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05)Welcome back for episode 72 of Count Me In, IMA’s podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I am your host, Mitch Roshong, and the episode I am introducing is for a conversation between our co-host Rouba Zeidan and Marwan Al Souwaidi, a seasoned finance specialist and the Director of Finance & the Procurement Support Services Department at Khalifa Fund. In this episode, Rouba and Marwan discuss the future of small- to medium-sized enterprises in the Gulf Cooperation Council and the role the Abu Dhabi-based Khalifa Fund is playing in supporting this fundamental segment of the economy. They also talk about how businesses can sustain and reinvent their models following COVID-19, so keep listening for another insightful and valuable episode of Count Me In. Rouba: (00:56)So let's start with the Khalifa Fund, which is the company that you represent. It was established in 2007 as an independent not-for-profit SMEs socioeconomic development agency by the government of Abu Dhabi. The fund was originally set up to support the culture of investment amongst UAE nationals and developing obviously the SME investments in the Emirates. What was the vision behind such an initiative byt Abu Dhabi? Marwan: (01:24)Prior to 2007, let’s say, actually no one was providing loans to small and medium enterprises, so there was a vague gap in the market. So, Khalifa Fund was established to take a position that banks and financial institutions we shy to take. So, the main idea or the main wisdom of creating the Khalifa Fund is to nurture the SME ecosystem in Abu Dhabi fairs, then by 2011, we moved to the entire UAE. So, that was the main wisdom or vision behind creating the Khalifa Fund: to encourage UAE nationals to go to the private sector, by establishing your own firms, take some employment from the public sector to the private sector, and provide like a financing vehicle, banks financial institutions did not take that step at that time. Rouba: (02:43)Okay. Initially you’d started for local purposes, national purposes, but eventually in 2015, the Khalifa Fund diversified its efforts internationally with a like a portfolio of some one billion dollars across 22 countries in 3 different continents : Africa, Asia and Europe. How were these regions selected? And what are some of the promising industries that the Fund is actually looking out for, and mostly interested in?Marwan: (03:11)Mainly, going international came from a direction from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, crown-prince of Abu Dhabi. So, the main idea is also to support the friend countries to boost their economy through creating employment in their country. That was the main wisdom behind going international. We have for example the Chechen Republic, mainly for innovation, also Belarus in the innovation sector, because we see that there is a big market or an encouragement for the society there to move to that. So, we analyze the country, before going there, we find potential areas that can be developed in that country and that can support the purpose of creating employment and enhancing the ecosystem. Rouba: (04:18)So, mostly, it revolves around innovation across various sectors. You’re looking for new ideas, fresh new concepts.Marwan: (04:26)True.Rouba: (04:26)Excellent. So, according to the Credit Bureau, the total credit for SMEs in the UAE totaled to 24 billion dollars by end of last year. How is that figure expected to increase or decrease under the current economic developments resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic?Marwan: (04:44)COVID-19 is the tipping point and I think the economy will be different. So, the methodology of the regular loan provided prior to the COVID-19 will be different post-COVID-19, entrepreneurs will be different, people who are going to go to them, to the market, need to be agile, flexible. The sector, private sector and classers will be different. We cannot say it’s going to increase or decrease because it will not be compared to what it was prior to COVID-19. This is something else that we are going to talk about.Rouba: (05:31)Would you imagine it to be stronger than it was pre-COVID?Marwan: (05:36)I think that COVID-19 is very challenging for the SME sector. So, SMEs that are going to survive during COVID-19 will end up learning a lot of things that they never learnt before. So, a solid will be much so important, and they can easily build on that. Entrepreneurs who did not survive during COVID-19 but saw how the market changed are going to come back with a different mindset and a different approach to the market. So, I think SMEs will be performing much better than before COVID-19. Rouba: (06:27)Amazing, a positive perspective, as it should be pf course. So, when looking at the stats on SMEs globally and regionally, it’s a fairly similar scenario across the board, in the sense that they represent the biggest percentage of the private sector businesses and employ the largest workforce. For example, if you zoom in on the UAE, they represent more than 60 per cent of non-oil GDP and 94 per cent of the total number of companies operating in the country. And when you look at the job spectrum, they provide more than 86 per cent of the private sector's workforce – according to the Ministry of Economy. What is the government doing to help them get through this critical phase which stands to have, as you mentioned earlier, a tremendous impact, in some cases it is going to mean everything in regard to survival?Marwan: (07:22)The government introduced many government stimuli. One of them is the targeted economic support scheme, the 50 billion dirham that was given to the banks, so the banks will support our financial support to the SMEs, out of their bank sheet, let’s say, which came like a heavy relaxation to the banks. Yes, so the banks, by the 50 billion dirham, which is the economic stimulus, will be able to provide financial support to the affected SMEs by waving a lot of fees, by waving or not taking the installment, during the next 3 to 6 months, plus providing loans for the working capital, because, again COVID-19 affected the working capital. The clash operating cycle. So, the banks are more relaxed now because they are going to provide the funds off their bank sheets, this is one thing. On the local governments, each Emirate has its own government stimulus to the SMEs. So, I think UAE is one of the best countries who proacted into supporting the economy beginning of March 2020. So, I think that the UAE government acted very fast.Rouba: (09:04)Yes, I definitely second that motion. I’m based in the UAE, have been for the past forty years, and to be honest, when you contrast this globally, I feel really privileged to be in this area at this critical time, they have been wonderful, in agility as you mentioned, it’s a crucial kind of attribute at this point. In a survey conducted by the Pearl Initiative, they found that 70% of SMEs surveyed in Saudi Arabia and the UAE stated that they face a number of challenges such as economic conditions and finding experienced personnel, they also noted a key one that comes to mind which comes to mind, which is raising capital. If this was a...

Contact Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremybehler/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00)Welcome back for episode 71 of Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I will be previewing our conversation between my cohost, Adam and Jeremy Belhar, the CFO at Sargento foods. In this episode, Jeremy discusses the importance of leadership when seeking to innovate and facilitate change. He shares some of his personal experiences and talks about how innovation and change does not necessarily need to revolve around technology. As a matter of fact, a big leadership quality he emphasizes in this episode is trust. To hear everything else he shared with Adam we're going to head over to the conversation now. Adam: (00:49)So to get started, I just wanted to ask you what leadership characteristics have enabled you to climb to such a high leadership position within such a well known organization? Jeremy: (00:59)Well , I think there's a few things. First and foremost, you know, I think it's important to note that there's not a one size fits all approach to leadership nor to achieving career success. It's one of the things, when I came on board early in my career, I looked at some of the leaders that I aspired to be, and it was at times a little bit challenged in terms of differences of what I saw versus what I felt and knew my core, personality, and beliefs and, and overall approaches were. And so for me, I've taken it a point to really be authentic and sincere first and foremost, because you can't be someone you're not and be successful and be, consistent throughout an entire career. So for me, what I try to do is I try to one, always be open minded and, and I have a general view of abundance. I always believe that there's always newer and better ways of doing things about thinking things. While I would characterize my thought process is largely databased, I also recognize that if it was as simple as that, we wouldn't need, leaders in positions cause we could just write programs to interpret data, and that's not as easy as there. So it's balancing the data piece with the judgment and understanding how to navigate in the gray area, where, the more senior you get that tends to be more of where you play. And I think the other, the other area that's been important is as you move up in the organization, I didn't appreciate as much the need to stay connected to what's really going on. I like to think of myself as a pretty approachable person, and have a very open communication process with most of my teams, but even with that, as hard as you can try, there are a lot of times where information just doesn't make it to you, because of your level, regardless of how you approach that. And so I've made it a point to, have deep relationships and set up processes so that I can have better insight into what's really going on, and understand when that may be inconsistent with what I believe, or I'm being told it's going on. Adam: (03:33)You know, it's a really interesting insight to be able to find that connection between what's really going on and what you're being told is going on. And how do you, how do you cross those together? Have there been innovative ways that you've been able to do that, to make that connection? Jeremy: (03:49)Well, I certainly, from a reporting technology standpoint, the more democratize data is the easier it makes that, in, you know, if you go back 20, 30 years ago, when we didn't have the rich powerful, ERP systems that we currently have management and executives would rely upon reports that they get from their teams without a real efficient way of validating that. And that's not to say that people are intentionally mischaracterizing data, but certainly there is a level of interpretation that comes with communicating, results and data, and if that is done in a manner that is intended to frame it in a positive light versus a negative light, you may not know that. And so being able to have access to more data, more timely data,  and data that doesn't maybe go through as many filters, certainly allows you to have a little bit more insight in terms of when the information that's being shared may not be the entire truth. It may be accurate data, but the information that that data is communicating, perhaps isn't consistent with what your objectives are or intents are. Adam: (05:15)That akes sense. So when you're, when you're a leader in any organization, it requires you to be innovative, to kind of come up with different ways to, to run the business better. Are there any innovative things that you've come up with that you can, that you've adopted to make your business more effective? Jeremy: (05:34)Well, sure. I mean, I think innovation is one where it's a little bit of this just magical word that means so many things, and a lot of times, I believe innovation is mischaracterized as being technology. And while technology is certainly an area that has seen, a very high level, of innovation, it's not the only area and, you know, innovation, if you get to the core of it, innovation is just a new idea and it could be a product, it could be a way of doing something, it could involve people, it can involve technology, it can involve process, and so for me, being able to embrace technology is really about being able to embrace change. And I think that in my career, one of the things that I've seen that really differentiate how effective, differentiate how much technology and innovation can have on a person or a group of people is very highly correlated with their openness to change. And, you know, for me personally, I've always hungered for new and better ways of doing things, and so inherently I have a very open mind to change, and I know that's not true across the board for everyone and it's not right or wrong. We're all right, you know, wired differently and their strengths and, and opportunities to each of those, but for me, it's never been a challenge because I, I really embrace it. And for me, how I've tried to utilize that with my teams is, to show examples of why that change is going to benefit all of us collectively, and in most cases, all of us individually as well. Certainly there are some new innovations that can have a negative impact on an individual, you know, maybe takeen to the extreme. Maybe there are certain roles that will be obsoleted by that, and I think that's why there's a lot of this inherent fear about innovation is. But what if you take the longterm view to that if you embrace that change, you're also going to embrace the opportunity that while your job may go away, your management team, your executive team, will see how you respond to that. And if you embrace the fact that your job is not going to be needed in a year, and you proactively identify that and work to resolve that, yeah, they may not need you to do what you're doing in the past, but what's more important is that you are seen as a thought leader that can lead future changes and future improvements and future efficiencies, and your team is going to want to keep you around for that. And you're going to have shown, that you have that mindset to be able to do different things and not look out purely for yourself, but look out how we can be better collectively. And I think that's something that, you know, throughout my career in the coaching and mentoring that I've done,  has been something that's been, a really clear differentiation between those who are embracing of new approaches versus those who see them purely as a threat. Adam: (08:53)So you mentioned a little bit, some of the things you’ve done to help folks with change, embracing change, how, as a leader, do...

Contact Vidal Espinosa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vidalespinosa/Invictus Advisors: https://invictus-advisors.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (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 am here with the 70th episode of our series. Our guest for today's conversation is Vidal Espinosa, the principal partner and CFO of Invictus Advisors. In his conversation with Adam Vidal explains why he believes everyone is broke, they just don't know it yet. And he tells us how accounting is about way more than just the numbers. Let's listen into their conversation to get these answers now. Adam: (00:41)So you have this saying, that is, and I just have to ask, what do you mean when you say everyone is broke and they don't know it yet? It just baffles me when I hear that. Vidal: (00:52)Well, it's probably exactly what you think it means. We all are broke and we don't even know it yet. But our saying goes most for business owners, most business owners think that, they're making it, they think that their business, it's amazing because they're taking some money to their personal bank accounts and their living the life. Unfortunately, when they review their financial statements, they realize that they're broke. They realized that holy, I am not making what I thought I was making. That's what we mean. Adam: (01:51)So how do you get started on that process of finding out that you're broke? Vidal: (01:56)It's very simple. People are afraid, extremely afraid of knowing their numbers, of knowing their finances, of knowing how they are doing because deep down they really know that they're broke. So it's very easy to go into your bank account online and see the balance, and as long as there's money there, you're doing good. Oh, okay. Perfect. But they don't take into consideration everything that they owe. So we have a very simple system, which is two checking accounts for your business. Even for yourself, two checking accounts. One checking account, it would be for all your income, all your revenue, either from your payroll, from your business, whatever it is. And the other one, it's just your expense account. Meaning that every single monthly payment, meaning every single vendor that you have to pay goes from that account only. So at the end of the month, instead of reconciling which you need to do, which is reviewing every transaction in your bank account versus what you think it is. The income account, wherever the revenue and payroll came out, the difference, the balance that it's there, that's your profit, that's for you. You realize that sometimes that's going to be negative. That's when you realize your realization of, oh, I might be broke, comes true. Adam: (03:43)Now that makes a lot of sense. And I could see how somebody could apply that even in their personal accounts as well, not just their business. Vidal: (03:51)Exactly. Exactly. You can use it for your business or your personal life. It's very simple. It's very simple. And you realized that your broke, as pretty much everyone right now in America, a lot of us are, are noticing that we are living paycheck to paycheck. We actually had a discussion and a conversation like, I don't know if you remember last year when the government shut down and they furlough a lot of government employees, but they were living paycheck to paycheck. I would have thought that we would have learned from that experience, and I'm advising that we did not. We did not learn from that experience just to save or rainy days like now. Adam: (04:42)Definitely. And I guess a lot of times we don't learn from our history. We don't learn from what's happening right in front of us. And then when the, when the rainy day does come, it's such a stress and we get past it. We don't, we haven't learned from our own experiences either. And so what can somebody do to kind of get started to getting over the broke, the brokenness? Vidal: (05:05)Just very simple. Open two checking accounts or open an additional checking account that it's only for your revenue, and I mean revenue as if you're a business owner or your income only income sales or if you're in a working just your payroll goes through that account. That's it. You'll probably gonna have, two or three transactions in that, that account, which is . the two deposits on the 15th and the 30th and one, two, three transfers to your expense account just to cover your expenses. The balance on your revenue, on your income, on your funding account, that's your profit, and we are going to realize that we are broke. Adam: (05:51)So once you start seeing your profits and you start understanding that, okay, I am broke, but now maybe I'm not as broke, what's the next step? Vidal: (05:59)Start controlling your expenses. Start controlling your expenses. It's on you. And even as a business owner or as an individual, you're going to see that on your expense account, lunch, Starbucks, a lot of things that are not necessary that you can actually live without. And yes, you can splurge a couple of times a month and things like that, but if you want to get out of broke, you're going to start by controlling your expenses. But really if you want to generate well and or get out of being broke, increase your revenue. I had an experience with one of our clients, very, very good friends of ours. They've been a client of ours like four, eight, nine, 10 years, 10 years, and we met them at a loan event. They were lending micro lending, for small, small, small business owners. So this company, they got a loan, and they came to us to help them manage their cash, structure their business. And in our very first meeting they said, Oh, we got a $10,000 loan. Mind you, that loan was like for, 25  or 30% interest. It was a micro, microloan. It was from, for a startup. So that money is very expensive. Six months down the road, they spent all the money and they came back to us and say, Oh, we're going to apply again for the loan. And I said, no, no, no, you're not going to apply for the loan. You're not going to apply for another loan. Utilize your energy and your focus on how we are going to increase our revenue. How are we going to make money not getting a loan or getting new credit cards to increase our revenue or our income. So, to make a long story short, now their revenue, it's $5 million. Adam: (08:06)The members of IMA are accountants, management accountants and they're the ones kind of looking at the books and finding all these things. You know, what if you're an analyst in your company, and you need to go to your CFO and say, Hey, we're really broke. What are we going to do? Vidal: (08:24)I would have approached my CFO with ideas. I would approach my CFO on ideas on how to increase revenue. Now a days accountants, we cannot just be bookkeepers and analyzing financial statements and saying, oh, your working capital is this much, your, your debt is this much, your accounts receivables are this, your turnaround on inventory is this and that. You cannot do that. It's no longer feasible. What you need to do is you need to be operational, and you need to focus on sales. You need to focus not on tax strategies, not on saving on cost reduction on manufacturing, if you're in manufacturing industry. That's of the past. You need to be more operational focus on generating revenue, focusing on the marketing side of the business, on sales and stop focusing on the profit and loss. As of, what is it? March 13th? March 16th, when the economy close, it became an economy of a balance sheet. Is my company, do we ...

Sandra Clarke, Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer at Blue Shield of California, is a proponent of finance innovation. At Blue Shield of California, she oversees the company's financial strategy, actuarial functions, and financial operations in addition to lading Enterprise Process Transformation. Most recently, under Sandra’s leadership, Blue Shield of California has made $200M in financing and support available to struggling physicians and hospitals affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The entire concept was an example of innovative thinking to ensure California can have a robust provider network after this crisis, and there is also an innovative technology element to the program as well. In this episode of Count Me In, Sandra talks about the value of crossing finance and innovation and balancing both to effectively lead your firm. Download and listen now!Sandra Clarke and Blue Shield of California in the news:Blue Shield of California Updates Details on Financial Support Options to Healthcare Providers in Response to COVID-19 CrisisIn the News: Blue Shield of California Offering Financial Support to Providers, Sandra Clarke Tells The Wall Street JournalFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05)Hi everyone. Thanks for coming back for another episode of Count Me In. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is episode 69 of IMA's podcast. Today's conversation is between my cohost Adam and Sandra Clarke, the CFO of Blue Shield of California. Sandra talked to Adam about the value of crossing finance and innovation for the organization and finding the proper balance as a leader of the firm. Keep listening for more insight into how to bring innovation to your company. Adam: (00:39)So to start off, what would you say are your guiding principles when it comes to finance and innovation? Sandra: (00:46)I'd say my guiding principles are that it has to be a partnership that you have to, as a finance person, find the balance between the business strategy and the financial discipline and how you can help innovation weave into those things in a balanced way. So that, that's a very key thing for me. We have to be drivers in unleashing that, that slice of genius that exists in everybody. We always have to do it in support of business objectives and execution still matters. You, you have to be able to execute on this idea of dreaming up lots of cool ideas on a whiteboard is a lot of fun, but you have to be able to turn them into something that's useful for the company. And, finally, I would say an underwriting guiding principle at all times as you cannot assume that what you are continuing to do or you're currently doing is riskless. If you are staying in your same way of doing things and not paying attention to what's going on around you, that can be just as dangerous as going and trying something innovative. So the better answer is to be bold and to strike that balance. Speaker 1: (02:07)I think that's some great advice to be bold. So then what counts as innovation in your organization and how do you define it, and what does innovation mean for your employees? Speaker 2: (02:19)Innovation is a real buzz word at the moment. If you were to do an internet search, I actually did this at one point. Google has over 2 billion results for the word innovation. So I'd say that it means a lot of different things to different people, and you have to be careful that you define it in a way for your organization that's meaningful because a lot of employees hear that word innovation and think “uh oh” this means job cuts coming. And it may mean that jobs change, it doesn't necessarily mean that the jobs go away. I define innovation as something that is novel and useful. So it could be a new way to work. It could be a new way to save money, or it could be a reinvention of something that you're currently doing, but it has to be useful as well as new. And new can be defined as, completely never seen before, or it could just be a significant and enhancement to something that you're currently doing. But the key is that in addition to being a breakthrough, it has to be a useful breakthrough. Innovation just for the sake of coming up with a cool new toy isn't beneficial to your organization, and a lot of times that's the balance that you have to strike that I was referring to before. Adam: (03:42)So we live in very uncertain times, and so what should leaders be thinking about when it comes to innovating in the face of things like recession or just not even sure what the economy is going to look like on the other side of this pandemic that we're in? Sandra: (03:56)Well, you still have to do innovation. In fact, I would say right now, especially in the current environment, innovation is even more important, because we're all finding that we need to rethink how we do our jobs, how we go to market in an environment where you can't do as many things in person. And so it's important for companies not to completely pull back on innovation in this type of an environment, but you might have to refine your priorities and pare them down. So you might've had 10 projects out there for innovative ideas, new initiatives, and maybe you scale that back to three or five and you do more frequent check ins, give them a little bit less time to evolve before you make a decision on what to move forward, modify, or stop the investment. So that I think your, your level of rigor around what you consider acceptable parameters might change a little bit. And again, and again and again, I will say it still has to fit with the business strategy and your company's objectives, and that's even more crucial now because you're going to be refining what those objectives are potentially, as I said, to address the new ways of going to market or the new ways of working, and you need to make sure that you don't continue with the project just because it's somebody, darling and you make sure that it's still going to sit. And so that's where that re-prioritization comes in to make sure that you are using your innovation energy, and I mean that from a people resource perspective as much as a money perspective that you're using it wisely. Adam: (05:46)Definitely. Are there some examples that you can give about, ways that you've been able to innovate? Sandra: (05:53)Well, within my finance team we rethought how we do our close process and shaved about a third of the time out and we're going to try and get another 25% out by the end of the year. And so I think that's one example of, I'll call it in place innovation where you're taking a process that by and large has to exist and finding ways to do it differently so that you can make it better. And that's allowing people a lot more time for analysis and a lot less time on transactional work that's not meaningful to them or to the business. That's one way. And then we, within Blue Shield have a big process transforma...

Miller & Company, LLP: https://www.cpafirmnyc.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:06)Welcome back to episode 68 of Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today we'll be listening to an important conversation about the tax implications and guidelines for individuals and small to midsize businesses following the various government loans in response to the COVID-19  crisis. Paul Miller is a CPA with over 30 years of experience in the accounting industry. Keep listening to hear how he's been advising his clients during these uncertain times. Mitch: (00:41)All right, Paul, so to start off in general, you're an accountant from the clients that you work with. What are some of the trends that you've seen, whether it's individuals or businesses following this COVID-19 crisis? Paul: (00:54)Everyone wants to know how to or have obtained the Paychecks Protection Program and what it means to them, how they have to spend it. That's been the general focus of the last two weeks, and it's very demanding. I've been engaging a lot with an employment attorney because a lot of people are, they have to be very careful that this is going to be scrutinized at some time, and they have to be sure that they follow the first set of rules. If they got the first trench of money and the second set of rules, they got the second trench of money. So you have to navigate them, and I'm trying to navigate it the latter  because I think that's more conservative than the first set of economic rules. So I've been referring clients to a SBA attorney and I've been referring clients to a labor attorney, and simultaneously we've constructed, and we're going to launch it today, which is an spreadsheet that gives people, not an official guideline but like a checker so you could keep track of where you're at, where you're spending is at, where your head counts at. That's, that's one of the most important things today that most of my businesses are focused on. The people who actually went out and got the money. I did have two or three clients obtain the loans and return them for their business is not in economic uncertainty anymore. Mitch: (02:23)So, you know, particularly in the US we here are very familiar with the stimulus package, you know, these government loans you mentioned and as a result of that or you know, on top of that, we've also recently seen the extension of the standard April 15th tax deadline. So that's been pushed back and you know, with your clients and everything you're working with these attorneys, what does the tax deadline mean now for everybody? And really, I guess you could start with the individual, or wherever direction you want to go. But what can people expect from this extension? Paul: (02:57)Well, it's definitely great. There's two schools of thought, right? The people who all money and the people who are getting a refund. The people who are getting a refund want to file. The problem is if your return contains any paper documents, your return is not getting processed. The IRS has made an announcement that they're not processing manual returns. So, you know, if you have any manual attachment or you have to file by paper, you're not getting a refund. For people who owe, and you would have voted on April 15th that extends everything till July 15th. So there's no penalties, no interest. You go to July 15th. There are States that have a broken from the federal government that a lot of your audience needs to be aware of. For example, New Hampshire is expecting their tax return on June 15th. DC expected their first estimate on April 15th. So you have to pay attention to where you file. You have to pay attention is the extension for not only the federal, and has the state connected with the federal and decided to align themselves and not break from, and have you have a separate filing, puts you under  distress. Mitch: (04:12)And what about from the business side effects this small to medium sized firms. Let's say you receive some of these government loans. What does that mean for your taxes and your filing and everything else you need to be aware of? Paul: (04:27)Well, again, this is fluid, so it's changing every day, right? So as of today, the money that you received, is  not taxable. The expenses that you pay, are not deductible. And the difference that you're not forgiven is a loan over 24 months at  1%. Mitch: (04:52)So many of our listeners are management accounts, right? They're really focused on the operations, the strategy within the business. With this kind of money, and there's different stipulations as you've just outlined for us, what does that mean to their day to day roles? You know, within the smaller business, even if you're a sole proprietor, as far as the planning, overall performance of the business, what are you recommending to your clients? Paul: (05:19)There's two schools of thought. You know, if you took the money, the money was to bring your staff back. Okay. Again, it's fluid so I'll blend it in. I've been telling people to preserve capital because you don't know how long this is going to last. Access to capital is very important. I'm explaining to people that it's not.... what is your objective? I asked that question to the employee. Is it too forgive the money and you're not worried about your business, or your business is going to sustain and be fine anyway. Or is your concern, I need the cash flow, because another disconnect with this PPP program, the Paychecks Protection Program is the government has not aligned themselves with the States. So technically from the day you received the money, you have eight weeks to spend it. That really doesn't line up in a lot of States, because a lot of businesses may be a different phase and not open. So you may ask people to come back to work, and they may not want to come back to work. Technically, and I'm not a lawyer, so I don't want to speak legally, but it's my understanding you're supposed to write a letter to the employee saying your job is available, we're willing to pay you, and then you're supposed to notify unemployment and then put them on family leave. This has been a big challenge for a lot of people. Mitch: (06:44)When should a business and individual really seek some additional guidance like yourself here? I know, you've obviously dealt with clients, we were talking about it just before we got on here, all over the place, right? Is there a threshold or a point in time where you say, or you've seen people are, you know, right in time or maybe it's too late before they contact an accountant and start to plan how to work through all these loans and the different tax extensions and such, you know, when is that point in time that you really need to get in touch with an accountant? Paul: (07:22)The minute you have the money. I think if you're not working with your accountant or your accountant is not up on top of this, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. You know, people, there's so much information out there, we send out very limited emails in bulk to have effectiveness so that when people get them, I'm getting calls from other clients who have accountants and so I just want to thank you for your email. I'm trying to give people the guidance that I get, not only from what I read, I talk to clients, I have clients who are lobbyists who are working on the bill. They are working on the revision of the bill. I talked to my friends, the SBA, just trying to get as much information as I can to get my clients as informed as they possibly can. And I think a client who does not seek counsel is, unless they took a little bit of mo...

Contact Gordon Hofman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grhofman/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00)Welcome back for episode 67 of Count Me In. I'm your host Mitch Roshong, and I'll be bringing you to Adam's conversation with the vice president of finance for SSA Marine, Gordon Hoffman. SSA Marine is a global transportation and trucking firm with operations across five continents. Gordon is responsible for directing the financial strategy of the company and leading people in teams to efficiently move commerce. In this episode he talked to Adam about how organizational culture plays such an important role in employee retention and personal productivity, particularly within his finance function. Let's head over to their conversation to hear more now.  Adam: (00:48)So to start off, what are the drivers that help to create a culture of productivity within an organization?  Gordon: (00:56)Yeah, so there's, there's three main drivers that we're really focusing on right now and what those are is, you know, one is just providing meaning in the work that's being done. If you have people that are just showing up and doing tasks, you find that, you know, they'll start to space out, they're not really focused and then they'll get what needs to be done, done. But there's never really any emphasis to go above and beyond that or look for process, you know, to look for ways to improve. And what we've been doing to bring some focus in that is really just trying to create a connection between the company vision and the actual work, which can be a little bit tricky when you're, you're talking about finance and accounting because you know the vision for our company is we partnered to move commerce with efficiency, flexibility and integrity and at top level that's really kind of challenging too say, well, what does that have to do with finance? But from there what we've done is broken that down and, and really made a trail from our vision, which, how does that translate into values? How does that translate into more core long term objectives? And then finally, what are the strategies that help us achieve those objectives? And once you've done those three, four pieces, it's much easier to sit down with your team and say, you know, this is what we're trying to accomplish. This is how it fits with the overall company vision. And that kind of brings people into the company and what we're trying to accomplish. And so it's, that's a bit of a motivational factor that I think is really important to having people engaged and really thinking about how they can improve and how they can be productive and how they can add value. Once you have people engaged at that level, there's, you know, some more, you know, task related items that we really focus on them, which is one maker productivity measurable. Really you need to have some KPIs. I noticed in the past for us, we were on the operation side very focused on KPIs, the business operations side. But when I actually came to finance and accounting, you started asking about what our metrics are and they were, they're just weren't very many of them. Yeah. So once we, once we've really created that motivation and buy in for the company, you know, coming up with ways that you can actually measure your productivity. Cause you know, a lot of the times on the business side you can really focus on your operations. In our business, what's important is how many containers we've moved in an hour. And so a lot of our business was focused around that. But then when we got on the back end of finance and accounting, we stopped doing KPIs. And so we now adjust that. So those KPIs are just as important for measuring productivity within your finance. It really driving and showing people how you're improving. And then the final item on there is just creating priorities and making sure that you're checking into those priorities on a weekly basis. It's very easy, I've found on the finance accounting side, you know, where are the people that fix the problems and you're always putting out the fires and then you boost focus on really what is value adding. So taking some time on, on a weekly basis to readjust your priorities and make sure that you're focused on whatever those top three items or five items are in the coming week that really can add that.  Adam: (04:20)So now, you know, it seems like everybody in the whole world currently is working from home. How have you been able to kind of implement these things switching to a work from home workforce.  Gordon: (04:31)Yeah. It's interesting that, you know, we were talking about this probably three or four weeks before covid really started impacting everyone who said we want to, we want to be able to make it so that people can work at home and work remotely more often. Cause you know, especially with the younger generations, this is incredibly motivating for them and it's like a value they see in their business. So it's, it really comes around like, but once again, it's like setting priorities and then setting expectations, and then being able to measure them so that because you can't sit down and have a chat with someone or walk over to their desk and have a chat with them and say, well, how are things going? What do you have on your plate? You have to have other ways to really be able to demonstrate that no, you are getting what needs to be done, done. Everybody's on the same page. So in a way it's more documentation, which is thinking a little bit scary because it feels like you're creating a lot of bureaucracy. But by creating that, that documentation, it forces you into like the third item I talked about like, you know, really doing that weekly review of what the priorities are and then making sure that you're staying on task for them. So it really just, the work from home culture has just reinforced that you need to, you need to do this going forward.  Adam: (05:51)So do you have some examples to share of, of success?  Gordon: (05:55)Yeah, so we've got some like really granular levels of examples. One thing that we've found that's been incredibly successful for us is time blocking, where people just, you know, set out like two hours in their day and I'm going to get this done and I'm not going to answer email. I'm not gonna miss chat or anything like that. And you know, when we have people do that and really honor those two hours, the feedback we consistently get is like, I can't believe how much I got done. It's like I was able to knock that out. you know, and it was a lot easier. And I was originally thinking rather than taking what I thought was going to be a full day project, I got done in like two or three hours. So time blocking has been one of the first successes that we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from. The second thing that's been very beneficial to us on the prioritization we as an organization really mix our FP and a or historically we'd mix start FP and a and our accounting groups together in what we were seeing is that there was a lot of conflict in demand for if people's time that that wasn't really effective in actually getting things done. So people were kind of doing both jobs halfway instead of doing one of them completely and we just, we weren't making no, the deadlines that we're expected to make or the quality of product wasn't good. So we ended up really splitting those pieces up and we did that by like just digging into each of those processes and understanding what the bottlene...

Contact Alain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alainmulder/Contact Bernardin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgeneralao/Coronavirus Update from IMA: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/jeff-thomson-on-the-coronavirusFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05)Hey everyone. Welcome back for another special bonus episode of Count Me In. Over the last few weeks, we have interviewed various IMA staff members from across the globe and shared their perspectives on how business in their region is being handled following disruption of Covid-19. We have heard about business continuity in the Middle East and India, China and now today we are going to share information coming from Europe. Adam spoke with Alain Mulder, Senior Director of Europe, Operations for IMA and Bernardin Generalao, IMA’s Director of Regional Partner Relations. For more global perspectives and business insights. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.  Adam: (00:48)So we are going through a globally challenging period and with IMA's regional Europe offices based in Amsterdam and Zurich, can you tell us a little bit about how this region is coping with the situation and what are some of the highlights of government level initiatives being taken?  Alain: (01:04)Well, let me first say that I hope that you are all safe and taking care of yourself and your family as we beat this COVID-19 crisis. And I also want to express my heartfelt sympathy to all being affected by this pandemic, and also the loved ones of the ones who have left us. So IMA’s approach to this challenge has been simple, to demonstrate social responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of our stakeholders, including our staff, professionals, and students in more than 150 countries, and of course our partners. Before our local governments decided to call a lockdown, we already decided to start working from home and not from the office anymore. So like I said, the wellbeing of our stakeholders is our priority, and in the first week of March, for example, we had many conferences happening across Europe, including Switzerland and France, and we immediately decided to cancel these events to make sure we, our members and stakeholders are all safe. Of course, it is very unfortunate because I was looking forward to these events for months and the teams and speakers put a lot of efforts into the preparations. But we have to take our responsibility during these difficult times. In Europe we currently have approximately 1.1 million COVID-19 cases, and especially Italy and Spain are heavily affected.  We saw most European countries have observed decreases in daily number of newly reported cases in the last two weeks, and as of April 22nd 20 countries had decreasing 40 day instance with 19 countries reporting a current 14 days instance below 50 cases per 100 K population. And although the composition and intensity of implementation for all European countries, entity UK, if we introduce a range of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as stay at home policies, recommended or enforced, alongside other community of physical distancing measures such as the cancellation of mass entering and closure of educational institutions and public spaces to reduce transmission. So while uncertainty remains about the extent to which the combination and intensity of these measures impact transmission in several countries here in Europe, certain measures are associated  created at least temporarily with decreases in the number of newly reported cases at the population level. So also transmission rates within the countries are heterogeneous and even in countries with high incidents of COVID-19, there are areas where sustained community transmission has been halted or strongly reduced, and countries with appropriate measures in place as well as in areas where transmission has declined or remain low probability of infection with COVID-19 is currentlyin his assessed low. And in many European countries we see the early signs of post-lockdown rise in activity and governments are now taking first steps reopening societies and economies. Here in the Netherlands for example, elementary schools were reopened for half of the time, and also other countries are now reopening.  Bernardin: (04:33)Well here in Switzerland and an easing of measures in three phases was introduced end of April. So public institutions, schools, private businesses are scheduled to reopen with three-week intervals until mid-June. There are various guidelines and regulations towards social gatherings and onsite events. So similar to most countries, physical distancing measures are highly recommended and also followed by the public. So as Alain mentioned, we have all had to act fast and remain vigilant. Hard to say that any organization was prepared for a pandemic and we are privileged to be at an organization with a high level of readiness for this unusual time of crisis.  Adam: (05:15)So as leaders in this region, you guys have had to make some difficult decisions to ensure that business continues and the staff is safe. What have been some of your guiding principles during this challenging time?  Alain: (05:28)Well, like I said, the wellbeing of our stakeholders is our priority and our senior leadership and our President & CEO, Jeff Thomson, has been very clear from the beginning, the wellbeing of our stakeholders is our number one priority, and that has always been the guiding principle for me. Safety is above commercialism and therefore we postponed our events across Europe, and we immediately started working from home. We are very fortunate that our organization was well prepared for that, and we used to work from home remotely while traveling and have all the systems in place.  Bernardin: (06:05)Well, I couldn't agree more with Alain. As cliche as it sounds, safety first is more prevalent than ever. Worth noting aside from the behavior for organizations, every individual reacts differently to this punctuated equilibrium. Prior to this current situation, there was a relative period of stability contrary to where we are now, where there are periods of rapid change. So for many individuals, this pandemic has been a period of loss, for example, with regards to normalcy, safety and livelihood. So consequently one should be mindful or at least familiarize themselves with the grief cycle from Kubler Ross. The grief cycle is stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and lastly, acceptance. Any individual or organization you're dealing with can be in any one of these stages. So what I'm saying is remember to be empathetic, or more empathetic than usual.  Adam: (07:05)I think that's some great advice Bernardin. We're all, we're all dealing with differing levels of that grief cycle as we're dealing with the loss of normalcy and this new normal is taking over. So how has IMA adapted to this new situation of working remotely? I know Alain you mentioned that IMA was very well prepared for that because a number of people do work from home at times, but how else has IMA adapted?  Bernardin: (07:32)Well, IMA immediately adapted to the new situation of remote work. So as a global organization we have been monitorin...

John’s website: http://www.johnstretch.comTo view a selection of blogs visit http://www.johnstretch.com/blogYou can find more examples of the author’s writing at these two websites: https://cfo.co.za and https://fpa-trends.comAlso visit https://cfotalks.com/podcast/29-john-stretch/John's recent book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086D93NPW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+hidden+balance+sheet&qid=1585295817&s=digital-text&sr=1-1John’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4MvDaja0Ua50Quvk-3NY4AContact John Stretch:Email - stretch@global.co.za    LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/john-stretch-272a475 FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05)Welcome back to episode 66 of Count Me In. I am your host Adam Larson, and today you'll be hearing an important episode on ESG and the unique topic of stakeholder capitalism. Mitch spoke with John Stretch, a published author, lecturer and business consultant specializing in management accounting. John writes and facilitates workshops for various professional institutions with experience across many different industries. In this episode, he explains what the CFO's role is in managing stakeholder capitalism and increasing the value in the organization. Let's hear what he shared with Mitch now.  Mitch: (00:47)So as I said, if we can first explain what stakeholder capitalism is and why it's so important.  John: (00:56)Mitchell, stakeholder capitalism is another way of thinking about how we manage organizations, not just corporations, but all kinds of organizations. And in a nutshell, it says dont took it all for the shareholders, leave something on the plate for customers and workers and employees and communities and even societies. It says doing good is good business sense, and another part of the stakeholder capitalism is that managers should take a view on longterm sustainability, not next year when they make decisions. And as a consequence develope better corporate governance to make to make those decisions. And you can ask, so what's the payoff? aAnd the answer is, there's a carrot and a stick. The big carrot is that  stakeholder capital is going to make your company worth more in the long term then pure shareholder capitalism. I mean you just need to look at the high market to book ratios of top hundred companies who reinvest the profits in building brands and tech and know how rather than distribute them. And of course share prices are based on prospects of intellectuals as well as physical capital. In the old days we used to call that Goodwill, but today we classify intellectual capital into four groups of human relationships, structure and natural capital. And the stick is that if we adopt the diverse view, we can say that the old movement, Freedman idea of profit without social responsibility as in fact led to responsible decisions, inequalities, damage to the environment, and so on. That's the viewpoint, and so why is it important now? Because since the turn of the century, the world economy has been, it's changed. It's been based now on intellectual, not physical capital. And we know that the value of intangible assets has grown much faster than tangibles, even if it's not all reflected on company balance sheets. And it's actually been proven, there's a, it's a book that came out last year. Capitalism without Capital with two economists have actually proved that intellectual capitalism is growing much faster in the world than the tangibles. So to make the world a better place, make your company more valuable, you should build a combination of different kinds of wealth and stakeholder capitalism has got this vision of a responsible future in which short term thinking would actually be  replaced a bit of long term thinking.  Mitch: (03:26)Now on this podcast we've had a number of conversations about reporting for ESG, and you've mentioned a little bit of ESG data already, and my next question is how do these types of capital that you are mentioning and talking about here really impact sustainability and the integrated reporting? Once again, particularly trying to give it a little bit of a finance and accounting perspective.  John: (03:50)Okay, well, you know, I think of two overlapping circles, but for me ESG is, is more about the stick than the carrot that I mentioned earlier. ESG, Isabel sustainability. It's something that was coined in 1994 to describe as we will know, the, the ESG, Environmental, Social Governance, factors that not managers, not accountants, but investors should consider when they measuring the long term viability. So they talk about natural capital, diversity, human rights, consumer protection, and corporate governance of those things. So it's about protecting society, and so ESG today is about sustainability and corporate responsibility in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. And what are the ESG people come up with? They've come up with more reporting. So at the January, 2020 meeting in Davos, the world Economic Forum Table, this framework for reporting ESG aspects of business performance and risk, put together along with the big four accounting firms, and it says that companies should report more information, wage rights, local jobs, created gender differentiations. There is massive amount of detail here, and this revised framework is at the proposal stage. And in my view, it's going to take time to be accepted by the accounting bodies around the world. It doesn't address the cost of the systems for collecting the data and whether the the measures should be audited or whether it only apply to public companies and acceptance hasn't been universal. So it's going to take a bit of time, but on the other hand, integrated reporting and integrated thinking is the carrot, which is the other part of the circle, and, of course, managers want to measure the performance of their brands and their research and their software and their knowledge. But as you and I know, the financial accounting systems and not always very helpful and sometimes a bit contradictory, accounting by its nature is a conservative discipline. It's intended to be there all the influences of the income tax and the statutory financial reporting and the stock exchanges and so on. But intellectual capital, assets like recipes and brands, trademarks purchased from other firms,we sell the fixed assets and we write them down over the useful life. But if we do these things internally, we call them sum-costs and they included operating expenses. And so now you get a situation where the, the market value of companies is like 20 times the value of the tangible assets because everything's been written off. So the accounting profession has responded to this, this, this whole thing was saying, look, the financial reporting is one thing, but we have to have a disclosure process called integrated reporting. So open above the audited financial statements, we've got these integrated reports which communica...

About Patricia Werhane: https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/profile/patricia-werhaneArticle About Patricia Werhane: https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/news/2019/10/01/werhane-tackles-tough-ethical-issues-for-gies-studentsFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. We are here for you today with episode 65 of our series. As we've addressed in many recent episodes, the Coronavirus has affected various aspects of accounting and finance. Today you will hear Adam speak with Patricia Werhane and adjunct professor at the University of Illinois, Gies College of Business and a fellow for the Center of Professional Responsibility in business and society. Patricia is also a co-producer of an Emmy award winning documentary television series in the Chicago area titled Big Questions. In this episode she talks about the ethics of commerce during these difficult business times. Let's head over and listen to their conversation now.  Adam: (00:53)So today in the podcast we have Patricia Werhane with us. Patricia, thanks so much for coming.  Patricia: (00:57)Thank you for having me.  Adam: (00:59)Now, Patricia, you've been speaking lately about ethical dilemmas facing the global economy in light of the pandemic that we are in. So I was hoping you can share some of those insights with us today.  Patricia: (01:08)Let me start by posing the question and then I want to give a couple of quotes from people who support that. So the real question I think we're facing right now as you know, how should we balance public health with the pandemic and social isolation with the financial health where massive unemployment will be economically disastrous? In fact, it already is. So is this an either or and we see this in the news all the time or is there a middle path? Let me give you two contrasting viewpoints. The first is from a Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, and he argues that Americans should go back to work even if that causes the deaths of their grandparents who will willingly sacrifice their lives for the sake of economic growth. Well, I know some grandparents who may be not quite so willing, but we'll see. Now on the other side is Governor Cuomo from New York, and you know, of course who he is. He says, given the choice between economic prosperity and the preservation of human life, every life is worth saving at whatever costs to the economy. Now you can see these two balancing and contrasting views and we hear about them in the news all the time and we hear our governors and our presidents going back and forth about this and the center for disease control. We're just caught up in this dilemma, so I want us to think about the dilemma and then I'm going to make some comments about it and then we'll come to some sort of resolution. I hope.  Adam: (02:45)I was wondering if you could tackle the local identity versus the inner inactivity and the dependence on global commerce issue.  Patricia: (02:51)This one of the important things to think about in this dilemma, and you all know this, I'm sure and that is we live in this global world, although we focus locally on the people who are ill and some of them are our relatives and our friends,O f course. We are globally independent economically. There's an enormous interconnectivity in goods and services. For example, most of you are on your iPads or your cell phones or your computers. All of those are made with parts from many countries of the world. And I don't recommend taking them apart and looking whichI have done with an old cell phone and you can't tell where the parts are from actually. They're not all marked. But Dell computer for example, says their all their computers are made from parts from 22 countries. So you can see this interconnectivity and look at your clothes. I'm wearing clothes from Vietnam, Bangladesh, Korea, and Italy. I won't describe which ones. I don't have one single thing on me that is made in the United States. Over 20% of our food is imported. I hadn't realized that. The ventilators and the respirators and the other health care equipment we desperately need are made in parts from all over the world. Now this means that we have to think very carefully about this challenge. And as Martin Luther King actually said, some in the 1960s, if you can imagine, he says, we live in an inescapable network of mutuality. And that's that network in which this pandemic is, you'll remember that we all thought it was a China problem, but of course as we know it's a global problem. It's not just China.  Adam: (04:36)Then what's your theory on the perspective we should take on this issue?  Patricia: (04:40)How? How should we think about it? I'm a, I'm a business ethicists. I'm a professional ethicists. I think about these problems all the time. So I'm going to present us with kind of three perspectives from an ethical point of view that will help us think through this problem that I've created for us and actually I haven't created. It's been created and I'm just talking about it. The first is obviously we all know about this is basic human rights. In the United States, we have a bill of rights, but in 1948, the United Nations developed the universal declaration of human rights and everyone, every member country is supposed to sign onto it. Not actually they do sign onto it, but many of them forget after they sign on that they actually are supposed to enforce these rights. But anyway, the basic rights are obvious, the right to life, but also the right to survival. The right to survival means I have a right to work, to do whatever I can to survive. And then I have the basic freedoms, freedom to speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, or not, freedom to worship or not, freedom to work or freedom not to work actually, and many other rights. Actually United nations is very nice and said, we have a right to a vacation, but of course I love that, but I'm not many people honor that. Right. Actually. And then interestingly, because many of you are in business and commerce, in 2015, the United nations developed a protocol, a voluntary obviously for businesses arguing that the role of business is to respect, protect and remedy abuses of human rights wherever they are in operation, wherever they're operating. I think that's very interesting. It means that organizations as well as individuals have basic rights, but they also, we have obligations to each other. One of those obligations is to respect the dignity of every single human being. Sometimes, of course we don't. The second principle to think about is fairness. There are endless, endless literatures on fairness. I won't inflict on you, but one of the basic ones is to treat every person as an equal. Now that's the principle underlining delivery of healthcare. We don't have enough of anything. We don't have enough ventilators. We don't have enough respirators. We don't even have enough room in our emergency rooms to deliver healthcare to every person who needs it. So in the healthcare thinking, they do triage and you probably all know that that is, they take the, if you think about the people who are coming in, t...

Contact Rohit Thakkar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carohitthakkar/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Mitch: (00:00)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 today we're going to hear about the popular topic of business partnering. Adam spoke with Rohit Thakkar, finance business partner at Adobe to define the role of a business partner and explain how you can guide the business with strategic decisions. So now let's head over and listen to the conversation.  Adam: (00:35)So Rohit, how has the business partner's role become a navigator or copilot for finance in the organization?  Rohit: (00:43)Yeah, it's a great question. So think about it this way, the traditional roles within finance are changing and evolving and one such role is that of an FP&A which is evolving, you know, into a finance business partner profile as well, from just a traditional FP&A a partner who was supposed to, you know, do reporting for the business. Now we are looked upon and rightly so should be the trusted partner for various business organizations that we support to succeed in this profile I'm absolutely convinced of being a friend. Now as they say a friend is not the one who is, you know, has been the longest with you, but who can be relied upon to keep various, you know, various teams grounded in expectations, show the true and fair picture and who can manage to tell the right business story and bring the right business conversation into context. Navigated by definition. You know, if you go to a dictionary you will find the definition itself by means that who can direct the course of the ship by using various instruments and devices. Now in a corporate setup, that role, the ship becomes a corporate, the corporate becomes the ship. The route is the direction we are heading to and finding ways, on where we want to reach that instrument and devices are, you know, the final business plans and the financial plans that we are talking about. And we develop through the course of, you know, our journey into the financial planning. Now a critical role is that, you know, it entails a lot of work in joining various dots within the organization. I'll give you an example here, we undergo extensive process of planning exercise that requires us to understand the overall market opportunity. It actually starts with, you know, understanding that time of the market. So, you know, time is nothing but total available market. So we need to understand as finance business partner, what our overall market opportunity is, you know, we need to have an extensive analysis and understanding around how much penetration do we have in those markets. Where do we stand?Where do we want to go? What kind of a product fit that we have in all those markets? What are customers? What kind of needs that we are trying to address with our products? What is our competitive landscape? Now that's where the actual financial planning activity should start. From finance business partnership point of view. Now it's easiest said in like two or three sentences, but it really requires a lot of work, you know, do analysiskind of get into the surveys and you know, get the survey results, interpret those surveys. And you know, I tried to create customer segmentation for your own products within the organization. So the second thing, you know in this product, you know in this roadmap is you know, understanding about the product roadmap is very important. It's essential for the business partner to understand the vision of the product managers and the business unit. It is important at this time also to factor in what it will take to realize the product goals during thisexercise of what we call you know the planning exercise or the partnership. It becomes important as next logical step to understand and work upon our pricing and packaging. That is where a close coordination is required.= with another dot in the matrix organization like say, Adobe, to work very closely with the product marketing management teams. We chart out our plans aroundt how much unit, how much do we want to drive, how much are we going to generate and achieve those targets R.ealistically.We need to chalk out plans around how we want to market the product. Suppose, you want to grow a product by say 40% in Iran. Now how many units should expect to sell? What kind of efforts would be required by say, you know, various other teams like web sales teams.go to market team, phone teams, partnership teams, that we will need to materialize and achieve those targets? Now joining these dots across organization and ensuring that various parts of organization understand their financial contribution responsibilities and in turn leadership signing off, giving them a priority to execute two plans is the most critical role as a finance business partner.  Adam: (05:37)So you've really kind of shown how finance becomes that business partner to the whole business, how it connects to each little section and that kind of goes to guiding the whole business. So what does that finance business partner's role when it comes to developing something like KPIs?  Rohit: (05:54)Yeah, it's a fantastic question. You know, let me kind of, you know, define what actually the KPI is. You know, KPIs by definition are those indicators that organizations should choose very wisely to reflect the actual performance. And they should be forward-looking. Theyshould be something that should be measurable, right? So, you know, it's super important for us to not just get bogged down by the financial KPIs, but to understand the relevance and the need of business KPIs. So business KPIs ideally should be forward-looking, especially in a matrix organization, you know, like, like Adobe. We tend to, you know, drive over planning activities by data key metrics, DCI. So what that stands for and it, you know, you can find that in six Sigma literature, but wedefinitely practice that is who's going to be the driver? Who is going to be there approver? Who's going to be the contributor? and do we need to keep informed when it comes to, you know, informing the reserves? So it becomes super important for us in matrix organization to ensure that we are able to derive responsibility assignment metrics as well from the Nike exercise. Now rule of finance is to sit across the table, bring folks from all across the organization and work to create those KPIs, to understand the role for themselves in setting up those business KPIs. Now we cannot just set up the financial  KPIs and say that, you know, we can't be the monitor and say that, okay, go get the results for us. We need to be super practical and understand what kind of business KPIs we need to drive to get to our financial KPIs. Financial KPIs, so there's a circular reference if you have to, you know, think about it this way. There is a circular reference between financial KPIs and business KPIs. At one end you have financial KPIs, which are kind of a derivative of the business KPIs and on the other end, you know, think about that financial KPIs should be influencing your business KPIs as well. So I'll give you an example on one of the key financial forward-looking metrics that we definitely look for in the subscription business. That's the  ARR, theannualized recurring revenue. That's considered to be much more forward looking compared to the revenue or the top line. Now the role of finance business partner actually goes beyond setting up this financial KPI. Think about it this way, it is kind of similar to ...