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Contact Khaled:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaledchowdhury/Blog: Getting started in #PowerBI for #Finance and #AccountingUnleashed  | Beast BI - http://beastbi.com/unleashed/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 Mitch Roshong and in today's episode we'll hear Adam Larson talk with global finance data and tech leader Khaled Chowdhury as they discuss finance culture transformation. Khaled is the finance director of analytics and business intelligence at Cabot Microelectronics, but even with such a focus on data and technology, he really emphasizes the importance of focusing on people first and how any business transformation starts with the culture of the organization. Let's go to the conversation and see what else he has to say.  Adam: (00:42)What is your philosophy on finance culture transformation?  Khaled: (00:51)My philosophy around cultural transformation, I think it's not really exclusive to finance, but a culture is a living organism, which are the some off the people, right? And when it comes to cultural transformation, investing in technology usually backfires. And the best way I have found the philosophy of finance, culture transformation is to invest in people. However, investing in people, you also have to kind of go from an agile methodology. You kind of have to have small proof of concept, see if that works, if that works, you kind of push them on. And one of the key things as I pushed for change, even to this day, I think it's a quote from a peaceful warrior that's is the key to change is to spend all your energy building the new, not fighting the old, well. We're talking about culture transformation. It's not necessarily about finance or whatnot, it's people change, right? So essentially culture is what is acceptable, how people behave and what is and there's some at one point, what is acceptable and what is expected, right? The kind of culture dictates that part. And from that perspective, if we don't ask the question, especially in we're in the precipice of the fourth industrial revolution, it is about to change big time. I mean it has already, but it's the impacts are starting to shop in smaller spaces. People have been talking about all this new technology, whether it's gonna work or not, but the end of the day that most of the technology actually are in pretty good shape that it actually can be used. But the problem is we don't have any gold drivers. Driver means meaning the people who would drive the technology.  Adam: (03:03)So then how would you take technology, you know, thinking about how technology is going to not take away jobs but change jobs. How do you infuse technology into your organization to kind of enhance its capacity?  Khaled: (03:15)So I think I will quote something that I say to my boss, right? I say, if you want me to be around, I'm going to cause a rebellion. And he's looking at me like are you crazy? I'm, my answer was you want a revolution. But a revolution is only as successful rebellion. Right? So, and the reason I liked the concept of revolution is it happens from inward, not outward. And the reason I'm saying that is because think about in our finance organization, it would come to us saying hey, we have this great product called SAP, BPC or whatnot. They'll come to you, try to install those and it's going to make all our problems go away. At the end of the day, it takes our life. I want to try to do the implementation. But again, when it comes to actually using it, we've become slaves of the tool. So in terms of infusing technology to the business or the finest profession, I kind of see it as a relationship with the technology. Whether are you the master of the trilogy or are you the servant? Technology is an absolutely awesome servant, but absolutely a horrible monster. And coming from that perspective, the best way to infuse technology into any business on the finance function is to see how we can start inward. See take things that we're currently doing. What is it that we can do to automate and liberate so that we can focus on the next step. Right? And instead of trying to go from crawling too, running you have to kind of learn how to call better before you can even walk. Then you go from walking to running. And it is a lot of dependent on investing people to send them for training and giving them exposure to what is possible.  Adam: (05:30)Thinking about a company that is, you know, trying to infuse this new technology and thinking that it's, you know, it's good for them, you know, having that business technologist on hand, you know, what kind of carry over similarities do you see in members of that transformation team that's kind of implementing these technologies? And then how do accountants and their skill set fit in, in that?  Khaled: (05:59)So I think it's more about a mindset. So one of the concepts that's taught by Clay Christiansen, he wrote the innovator's dilemma. He's a famous professor and strategy is to focus on job to be done. It's kind of be the people who looks at the task or as something there is a meaning behind it rather than completely a task. They understand what job is performing because from one perspective, the job we're doing is not going away. But the task, how it is done is going to change. And people who can kind of come break the shackles of what has done before to be able to see farther. Right? This goes back couple of years when I was a, I was talking to my chief accounting officer and a in FP&A, so I came, came up to management accounting, then FP&A for a pretty long time now. And most of us who are successful in our jobs tend to be excellent. Right now there is two things you can do with becoming an excel wiz. You can just develop something that's nerdy or something pretty complex and for the heck of it versus whether you actually get, use it to get some job done. So it's a lot about coming out of your desk and going and trying to solve a problem. So it's essentially, it's business technology should do you have a business problem, you have a technology, go solve it. So think about in the old days, the accountants who would know whatever's to sell whatever skill set, whether it's Excel as a media, whatever they had, they would see a problem person in problem, they will come out of the desk and go solve that problem. I think the way Harvard put it is there is a premium on curiosity. So it's actually the curious mind that has a huge benefit in today's world because they usually tend to go find out what's working and what's not.  Adam: (08:18)That makes sense. You know, it's good to have that curious mind. You know, and thinking about, you know, we've been talking about technology and how to, you know, transfer me and your team in getting that technology in there. But once you have that technology, you know, there's things like data analytics that are that seem to drive our decisions. You know, what would be the end goal of creating a data analytics kind of driven culture where you're looking at the data and making decisions based on that? What's the end goal of that?  Khaled: (08:46)Okay. I think if you think from that perspective, right? Regardless ...

Contact Debbie: www.linkedin.com/in/debbiejacobscmamba Debbie's Work:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tackling-fpa-budget-process-debbie-jacobs/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/improving-communication-within-fpa-debbie-jacobs/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I am your host, Adam Larson and I'm joined as always by my cohost Mitch Roshong. We are here to bring you the latest perspectives and learnings in management accounting as told by industry leaders shaping the profession. For today's episode of Count Me In, Mitch spoke with Debbie Jacobs about cross functional relationships as FP&A leaders. Mitch, what kind of insight did Debbie have to share?  Mitch: (00:33)Debbie Jacobs built strong relationships to ultimately drive change at many well known companies like Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and Johnson and Johnson. She shared her perspectives on forging relationships with cross functional departments and the value of aligning all teams activities with the same business drivers to become valued organizational leaders from the FP and a team. In our conversation, Debbie was also able to tell a lot of real life examples which made her answers very interesting and engaging. Let's go to this discussion now so you can hear for yourself.  Mitch: (01:03)How do you go about building relationships with cross functional departments such as marketing, research and development or operations?  Debbie: (01:19)You need to show a genuine interest in learning their perspective and their world. And you can go about that in a many different ways. One of my favorite ways of doing it was when I was with Johnson and Johnson. And there I would spend a day out with the sales rep. My finance role there was, I was the finance director supporting commercial operations, which was sales and marketing. And so by spending a day going out with the sales rep, I was able to listen to our customers but also see my business partners, that sales rep you know, going about his job or her job all day long and see what kind of issues they came up with and how they addressed issues as they came about. And I encouraged my team to do the same and it really gave us a different perspective on our, on our business partner. So in addition to showing a genuine interest in learning their perspective and putting yourself in their shoes, it also helps to be present where the informal discussions are taking place. You know, oftentimes we're in meetings with our business partners, but there's a lot of conversations that happen around the so called water cooler. And if you can figure out where those conversations are happening and become a part of the team that way and not in a forced way. But an example I would give is why was that Hewlett Packard and I had recently joined a new division that had been acquired. So the people, my business partners were all people coming in from a company that had been acquired. They liked to play Bridget lunch in the, in the company cafeteria. And, and so I learned to play bridge, which I haven't done before. Simply so that I had an opportunity to sit down with them at lunch and become part of those informal conversations.  Mitch: (03:32)And why is it so important for these other operations or functions of the business to really buy into FP&A and, you know, how do you go about convincing them that, you know, you appreciate their relationship and what they have to offer?  Debbie: (03:51)Sure. So in my experience working in FP&A, the senior leadership of the business typically looks to FP&A as the, the voice of reason or the voice of objectivity. And in order for us to fill that role, we really need to have a strong partnership build up with the other functions R&D marketing sales. So that we can look at the analysis from multiple points of view. And with that relationship with the business partners, we can drill down in our conversations. I like to call it the, the five levels of why which some of the listeners may have heard of and we need that relationship with marketing or R&D experts to engage with FP&A so that we can do that drill down past the first level of why. So that when the senior leadership turns in a meeting and looks at us and says, you know, what do you think we have enough knowledge beyond sort of the top level skimming of it, of whatever the business case may be, to really be able to answer thoroughly that we understand what is being asked for and give a solid opinion on it. An example I would give is early in my career I was actually a financial analyst at Hewlett Packard and I was part of this big cross functional team and we were investigating whether or not to expand the plant operation. And this was in semiconductors. Do we build a new way for fab to meet the increasing demand? Do we add a third shift to our existing lines? Do we outsource the information? And so as part that business case, I had to work with marketing on the forecasted demand. I had to work with its supply chain and all of the different options of running a third shift or what would it cost to build out a new plant or and then also with R and D, I had to partner with them on what is the technology doing and how is it changing and how would that impact our decision, but when it came time to present the business case, once we had made our decision and we needed a substantial capital investment, we had to take it up several levels within the company. And it still sticks to me to this day that I remember sitting in this room with a bunch of senior leaders and I was probably the lowest level in the room as a financial analyst. And yet the group level CEO turned to me and asked point blank from my opinion on the option we had chosen versus the other two. And they, he did that because we're supposed to be that objective voice. I don't have you know, something at stake here with the different options that were chosen. I'm trying to look at them objectively and that is the role FP&A played. But I wouldn't have been able to answer his question on the spot like that if I hadn't been able to do all of the due diligence ahead of time in partnership with the other functions.  Mitch: (07:26)If everyone truly needs each other for a successful business strategy to be implemented, what are some of the biggest challenges in leveraging these relationships? Cross-functionally,  Debbie: (07:38)The biggest challenge I've ever seen has, has been around communication. If communication isn't spot on then you cause a lot of confusion. You have information that may be out of date that you're using, that a business partner may have updated. Deadlines could be changing and you're not aware of it. So to be effective communication really needs to be frequent and timely and, and understandable. And I'll start with the understandable. And by what I mean by that is if I'm using technical finance terms that my business partners are familiar with, then the chances are I'm not going to get the information I need to do my job because I'm not communicating effectively on what exactly the data ...

Contact Lorenzo Patelli:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenzo-patelli-2abb518/University of Denver bio - https://daniels.du.edu/directory/lorenzo-patelli/Daniels College of Business: https://daniels.du.edu/Institute for Enterprise Ethics: https://daniels.du.edu/iee/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00)Hey everybody. Thank you for listening to another episode of Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson sitting alongside Mitch Roshong and our expert guests for this episode is Lorenzo Patelli. Dr. Patelli, is an associate professor in the school of accountancy and interim director of the Institute for Enterprise Ethics in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He joined us on count me in to talk about the fascinating intersection of artificial intelligence and ethics. Mitch, can you tell us a little more about Dr. Patelli And his expertise in AI and ethics?  Mitch: (00:37)Sure, Adam. Lorenzo Patelli also serves on the editorial board of advances in management accounting and has received a number of awards and honors for his teaching excellence in research. He was recently a part of the elevate the ethics of artificial intelligence event at the University of Denver and regularly writes on the topic. Dr Patelli gives listeners a great overview of AI and tells us all why management accountants have the skills necessary to effectively manage the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Let's go to the discussion.  Mitch: (01:08)Artificial intelligence is certainly becoming more pervasive in accounting and finance today. Can you please give us an overview of what exactly artificial intelligence is and what it can do for us?  Lorenzo: (01:26)Sure. Artificial intelligence is a field of computer science, particularly this field is concerned with empowering machines to think, behave and act like a han beings. In other words to make sure that machines have intelligence. Yeah. So several different technologies are developed to replicate the han senses and the ability to draw a conclusion or make judgments based on on the census. So for example, humans are able to talk and artificial intelligence develop develop speech recognition tools. Humans are able to move in artificial intelligence, develops motion planning tools through robotics, for example. Humans are able to see, and artificial intelligence develops computer regions. Humans are able to learn from experience. So artificial intelligence develops machine learning. So how does artificial intelligence and how does as computer science develop this technologies? They use different techniques, such as reinforcement learning. So machines learns from executing tasks and make mistakes and so for example, the LinkedIn notifications that we get from like a website like LinkedIn, a social network lately are based on reinforcement learning. So if we pay attention to this notifications or not it's something captured by the machine and it triggers a learning process. Another technique is deep learning and deep learning has to do with artificial neural networks that are meant to replicate the human brain. So there is one input and one output with multiple hidden layers in between in some advance search engines, are based on this technique. Then we have machine learning and the ability to learn from data without being programmed. So there is a training process where we give data to the machine and the machine is trained and that machine is capable of predict. So Google, Gmail or the automated responses that we, use, you know, or texting for example on our smart phones those are based on versions of machine learning. As I said, then we have computer visions and computer vision tools enable autonomous vehicles for example, to capture and understand the surrounding or facial recognition on our game and our phones and finally we have a natural language processes and with this machine so capable to understand and react to human language. So Alexa or Siri are technologies that we use base on NLP. So this, these all these techniques basically in this this methods are used by artificial intelligence to empower machine to examine a phenomenon and initiate a response based on the analysis of if not.  Mitch: (05:09)And with all of these capabilities, can you explain how AI has already started playing a role in accounting and finance?  Lorenzo: (05:15)Yes. well, specifically management accounting is the practice of judging organizational performance judging, meaning measuring, reporting and interpreting factors that indicate whether an organization is creating good destroying value. So at least in theory, artificial intelligence has and will have their remarkable impact on our profession. because exactly, we deal with analyzing a phenomenon and producing your response, judging it, but also practically, we know that in management accounting is practice relying on machines, databases and these machines nowadays deal with the large quantity of data in complex environments in which processes and products themselves will more and more run on artificial intelligence. So my view is that artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on accounting and finance. we know that companies that are already using some artificial intelligence techniques like bots and machine learning to enter data we know that bots are able to enter and categorize data you fully automated way. We know that something like reinforced learning is assisting companies in internal audit tasks to detect fraud and compliance issues. We know that companies are using language processing techniques to interpret contracts and we can even speculate further and imagine a performance measurement system completed a design based on metrics defined by machine learning techniques. We can again imagine initial iteration of budgets prepare through deep learning and we can envision performance reports and feedback processes, obtain through, language processing techniques. So the impact is going to be a significant and it's going to be a widespread in term of the type of companies who, which are going to be affected and the areas within the companies that are going to be affected.  Mitch: (07:45)Now I know another major component of accounting is ethics. So I'm just curious, in your opinion, how do we separate the opportunities from the threats of artificial intelligence when it comes to the ethical application and potentially the negative effects of artificial intelligence and machine learning?  Lorenzo: (08:05)Yeah, that's, that's a very, very important question and a strategic finance ad published few interesting pieces on this topic. As far as I see it it's important in first of all to have a framework to look at this issue. And I grew up the unintended consequences of AI in five major buckets. The first one is the impact on work we do know that professions are going to be disrupted and jobs would be lost and economies are actually debating whether artificial intelligence, different from technologists in the past are going to create jobs or destroy jobs primarily. So it's an interesting issue from an economic standpoint and it definitely poses some ethical considerations. The second bucket is inequality. I'm not the of...

Contact Amy:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyvettercpa/Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram - @amyvettercpaEmail - info@amyvetter.comhttp://www.amyvetter.comDisconnect to Connect: The Path to Work-Life Harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1WYlK-gUME#action=share Breaking Beliefs Podcast: https://www.amyvetter.com/breakingbeliefspodcastFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:03)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Make sure you send us an email and let us know what questions you'd like our experts to answer so we can continue providing you with the information you need to advance your career. One of the biggest questions, not just in accounting but across the business world, is about technology. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I'm joined by my cohost, Adam Larson, who spoke with Amy Vetter about the impact of technology and how it can be used to create a better work life balance. Amy is the CEO of the B3 method Institute and a professional keynote speaker on being mindful with technology disruption and this episode, Amy shares her mindful leadership strategies and discusses the importance of implementing technology the right way. Adam, what is Amy's business balance and bliss all about?  Adam: (00:57)Great question, Mitch. Amy's whole message is that you can transform your career and your life by being mindful with technology and utilizing successful leadership strategies. In our conversations, she emphasizes the importance of leading by example and engaging in the process, not trying to be perfect all the time and allowing individuals to be innovative to maximize the team's potential. As an award winning accomplished C level executive and board member, Amy strives to inspire a culture of mindfulness when utilizing technology and in an environment of innovation and collaboration. Let's listen to how we can create a better work life balance.  Adam: (01:34)How can technology be used properly to not only improve business efficiencies, but also create a better work life balance?  Amy: (01:47)When you're thinking about putting technology in place, it's important to step back from the whole process of digital automation and understand what your goals are. Because many people just go about where they hear about a certain software or are trying to rush ahead in technology implementation and don't really understand the why behind what they're doing and why they're putting it into their business. So first off, it's really important to understand why you want to put certain communication tools in your business. And so when you talk about technology, that could be a distraction that can be where we set up instant messaging And then there's email and then there's some people use like Microsoft teams or Slack for communication as well as just our regular texting and phone call and people walking into offices. And the thing is when we're putting all this technology in place, if we don't start thinking about the human experience as we're going through the implementation, we can actually create more stress rather than less. So think about what you were using each of those technologies for. So if you're trying to put in communication tools so that people a can easily communicate no matter where they are, if they're remote, different geographic locations and so forth, make sure to define what each is used for. So if it's a Slack or Microsoft teams, what kind of communication are you doing in there versus instant messaging versus email versus texting? Because what you don't want to happen is someone in the workplace feeling like they don't know which one you're checking. So now they have to send four different messages to four different places. So that they catch you, which then creates more stress for everybody because then you're checking all of those things. Now when we talk about work life balance with technology, if implemented correctly, it really can create that freedoms so that you can be doing what you need to do personally or with your family because you have the right technology in place and because you've put parameters around that technology as well. But it's also again, putting guardrails around how communication happens. So I'll give you an example, you know, I'm a CPA and when I was a CPA firm partner, you know, you're working a ton of hours. And what would happen in my day is I was out at clients all day long and then I'd get home, do dinner and spend time with the kids and then I'd start working again and get my own work done. So that might start at eight o'clock at night. And what I didn't realize was when I was sending emails at eight o'clock at night, I was stressing out my staff and the people around me because they thought, which I didn't realize at the time that they needed to respond to me at eight o'clock at night and I never had that intention. But again, this is where the human side needs to coincide with technology where one day I heard the staff making a joke about the eight o'clock emails. Then I went over to them and said, are you talking about the emails that I send? And they said, yeah, and I said, so you realize I don't expect you to answer those emails at eight o'clock at night. And they were feeling the stress that they needed to. That was just the time I could work. Now the way technology is set up today, if we use properly, if you are doing your work at eight o'clock at night, you can set it and schedule those emails to go out in the morning so that you aren't creating an experience for someone else that could be stressful even if it's unintentional. But use the technology so that everyone's got their guard rails between work and home life and their personal life. And you set up the technology with the parameters around communication and how you work so that everyone has the freedom to get away from work when they need to.  Adam: (06:32)So then how should people view technology? Should there be different goals for learning new technologies in your career versus in your personal life?  Amy: (06:41)Technology is definitely not going to go away. So the truth is that whatever we learn today is going to continue to change. What used to happen in our businesses was we'd select software and that would be good for 20 years or so. But now this is a constant learning process and we really need to be open to just the play of it and being innovative with it to find out where it can help us in our career, but also in our personal life, make things more efficient. I can use an example. You know, my oldest son just went to college and you know, experiencing my son moving out was definitely an emotional time. But then in my personal life was able to discover this app called Marco polo. And we got on as a family and it's video messaging between each other. And so at anytime, even if we can't connect on the phone or all available at the same time, we're having a personal connection through these video messages that have actually been pretty hilarious. But I'm also seeing the new things he's doing as well. And that's what I mean about play, that this doesn't always have to be so serious. This is about how do you utilize this technology to enhance your career and your life and make sure you're having...

IMA's Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/diversity-and-inclusionFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:03)Welcome back for another special bonus episode of Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm joined by my cohost Mitch Roshong. Today you will be hearing the second installment of our IMA focused mini series as we highlight IMA's commitment to diversity and inclusion. Fundamental to our core values, IMA is committed to creating and nurturing a diverse and inclusive member community and accounting and finance profession to foster mutual respect between individuals. To further explain this commitment, Mitch sat down with IMA's, director of diversity and inclusion, Linda Devonish Mills. Mitch, what did you take away from the conversation?  Mitch: (00:44)IMA embraces a culture of open-mindedness and encourages multiple perspectives to enhance our collaborative solutions, drive innovation, and create and deliver value in all that we do. Linda is the staff member who steers this education and outreach through various initiatives. In our conversation, Linda talks about her role at IMA, emphasizes the importance of D&I and provides implementation strategies for other organizations to adopt diversity and inclusion practices. Let's listen now.  Mitch: (01:13)So the director of diversity and inclusion at IMA. Can you please explain to us how your role came about and some of the different initiatives you're working on at IMA?  Linda: (01:30)Sure. So this is a prime example as to how someone can just manage or control their career. Where at the time I was officially a IMA's director of technical accounting activities. And in that role, I just took it upon myself to go beyond that role and just look at the environment of IMA in general where I don't feel uncomfortable saying this since our president and CEO has said that when we attend our annual conferences, for example, of many years ago, it's gotten better over the years. But when I first started my career here in may of 2006, the audience at our conference is much different than it is today. And back then I would say the best way to describe it is that it was a predominantly white males that were coming to our conference. And with me being an accounting professional all throughout my career, I knew that wasn't a good representation of our profession. So during my years, again as director of technical accounting activities, I took it upon myself with the support of the leaders at the time that I was reporting to, to do outreach to students at diverse student populations, you know, at colleges or universities that have diverse student populations, specifically you emphasis with historically black colleges and universities. Because as I started going to those schools the faculty members at those schools were but informed me that they didn't have a problem with attracting students at those schools. The more of the challenge is maintaining them or encouraging them to stay within their major thinking that it was so challenging and they may not have a chance to have careers in that field. So it seems like you know, the leaders here at IMA really appreciated my efforts and thought that a better fit for both me and IMA is to focus about around diversity and inclusion initiatives more so on a full time basis. And here I am today since July 1st of 2018 being an IMA's director of diversity and inclusion. And since then, you know, I've just developed my own path with that particular position. So a lot of the initiatives that fall under that umbrella is education. For example, with IMA being a membership organization, you have to provide education not only for staff but for our members as well. So we've done training on, you know, various D&I topics recently specifically has to be laid to unconscious bias. You know, we have a great course under our Leadership Academy catalog called cultivating a bias free workplace and we use that as a product both for staff and members as relates to training in that area. I'm still doing an outreach where I'm going out next week to Savannah, Georgia to some of the historically black colleges and universities in that area. And other areas is the diversification of a leadership pipeline, both as relates to staff and all volunteers and then also just best practices determining what other organizations are doing as it relates to a diversity and inclusion initiative.  Mitch: (05:16)That's great. Following all these different initiatives and a lot of your personal outreach what do you think is the true value of diversity and inclusion? Why is this important? Why are you so passionate about accomplishing your own personal goals?  Linda: (05:30)Right? So you hit it, you framed the question very well that this is clearly coming from my own personal passion. What's interesting and I'm so honored that I'm in this role because this is like the most exciting role in my career. Despite the fact that I don't consider myself an expert in the area, I'm still going through a learning curve in terms of how this position should play out. But the reason why I know I will be successful with it is because it relates to my personal passion. I can, you know, speak to it, you know, very directly, just based on when we talk about unconscious bias or conscious bias. I've experienced it all throughout my career, you know, so I know specifically how to apply it. and how I would like you know, a workplace to look like as it relates to diversity and inclusion. So in terms of value what I would suggest to other organizations, or what we have to keep in mind here is that no successful initiative with diversity is successful if you don't include the component of inclusion. So when I think about diversity and inclusion together, I think of transparency so you know, I just saw a quote recently about how diversity and inclusion should integrate together. And it said diversity is when you're invited to the party and inclusion is when you're asked to dance. And I thought that was a great correlation, you know, of the two just recently among our staff when we had trained in use India leadership academies, a course about developing a bias free workplace that was a great milestone for me and shared with you Mitch that you know, we actually saw staff, at least my observation was, is that there was staff that actually spoke up during that session that I've never seen in any other type of forum speak up. And I think it's because they, you know, based on what they do here at IMA, they may not think that they're at a level or maybe based on their title, they don't feel like they can or should be heard. But I was very fascinated that it seems like the, the walls just, there was no walls there and people just opened up and you know, when I see that type of environment development developing within an organization, that to me is you know, signs of success.  Mitch: (08:22)So I think that's a great point because, you know, personally witnessing the training session that we had obviously there were very positive results coming from that. So I'm just curious, you know, as awareness increases in our organization and the other organizations that you reach out to what kind of positive results have you seen elsewhere maybe outside of our own building here?  Linda: (08:47)Well, actually I just been appointed to serve on behalf...

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:03)We are back with another episode of Count Me In, IMA’s podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is Mitch Roshong as your host and I'm joined by my cohost Adam Larson. We are now over 20 episodes into our podcast series and we would love to hear from you drop us a line or write us a review and let us know what you think about the accounting and finance topics we've discussed so far for today's episode. I personally think the topic is very interesting and I'm especially excited to share this episode because we were fortunate enough to be joined by Dr. Paul Juras. Adam, tell us a little bit about Paul and what you learned about the topic of industry 4.0. Adam: (00:47)Dr. Paul Juras is chair elect of IMA's global board of directors and serves on other committees for the Institute of Management Accountants. He is a certified management accountant, a CPA, and uses his expertise in strategic management accounting to teach as the Vander Wolk Professor of Managerial Accounting and Operational Performance at Babson College. He joined Count Me In to give us an overview of industry 4.0 and explain why accounting and finance professionals can benefit from learning more about its principles. I learned how industry 4.0 is going beyond just the manufacturing industry and a number of other relevant points. Let's make sure you're accounted in for all these learnings too and jump ahead into the conversation now  Adam: (01:28)Since industry 4.0 may still be considered a relatively new topic, can you give us an overview of the topic and let us know what makes it so special?  Paul: (01:43)Sure. In fact, it was not that long ago that I first heard about this topic. I came across it as part of my research and quickly realized the implications could be huge for our profession. Industry 4.0 also called I4.0 is a complex and fast evolving topic, but at the most basic level, the term refers to the combination of several major innovations in digital technology all coming to maturity right now and all poised to transform industries. The technologies include advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, sophisticated and low cost sensors, cloud computing, he internet of things, data capture and analytics, digital fabrication including 3D printing, smart phones and other mobile devices and the list goes on. These technologies are often thought of separately, but industry 4.0 is all about connectivity and that's what makes it so special. When the technologies are joined together, they integrate the physical and virtual worlds, which has led many to call this the fourth industrial revolution. The changes that are taking place enables a powerful new way of organizing global operations and smart technologies will likely redefine industry and operating models. I4.0 Might also be called smart manufacturing because of the expectation of complete visibility of manufacturing processes and the possibility of continuous process improvements using the big data collected throughout production lines. The end result could be increased production flexibility and efficiency improvements that drive down costs and reduced the time to market and we're seeing companies transform themselves through the emergence of new business models such as software as a service or equipment as a service. One examples is GEs power by the hour model or does selling us engines? Much as utility company might sell to a residence or commercial enterprise. GE sells the capabilities of its engines for some price per operating hour and the customer pays only when the plane is flying. Now, I don't know what are the transformations we are likely to see, but I know accounting and finance professionals could play a role in helping organizations through their transformation.  Adam: (03:53)You mentioned that I 4.0 has been called the fourth industrial revolution or smart manufacturing and the example with GE is interesting. Is manufacturing going to be the main industry affected by this revolution?  Paul: (04:05)A fair question and manufacturing was the original focus. Industry 4.0 is the name given to the German strategic initiative to establish Germany as a lead market and provider of advanced manufacturing solutions, but the concept has evolved and many companies have been adopting the industry 4.0 concepts and adapting them to work within their own industries. There's already been wide adoption of industry 4.0 technologies in farming. Farmers are using sensors to monitor soil conditions to determine when to water, how much to water and what fertilizers might be needed. They're using drones to monitor the crops to help determine which part of a field is ready for harvest and may be even do targeted applications of insecticides or fertilizers. Those are just a few examples of technology helping farmers grow more with less as part of what is called agriculture 4.0. There've been advances to build smart grids, managed renewable energy and distributed generation all as part of energy 4.0 we have retail 4.0 healthcare 4.0 pharma 4.0 and many other 4.0's it is hard to imagine an industry that will not be affected by or take advantage of industry 4.0 implementation. We might say we will be living in a 4.0 world.  Adam: (05:22)So what about the accounting industry? What do our accounting and finance professionals need to know?  Paul: (05:28)Looking at globally, we see a growing pressure to move ideas into tangible products in a shorter period of time with increasing levels of customization, quality and performance, all will maintaining acceptable margins. Well delivering goods and services that for more demanding customers want and doing so at a cost that preserves margins is increasingly difficult and can no longer be done by simply doing more. Let's face it, new ways of connecting people with products and products with each other will continue to emerge and all this connectivity will be providing organizations with an ocean of data. The increase connectivity may open ways to improve asset utilization or create new ways to monetize the company's assets. These are examples of the promise of leveraging big data and advanced analytics to make better decisions and take better actions, but you need to avoid analysis paralysis. What that means is that more data is not always better. The key will be effectively managing big data sources and the related analysis of that data. I view all of this change as a technology tidal wave, a tidal wave that will further drive the need for transformation. These transformations will come with opportunities, but also with related challenges, Opportunities and challenges that need to be identified and understood. Individuals who understand the implications of these emerging technologies and their potential impact on the organization can help navigate this coming see of change. Now consider the technology and analytics and the business acumen and operations domains of the IMA's managemnt accounting competency framework. These domains include the competencies required to manage technology and analyze data within an industry specific context and with the operational knowledge to envision the opportunities to capture value. These competencies seem perfectly aligned with the needs of companies that will go through and I 4.0 transformation.  Adam: (07:24)How about outside of just technology though? Are there connections to t...

Contact Sandy:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-richtermeyer-6b62083/Twitter - @SRichtermeyer UMass-Lowell Manning School of Business: https://www.uml.edu/msb/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMusic: (00:00) Mitch: (00:04)Welcome back for Episode 20 of Count Me In! Mitch Roshong and Adam Larson from IMA here with you to pass along industry knowledge and the latest perspectives on management accounting. Our expert guest speaker for today's episode has over 20 years of experience as a board member more than 14 years of academic leadership experience and is extremely well versed in presenting on key accounting topics for our conversation. Adam spoke with Dr.. Sandy Richtermeyer on the importance of enterprise risk management.  Adam: (00:36)That's right, Mitch. Sandy is the Dean of the Manning school of business of the university of Massachusetts Lowell. She's previously served as chair of IMA's global board of directors and represented IMA on the COSO board where she served on the committee that updated the COSO internal control integrated framework and the COSO enterprise risk management framework. She is truly committed to organizations achieving excellence through good governance and effective risk management. In this episode, Sandy talks about why organizations should align their mission and vision to create a culture that embraces the tone at the top and enables successful strategic execution through enterprise risk management. Now, here is episode 20 of count me in with Dr. Sandy Richtermeyer. Adam: (01:24)What advice do you have for organizations seeking to align their mission, vision, and core values with effective risk management programs?  Sandy: (01:32)Sometimes when we think about a mission, vision, and core values or as an organization is preparing to to become more risk, mature or refined, or maybe they're just getting started in their risk management program. So I like to give them like three practical exercises, three things that they can work on or think about. Usually you start to set the tone for looking at risk management in a different way. So one of them, one exercise that I ask them to do is to do a mission check. And I think it's good for an organization to do a mission check every three to five years just to make sure their mission statement, mission of their organization is still truly in line with who they want to be. And then after they do that mission check and maybe they make some changes to it or maybe the mission statement that they have in places is working great for them. Then I asked them what top three risks could cause you to fail in your mission? And this is usually a pretty good exercise because oftentimes you get a lot of variance on the responses. But I think by you know, having organization leaders you know, come up with just three, only three top risks that could cause them to fail and then be in alignment on there on those top three risks that could cause their mission to fail can be a very, helpful exercise. And it's one that really sets the tone for what you need to do, you know, down the road as you move through the risk management process. So that's the first exercise I usually ask them to do. And then the second is to evaluate their vision statement and see if that vision statement that they have or sometimes they don't even have one or they confuse it with the mission statement. But usually larger organizations have a vision statement, but ask them to see if this vision statement is a good fit for their ideas on how they want to create, preserve and enhance value. What are they trying to accomplish and how does that vision statement, describe that. And then I asked them to describe what risks could cause them to not achieve their vision. This is where it's also important to bring in the concept of having them think about risks that bring in new opportunities and risks that they want to avoid or mitigate. So the vision statement piece and associated risks is very helpful for them to think about. And then the third exercise we move into evaluating core values. And that's hoping that they have clearly articulated core values. Sometimes an organization might say, well we haven't really, you know, clearly defined our core values. And so this is a great opportunity before they get too far into the risk management process for them to take a step back and really look at their core values. And maybe they have them in place or they create them. But if they say they have core values in place that they've, that they've articulated before or they're that or that they've articulated previously to starting on their risk management journey, then we ask are the core values specific enough to speak to the value creation that they hope to achieve? Are these core values? Are the core values that they have enablers of a good culture? Do they set the tone for a culture that will allow the organization to achieve its strategic goals and achieve its desired performance? Again, these generic or vague values might not bring about a culture that's needed to reach strategic goals and objectives and ultimately strong performance. So it's good to take a pause and do this values check. So I think these three exercises, one is a mission check to evaluate a vision statement. Three, evaluate core values or create a vision statement and create core values. Those are activities that I think can really become very effective and useful that set the right foundation for risk management.  Adam: (05:43)All right. So we've talked about an organization's mission and their vision and how important those are focusing on your risk management program. But what role does the organizational culture play in risk management and then who is responsible for establishing that culture?  Sandy: (05:56)Sometimes an organization wants to do everything or organizational leaders want to do everything they can to improve the culture and and help establish the culture that will embrace risk management and all that that entails. They focus on how can they instill more transparency and risk awareness into the culture. Because oftentimes if you look at where does some really core problems exist in organizational culture, very often it has to do with lack of transparency. People don't feel like they know what's going on, they're not aware, they feel like they are on a need to know basis, that type of thing. And they also may not be even remotely aware of the key risks of the organizational faces. So how do you get people to understand or how do you, how do you improve transparency or how do you build a risk aware culture that will be very useful in terms of implementing risk management? Well, what I've seen organizations do is sometimes they they work on ways to encourage people in the organization to, bring up issues of concern to have maybe like, I don't know, for lack of a better example, maybe a suggestion box or maybe it's a way to voice concerns either anonymously or yeah, not anonymously, but basically encouraging people both to talk about key issues of concerns and make sure that when they do that that, that you can help them not have fear of retribution because oftentimes people are reluctant to bring up challenges or concerns or issues that they see because they feel that it's going to come back at them. And so as you find ways to transparently have, you know, m...

Contact Ben Wann:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wann/The Numbers Guys:https://www.the-numbers-guys.com/https://numbersguys.glideapp.io/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAcYwylNFH3iz98JIH94n7AFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMusic: (00:00) Mitch: (00:05) Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us again on Count Me In. I am Mitch Roshong and my cohost is Adam Larson. Our guest for today's episode is Ben Wann. Ben is a CMA, MBA and CPA and is currently pursuing his CSCA specialty credential. He is an operational finance leader and a finance business partner who came to talk to us at IMA about the future of finance. Adam, you interviewed Ben for this episode. Give us a quick preview of what Ben shared. Adam: (00:36) Ben is a passionate leader dedicated to process improvement, finding dynamic solutions and is constantly working to learn and improve his own skill sets. In our conversation, Ben explains what it means to be a true business partner and talks about how these strategic leaders can champion change for the finance function of their organizations. He is all about opportunity and growth and I think he will give our listeners a lot of actionable insight. So now let's hear Ben Wann's perspective on the future of finance. Music: (01:08)Adam: (01:10) What is finance business partnering and why should we care? Ben: (01:14) Finance business partner- it's the mindset that an accounting professional doesn't just do accounting. We're not just reporting the numbers, looking back, we're integrated with the business and we're creating value, an active partnership with the operation side of supply chain management. You know, we're growing, we're and adding value wherever we can. Adam: (01:45) I recently saw that you wrote an article entitled the business is to soccer to help explain this philosophy. Could you maybe give a high level overview of your analogy? Ben: (01:55) Yeah, yeah. I had a fun writing this one. So the analogy that I used is that for most of the time that accountants have been around, we've been in the goalkeeper position, right? We're making sure nothing gets past us and in my analogy, I refer to, you know, like report and mistakes and all sorts of data issues that we're constantly trying to monitor. But now with different technology, we have the opportunity to play a different position on the team. And that's the midfielder. And my main argument in the article is that finance is now the mid-fielder and that's position that can fluidly move from defense to offense. So then making sure that businesses numbers are sound, and then then moving forward and helping to create some winning opportunities and some goals by providing, you know, the right insights at the right time. Adam: (02:47) I think that's a great analogy, you know, so in line with that, you know, what's some advice that you would have for someone who wanted to champion the change in the finance area? They wanted to go from the goalie to the midfielder? Ben: (02:58) Yeah, that's a question a lot of people are asking. I think that the big thing that you have to do is start to increase what I would call your orbit of awareness. So you have to go out there and read about what other finance business partners are doing so that you know what you have to do. A lot of times it's too easy for us are heads down and get siloed. But if you look around, you can find out what other people are doing to advance themselves. You know, sometimes it's taking leadership training courses. I learned how to build your influence, sometimes just become a more technically strong. But there's, there's a lot of people who've done it already and just no one who to talk to, like who's been in a similar situation as you are now. That's a great place to start. Adam: (03:30)You know, there was another article don't ask permission if you want to change the world. You know, there's a particular line that sticks out to me, but you know, one that I'll mention in a moment, but, you know, I was hoping you could explain your ending. What was your ending message in that article? Ben: (03:45) The ending message for me for this article is that you can't wait for opportunity and if you want to advance in accounting, you know, opportunity doesn't knock, build the door. I guess the overall premise too is, you know, don't ask permission to, to make a change. That makes sense and I've kind of built my career around this and I had a lot of success around it. So that's why I'm advocating for this message of probably professionals who are looking to grow and advance in their own careers. Adam: (04:15) And you know, a particular line I wanted to kind of point out was, you know, the problem here is that my colleague saw a roadblocks instead of opportunities. Could you maybe comment on that a little bit? Ben: (04:30) Yeah, It's, it's too easy to get stuck, right? So I went to, my colleague had a few suggestions on how she had this one report where it was done weekly. So we had 52 separate weeks of reports instead of one big report that's more comprehensive, you know, and what she got held up on is that she didn't think she had the ability to make these changes. I don't know if it she didn't think she had the technical ability or it was outside the scope of her work. But yeah, so it takes some time to work through these things. But I would suggest trying, just try and get some feedback from maybe your manager, your peers to see if something's working. That's the best way to start seeing roadblocks as opportunity. Adam: (05:13) So what do you think is on the horizon for the future of finance? Ben: (05:15) For me, I have been, in my career, I've seen the same companies struggle with the same problem and I think that we're getting closer to a solution. And the big problem for many organizations is that we spent way too much time trying to get the data out of the system and provide some sort of analysis. Usually when we're done it's taken too much time and it's not comprehensive or timely enough to solve the problems of business and answer the main questions. And what technology's doing now is it's providing a lot of low costs and then what's called low code, no code solutions that is really going to be key to putting the tools into more hands.The democratization of data is a term that's been going around. So more people are being able to access the data. and it's easier, you can't break the system. So I think that's going to be a huge thing, if finance wants to move forward, that we take these steps sequentially, right? We stop spending 70% of our time doing non-value-added activities and we get the building blocks in place. Adam: (06:24) So what advice would you give to somebody you know, who's, let's say they're, you know, the higher ups in the company are chasing whatever the flavor of the month is, whether it's blockchain or AI or whatever that key term is that they're jumping on and saying you have to do, you know, what advice would you give to the people who are actually doing the work to say, hey, how do you help them slow their horses or get them to realize that maybe ...

"12 Rules for Cyber You MUST Know" by Joseph Brunsman: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-12-rules-cyber-joseph-brunsman/CPL Brokers, Inc.: http://cplbrokers.com/Contact Joseph Brunsman:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-brunsman-3a1102101/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMusic: (00:00) Adam: (00:04) Hey everyone. Welcome back to count me in. I am your host Adam Larson and with me once again with me once again, it's my cohost Mitch Roshong. As we continue to offer insight into all things affecting the accounting and finance world, this episode is going to focus on cybersecurity, as we hear from cybersecurity expert and bestselling author Joseph Brunson. Mitch, can you give us some background on Joseph and what your conversation was about? Mitchell: (00:35) Sure. Adam, thank you. Joseph is the vice president and CCO at Chesapeake professional liability brokers in Annapolis, Maryland. He most recently served as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy working as an anti terrorism and force protection officer. He has a background in systems engineering and cyber law and he is in the process of writing two books on cyber insurance. We focused on the progression of cybersecurity and how to create organizational cybersecurity policies to avoid some of the potentially disastrous costs following a cyber attack. So let's take a listen. Music: (01:11) Mitchell: (01:17) So data and technology are two of the most popular topics in accounting and finance. With so much data available to companies today and subsequent information being shared, what kind of emphasis should businesses place on cyber security? Joseph: (01:32) Sure. So, you know, that's a great question, I'd say that information is like the new oil. So data security is a huge deal and you know, of all the breaches that I've researched that I've written about, that I've worked on, you're really kind of see a common trend and it's that everybody who's been breached suddenly finds a way to spend more money and more time and more resources on cyber security after a breach. So kind of the lesson there is it would have been much easier to prevent that breach beforehand, you know, and that really kind of gets into, you know, starting from the top down where if a company wants to place an emphasis on cyber security and they all should, then, you know, it's really got to start from the top and work its way down. So that's from, you know, the board of directors has to get educated on the topic. Even if it's just, you know, a couple of YouTube videos that generally understand, you know, the basics of cyber security or network security and then from there filter that down through the organization. Mitchell: (02:38) So with that kind of top down structure, when it comes to implementing a different cybersecurity policies, what are some of the common strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats that you've come across when you're trying to help coach these businesses? Joseph: (02:54) Sure. So you know, kind of some of the common things we see obviously going to be different for each business, right? Because it's going to depend on the industry. They're in various environmental factors of what they're dealing with. But you know, we do see some common trends. The first one's going to be, you know, cyber security policies should not read like war and peace or some legal primer on contract law right there and we, we see a lot of that and always kind of makes me cringe because the primary purpose of a cyber security policy is really, you're supposed to be guiding the staff into making correct decisions, right? You're trying to tell them, Hey, this is what's acceptable and what's not. But more than that, really the biggest flaw that I see is, and this is, you know, it takes a little more time and effort to do this, but it pays off in the long run is, you know, they need to tell the staff members and employees, you know, Hey, this is the purpose behind the policy that we've implemented. And that really makes adherence to it much simpler, which makes the cybersecurity of that business, you know, exponentially stronger because, you can't plan for every possible scenario, but you can really stick to those major threats that you're reasonably foreseeing that could hit the business, you know, you don't need to plan for the apocalypse. So you want the cybersecurity policy to be understandable by the common person. Just complex enough that you're hitting the major wickets there. And that if there's something that you couldn't plan for or there's something missing in that cybersecurity policy, you could reasonably expect the average person, you know, to at least have a general understanding of who to go to to pose the question. Mitchell: (04:42) So what if you're new to this, what if you have never drafted a cybersecurity policy before and you're not even completely sure of what the potential risks are with all the new data and technology that's out there. What are some best practices for doing your own personal research and developing a process for implementing a new cybersecurity policy? Joseph: (05:03) Great question. So, you know, first off, Google is your friend, so that is an amazing place to start. There is a ton of great information out there. You know, try to steer clear of, you know, kind of minor organizations that you'd never heard of, but there's a bunch of major players out there. They're really kind of have templates for you. You know, best practices, you know, it's going to depend on each organization. But you know, kind of broad stroke here is get all the decision makers inside the room, block off a period of time and you know, that could be the board of directors, the C suite executives, it legal, your HR team, bring them all together, you know, and kind of start hashing through these templates that are available to you. So that way you get all of the different perspectives on what could potentially happen and how you should really respond to that. And that's going to be probably, you know, the best in terms of best practices because if it's, you know, if you have your cyber security policy and you say, hey IT guy do this delivered on Tuesday, and then you just try and, you know, push that out to the entire business, it's going to be a train wreck and there's going to be a million questions and you're going to have to go and redo the entire thing. So get everybody involved from the beginning. It's going to be much easier for everybody. Mitchell: (06:31) So as you start to, implement these processes, right, and we have all these different people working together, all the different functions of the business. What have you seen from, you know, different industries or just different firms in general as far as the progression of cybersecurity and what that means in our economy today? Joseph: (06:54) Sure so I think, you know, everybody is saying that they're taking cybersecurity seriously now, and I would really kind of push back against that because, you know, I think most businesses now are saying, hey, we take cyber security seriously. we have this one guy who does it right, who's in charge of it. But cyber security is really a full organization front that has to occur there. So, you know, it's something where the world is just getting more complex. And so, you know, that's on the regulatory si...

Contact Ginger White:Email: ginger.r.white@icloud.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginia-ginger-d-white-cma-csca-bb-mbb-mba-mssf-a7221b1/IMA Bio: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/ima-leadership/virginia-ginger-whiteInstitute of Management Accountants: https://www.imanet.org/American Accounting Association: https://aaahq.org/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMusic: (00:00)Adam Larson: (00:05) Hey everyone. 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 joined by my cohost, Mitch Roshong. As you know, the purpose of "Count Me In" is to bring you the latest perspectives and learnings on everything management accountants need to know. We strive to consistently share valuable insights from industry experts and those who are shaping our profession, and today's episode is no exception. We were delighted to have the opportunity to sit down with one of the great leaders in our industry, ginger white. Ginger joined us in our office here in Montvale, New Jersey and talked about what it takes to be a valued leader of the finance team. Ginger is the global chair emeritus of IMA's global board of directors and has a wealth of knowledge and expertise that we were lucky she was willing to share with us. Mitch, what else can you tell us about Ginger and your conversation with her for this episode?Mitch Roshong: (00:56) Ginger is an executive level financial management professional with over 20 years of experience. She spent 22 years at Cummins, an American Fortune 500 company that designs, manufactures, and distributes engines, filtration and power generation products. There, she spanned roles from cost analyst through corporate purchasing finance director acquiring and developing valuable skills along the way. She is a CMA, CSCA, Six Sigma black belt and now serves as the chief operating officer for the American Accounting Association. In our conversation, we talked a lot about Ginger's tenure at Cummins, the skills she noticed to be most valuable and some of the best wins as a finance professional. This is a great episode for those interested in learning what it takes to create your own successful long lasting career. So let's go to the conversation.Music: (01:47)Mitch Roshong: (01:53) Take us back to when you first started in finance and business. Was it originally your intention to work at the same company for the majority of your career?Ginger White: (02:01) Actually, no, it was not. So when I actually joined Cummins in 97 I had been teaching Accounting I at a small college called Ivy Tech in Indiana and I was teaching Accounting I and absolutely loved it and they were changing the accreditation standards that required a master's degree or work experience equivalent. And I didn't have either. So I heard Cummins would pay for your master's degree. So my whole purpose to go there was to get my master's degree and quit and teach full time. So I spent 21 and a half years there before I left recently to go be the chief operating officer at the American accounting association.Mitch Roshong: (02:37) So was it always your longterm goal to achieve some kind of C-suite position or did you think you'd be teaching your whole career?Ginger White: (02:44) Early on? After I'd been teaching Accounting I, I really did think I would be teaching my entire career. However, when I got to Cummins and started really learning about cost accounting was introduced to IMA, my path changed. And I think it's really important to always flexible to what life might bring you. And I would have never guessed that I would be C-suite at some point and I'm really enjoying it and my new role.Mitch Roshong: (03:10) And as far as the progression that you did have through Cummins, how did you develop and acquire the skills needed to kind of progress through all these different positions? What were some of the skills that really proved to be most valuable in supporting your recent role that you, the most recent role you held there?Ginger White: (03:27) Actually always being willing to learn and pushing yourself above and beyond what you ever think you can. So I had initially started getting my MBA immediately as I joined Cummins. And so I finished that in 2002 and then later I ended up getting my Master of Science in Strategic Finance in 2006 and I had always had on my individual development plan, my CMA. And it wasn't until 2014 that I actually achieved that, which was very valuable because I had taken a role as a Six Sigma master black belt, which was in the quality function. And the skills I gained there actually is very relevant to today because we're really moving into a world of data analytics. And when I did my master black belt role, that's pretty much what we did. So then when I really wanted to move back into my corporate purchasing finance role at Cummins, I felt that I needed my CMA. So that was very valuable in 2014 when I achieved that. And then in June of '15 is when I moved back into the finance role in a corporate purchasing finance.Mitch Roshong: (04:28) How about the other side of things? What were some of the daily challenges of directing large growth plans and executing different strategic initiatives for Cummins?Ginger White: (04:37) That probably came mostly in the corporate purchasing finance role. There, when I joined the team, we had implemented, prior to me joining something called the strategic finance solution for payables. And when I got there, there were lots of issues that systems processes were failing daily, suppliers were not getting paid as we promised and so forth. So I went to work immediately to fix that. And when I left, the individuals were getting paid within five days. So we still were able to extend our payment terms, which actually helped Cummins with their cashflow, but our, our suppliers were getting paid within on average five days. So I felt really proud of that because it actually helps some of our suppliers become debt free and it was a win, win, win.Mitch Roshong: (05:24) And what do you attribute some of that success to? How were you able to overcome those challenges?Ginger White: (05:28) I really do attribute a lot of that to Six Sigma, my problem solving skills and then just getting everybody together and working collaboratively. It's, it's a skill I've naturally somehow come about. And I think Six Sigma helped me do that because a lot of times people will just try to solve things from their perspective. And it's so much more powerful when you get cross functional teams together to really talk and understand deeply what each issue might be in a given area. So that's what we did. We really looked at it solution, we looked at the payables process, we looked at all kinds of things to really determine what the real root cause was. We fixed those, we put controls in place to ensure the failures just stopped ongoing. And then we, we had good suppliers that we partnered with and they held us accountable too, which was really powerful. So it, it was it was a great experience to, to really do that. And I have lots of those, those kinds of areas where...