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Contact Roland Abi Najem: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rolandabinajem/

Roland Abi Najem's Website: https://www.rolandabinajem.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:00)
Welcome back for episode 105 of Count Me In, IMA’s  podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong, and today's episode features cybersecurity and digital transformation expert Roland Abi Najem. Roland is founder and CEO of Revotips, Expert Tech Consultants, and Solutions. In this episode, my co-host Rouba dives into better understand the evolution of cybersecurity, including the risk areas and how finance and accounting professionals can better enhance digital safety measures across their organizations. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.

Rouba: (00:46)
You’re a cyber security expert in the region, you have been one for many years. What does the work that you do entail?

Roland: (00:57)
Well, basically it's the most important thing to me on a personal level I should work on is, being up to date on daily basis. And I really mean it on daily basis because sometimes if you, for me, on a personal level, I have at least for example, a minimum three to four hours readings per day. And, I have to stay up to date with all technology related issues about, all type of, technology, the less the news and cyber attack happened, worldwide and so on. So because we always learn from case study happened worldwide. Moreover, I have to say after this was all a governance issue about new laws, new regulations, because also those, rules and regulation of, being up to date, also kind of on daily basis. And, we have, let's say GDPR in Europe, perhaps a hundred rules and regulation here in the region. So we must follow those guidance as there'll be, for example, in GDPR, if you don't follow the guidance and regulation, you'll have fin, 10 million euros and so on. Moreover when it comes to cybersecurity, it's not only about the technical know-how of each person, what, what any company will look for when they are working with a certain cybersecurity company or consult them, they will look first for personal know-how. They will look first for, as a company reputation and a brand name and the look for the person or the petition of each individual who's going to work in cybersecurity because, you know, when you are working on cybersecurity, sometimes when I'm doing, let's say a penetration testing and so on. So, you might have access to very confidential data and so on. So for other companies, they will need to make sure that they have full trust in the company and each individual working on the project. Plus we all know that, working in the GCC region, is really challenging because you are working like, with, a different type of culture and society. Within in one company was in one country is so working with a different culture, different society, different mentality, you are working in different industries like, government, all I'm guys, banking, staffed up everything. So, you need to be, aligned with all types of cultures and societies in order to understand the needs and the requirements and how they think and how they perceive things. So actually it's kind of hectic to be combined and I'll combine all those together and to stay up to date with them. But actually this is what makes, let's say the thing different, and, this is what gives me added value, in this industry.

Rouba: (03:43)
No, that's quite a task that you have on hand. When we look at the, the Middle East and Africa cybersecurity market, I mean, it's witnessed some tremendous growth over the last, few years, more than a decade even, and it's projected to grow even further from an estimated 15.6 billion in 2020 to 29.9 billion in 2025. And the compound annual growth rate is 13.8, which is exponential. And this is based on the post COVID scenario forecast. Now, the lion's share really goes to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and some parts of Africa when you look at these figures, but what are some of the most notable initiatives that are taking place in the region?

Roland: (04:24)
Well, this is a very important question based on what you said on the growth of, everything regarding to, cyber security in terms of spending, nowadays, lots of, government issues and rules and regulations. They are forcing by law each company, especially when I talk about big companies that have billions of dollars, to have at least three cyber security providers, because we all know that when it comes to security, is that is no, let's say a one plus one equals two. It's not that simple. So you need to have the different providers see different companies that are working in cybersecurity for you, because we all know there is nothing called 100% security and no company can be 100% secure of the time. If you are currently secured, you are secured, let's say up to 70, 80% maximum and so on. So there are still gaps. That's why I asked to have multiple companies under 10 providers. And this is what makes the industry, let's say, growing up so fast because for each company needs at least three companies for cybersecurity. This is number one. Number two, a few days back in the UAE is a consult ministers form, a concept for cybersecurity, which is, which shows clearly important nowadays for everything we got in cybersecurity, because let's say sometimes now we're on, we're talking about what, what we're talking about, the Cyber War, not the normal wars, is that like a World War One and World War Two. So I'll talk about the Cyber War and we all know that everything is happening between, uh, let's say, North Korea and Iran and Saudi Arabia and USA and so on, and we're not talking about a cyber war. It doesn't come with only with what you call it say about, only a just hacking and cyber attacks and so on. It's all sometimes about data. And we all know, for example, what's happened between Donald Trump and the big fight. And most of the big parts of it was political and part of it was economic, but the biggest part is about the data. Where am I going to store  the data and how we are going to, to store it somewhere. So I'm not sure the initiative is, in Saudi Arabia, they have what we call the National Security Authorities, where you can, for example, if you are under attack or do you have, now you can claim directly online and they will support you, and in many ways. Here in Kuwait, since I'm based in Kuwait, we have, two laws, you have the Image alone, and we have a Cyber law, every since cyber crime law, and so on. So, the biggest challenge, and, here, I think is, how we can join all those laws with international laws in order to, to be aware of all the laws and regulations worldwide in order to try to make for everyone. Because let me give you an example, let's say in the UAE or the Kuwait or whatever, they have lots of Eu...

Contact Ed Lam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-lam-9b97258/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and this is episode 104 of our series. Today's conversation features Ed Lam, the Chief Accounting Officer at Exeter Finance. Ed is an accounting and finance professional who has seen many changes to the profession over the years. In this episode, he talks with Mitch about his thoughts on the future of work and how he envisions the role of the finance leader, evolving even more. From change management and continuous improvement to leadership and organizational culture development, Ed offers great perspective on what is needed to gain buy-in and succeed. Keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.

Mitch: (00:55)
So Ed to the kick off this conversation, can you tell us a little bit about how your job has changed in the last three to five years and then taking it a step further? You know, what do you anticipate kind of happening even more in the next three to five years for the future of work?

Ed: (01:09)
Yeah. you know, I'll basically, define the last three to five years in three phases. It's basically a stabilized standardized and optimized. So when I first came in, I think we had a, basically an under-resourced accounting group, without the right technology and, you know, basically, inconsistent processing. So the first two years was just looking under rocks and finding and identifying and addressing any risks and any, any errors in our process. So it took a little while, a lot of hard work, but I think we were always looking to kind of develop a stable and repeatable process and that just has to be built, over, over time. And, as a transition from fighting fires into having more reliable processes. So that was basically about year three heading into year four. But then starting, back in early 2019, we started to look for the opportunities to start optimizing processes and bringing on new technologies. So, you know, I think the optimized stage has been the most fun, just because you start seeing a lot more buy-in from the organization now that we built the trust and credibility, we need to basically, stack on, improvements in how we do things. So that's the, you know, for the last five years, just an evolution, it's been ongoing. We still have a ways to go, but we can definitely see the opportunities from there. So when we talk about the future, the next three to five years, I'd say over the coming years, my role, in directly managing my operations is going to continue to diminish actually. And that's the due to the strength of my staff and having efficient processes in place. So, you know, the focus then she has really a way from day to do day to day doing and managing, and just really a lot more on those continuous coaching and development. I've had to learn to embrace that a little bit, because it's a different aspect of being a hands-on manager. But it's actually a little more meaningful than, what I started doing, which was basically, giving bad news to my CFO whenever we found a mistake.

Mitch: (03:32)
That's really interesting. you know, you talked about optimizing and some of the changes to your role, obviously expectations of you the organization in general, but how have you been able to kind of change your management skills? Like you were just kind of talking about, but in a way so that everybody you're working with understands what the necessary changes are for the organization to truly optimize its processes and move forward?

Ed: (03:56)
Yeah, I think changing the management skills comes down to, you know, you go from, individual contributor skills, you know, and just being a subject matter expert in areas and basically telling people, you know, what the right answer is to basically focusing more on, encouraging communication and collaboration, and specifically outside of the department, because that's been a shift, you start off early on just looking inward and saying like, how can we, ensure that we put out a good product for our customers? But once you've done that, then basically the collaboration is a means of allowing you to influence the larger organization. So it does take a lot of time to build, those strong relationships with other groups, and that has to be encouraged. It's not just me talking to my counterparts and other divisions, but it's encouraging, all of the staff that part of the role is to not just give output to other groups, but to also communicate and understand, you know, why they need the things that they asked for. So, you know, again, taking the time to increase collaboration, encouraging that within, my org, and then supporting it and staying engaged with any change management initiatives. I mean, it's a way of basically, you know, evangelizing for transformation, right? So, you know, we're actually lucky to have a change governance committee at Exeter and that's something we can engage in where, anytime there's a change that impacts more than one division, it does need to get brought up through an intake process with change governance. So we stayed very engaged in that group, and it does involve executives and that's pretty important as well. So, you know, a lot of, how, I changed my management skills is just taking, any of those intake forms that has the potential for impacting my group or other groups that are aligned or adjacent to mine, and basically sharing that information in a meaningful way.

Mitch: (06:02)
That's great. I know any, conversation that we've had around the future of work and the changing profession, the word influence always comes up. So for you to bring that up again, you know, it's, it's right on target with what we're hearing, but I really liked the encouraging communication collaboration. That's something that I think will really stick, and truly shows the shift right, in the roles of the profession, the individual, is no longer just that contributor, like you said. So I think, some people who are maybe not as familiar with some of these changes, you know, they might have a little difficulty straying from the traditional, you know, finance and accounting work. And then the day to day that you were talking about the management style, how do you go about getting the buy-in from these different stakeholders in your department or these cross-functional teams across the organization that you're working with? What role do you get the team, you know, how do you get your team to really buy into this kind of new initiative?

Ed: (06:59)
Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And, you know, one thing that you hear a lot of success begets more success, right? So, I think part of this is just attacking incremental improvements early on, and they can be very, very incremental. They could be small improvements, but you celebrate those accomplishments, and then also behind that consistently discussing what's next on our roadmap. We're gonna discuss roadmap from a little bit, but just the possibilities, and then periodically visioning kind of like the optimal state. So, let me give you an example. when I first started with Exter, our close process took more than seven days, and sometimes just to address like an issue or, you know, something that was broken, it could be up to 10 days to close the books. So, you know, with some of the technology that we've introduced, including a new general ledger and an account, sorry, loan sub-ledger, with a lot of the process improvements we put in place, including a close checklist and some management workflow, and the, obviously a lot of staff development we've been able to bring the accounting close down to...

IMA Diversity & Inclusion: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/diversity-and-inclusion
D&I Toolkit Press Release: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/news-and-media-relations/press-releases/2020/6/3/ima-unveils-diversity-and-inclusion-toolkit
The D&I Toolkit: https://www.imanet.org/-/media/1cb71380a29540f2af5aad35e04f2930.ashx?la=en

Contact Karmin Bailey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karmin-bailey-0a849346/

Contact Matthias Tillmann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthias-tillmann-58997a53/

Trivago: https://www.trivago.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And I'm here with episode 103 of our series. Today's expert guest is Matthias Tillmann, CFO of Trivago. In this episode, he speaks with Mitch about how COVID-19 crisis impacted the travel industry and speaks to the various crisis management plans he implemented to maintain operations. For an interesting discussion around business continuity, technology, enablement, and finance in the travel industry, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.

Mitch: (00:42)
The COVID-19 crisis disrupted the global travel and hospitality industry immensely, and I know it affected everything from air travel to hotel accommodations. So in your line of business, what were the immediate steps that you took to ensure business continuity at Trivago?

Matthias: (01:01)
Yeah, that is right, the COVID crisis had a huge impact on our business. And let me start with giving you an idea of the magnitude of that effect, and just for context, we are an accommodation  meta search platform. So comparing price of hotels, apartments, vacation rentals, and other accommodations on this, so we're not active in the air space, for example. So while we run and operate over 50 countries, only a minor part of our business is in Asia and we have no presence in China. So when the virus first broke out there, we got an idea of what this could mean to our business, but we did not see it immediately in our numbers. That quickly changed when infection started to spread in Italy, end of February. Within a couple of days we lost all of our revenue in that country, and as the virus spread throughout, Europe first and then Americas, our revenue declined more than 95% year over year by end of March. So why, I'm  telling you this, we did not have much time to react. Our cost structure pre COVID was roughly 80% variable, which is predominantly marketing and 20% fixed costs. So  to preserve our cash, we first focused on cutting our marketing spend and on the performance marketing side, you can do that immediately as you just lower your bids  or stop campaigns altogether. On the other hand, on the brand marketing side, it is a bit more tricky. So we usually have part of our budget committed with certain TV channels, and you also need to brief the channels and commit budgets a bit in advance to go through clearing and secure the desired ad products, et cetera. So we started right away to cancel commitments and negotiated to post campaigns. And that was very important. As every dollar on TV advertisement obviously would have been wasted and might've had a negative effect as during a global pandemic countries and countries being in lockdowns. The last thing you want to do is to promote travel. So after we had taken care off of the 80% of our costs, we started to analyze our overhead structure as well. We are based in Germany. So as an immediate action, we utilized short labor, a government aid scheme where people work reduced hours and the government subsidized the salaries. This bought us some time to think about the implication of the pandemic, not only for us, but for the overall industry for the next couple of years and then we spoke to other industry participants to get different perspectives and try to understand how the action would impact the dynamics and all that occurred. And based on that, we formed a hypothesis around different phases of recovery. And by doing that, it became apparent that we cannot manage, through the spirit by just putting people on short labor, but we needed to restructure the business. That means reducing complexity, streamlining operations, and certainly also letting some of our talents go.As a consequence we closed or sold our remote offices and moved to everybody to our headquarter in Dusseldorf. And we reduced our headcount. but on the other hand, brought back everyone from, from short labor. And then lastly, I would mention that on the B2B side, we proactively reached out to our partners and implemented payment plans for those being in a difficult financial situation. And, that was very important because, at that moment we had a high amount of outstanding accounts receivable, but as we acted as a partner of trust and we collected almost all of the receivables, by the end of the second quarter, and as a result of all these measures, we did not burn any cash over six months period since the outbreak of the virus.

Mitch: (04:59)
So it sounds like you had to, you had to take a lot of steps upfront, but I'm just curious if you had any crisis management plans or any of these ideas in place prior to actually having the change the business.

Matthias: (05:13)
Yeah. We have operated in a very dynamic environment over many years and despite our global footprint and, a well known brand, we are still a small company, thus we always had to adapt change and innovate in order to be able to compete with large global companies. And this, I believe has fostered a very agile culture. So we always had to prepare for big changes and learn to stay flexible and adapt fast. So when the crisis hit, it did not take us long to adapt, and also, we also have a relatively simple business, with key leavers and product marketplace and marketing, and the biggest short-term, is clearly marketing. I mentioned it before. however, during, even during normal times, our marketing channels can be very volatile. And so we constantly reassess what we are doing there, and we always keep the flexibility to adjust quickly. So in a way we are at any time prepared for different scenarios, on the fixed cost side, our largest cost category by far is personnel and related costs. And, we are investing in people, thus we constantly have to evaluate how to allocate this precious resource. And when the crisis hit, we had to reassess our investment and projects outside of our core. And based on that, we came up with a restructionplan. So in a nutshell, I think we almost always operate, in an environment where we do have, a plan for all kinds of different scenarios and didn't need a specific one for this crisis.

Mitch: (06:54)
Well, that's great. And I know, you know, you've mentioned talent a few times now, already in this conversation, and I'd like to kind of talk about that a little bit further. You know, obviously you had urgent financial needs going into this crisis and you certainly had to adapt the business, but how did you really balance that with your desire to maintain the top talent in your organization and also, you know, address the concerns of the talent and the organization?

Matthias: (07:18)
Yeah, absolutely. So our first reaction was to focus on preserving our cash. and that means that we, cut all unnecessary costs and, came up with a reconstruction plan, as I mentioned, and have all partners with flexible payment terms. Internally we were very open-ended and transparent about this. So for example, we established weekly all hands Q&A's where we as management gave updates on our view of the industry, the implications for us and how we need to react. And the feedback from our talents was very positive on that, and I believe that the transparency about how we are approaching the crisis increased the acceptance of our measures. And, just to remind you that we had to take some very difficult decisions, like the headcount reduction. On the other hand, we clearly communicated as well that we will continue to invest in key...

Contact Liv: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livwatson/
Contact David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-w-29627882/
IMA's Paper - https://www.imanet.org/insights-and-trends/external-reporting-and-disclosure-management/a-digital-transformation-brief-business-reporting-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome back. This is episode 102 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I'm here to open up today's conversation by reintroducing you to Liv Watson & David Wray. If you'll recall, Liv and David joined us a while back to talk about business reporting in the fourth industrial revolution. Today we'll hear them talk with Adam about their paper on nonfinancial standards, digitizing transformation. Liv and David are leaders in the process of assessing the infrastructure required for the digitization of nonfinancial information, and they are here to share their perspectives with us again now. Let's head over to the conversation.

Adam: (00:51)
What does digital transformation of nonfinancial disclosures mean?

Liv: (00:55)
Thank you for the question here. What does digital transformation for non-financial disclosure mean is it's fragmented how people look at it, but let me try and put some perspective into it.  At the bottom or at the end goal, if we put it that way. We want auditable, traceable data. One truth to the data, and as long as we create data sitting locked up in proprietary documents or PDFs, there is a copy and paste process that is very human intensive and error prone. So what we really need is a digital transformation to create non-financial data and bring that into the same kind of environment where financial data is today, where regulator mandates companies to disclose XBRL as an open standard for financial information. And if you look today at a data captured from analysis, which used to be a cumbersome process from the U S Security Exchange Commission. Today, 89% of that data is captured in bots and becomes machine-readable data to automate analysis. So we need to take this whole non-financial data into a digital transformation, into a taxonomies ecosystem, where there are trusted available taxonomies for non-financial data. And it allows then also for companies to use this taxonomies is to improve their internal system so that you truly can create one truth to the data and link to multiple reports. And I know we will speak a little bit more about that later, but the regulators now are stepping out and understanding that non-financial data, sustainability data or ESG, however you want to put it, it's actually just as important to making economic decisions, but also policy makers wanting this to try and drive economies, to align with the global goals. So we need a data revolution. Thank you.

Adam: (03:38)
So that we've discussed what it means. Why is the digital transformation of nonfinancial disclosures, a burning platform need?

David: (03:47)
That's a great question, Adam. I'll answer it from two different perspectives. So firstly, as a working group member and then as a preparer. so let me look at the working group member perspective first. So despite the increasing attention in the role of sustainability disclosure, there clearly is a lack of trust taxonomies for non-financial standards and frameworks. And what this basically means is that the prepare of information is really limited in the way that they can access and disclose information against these nonfinancial standards as Liv alluded to earlier. So one possible outcome is that the data that's being passed from the preparer to the user, really risks being misinterpreted without contextual information being provided. So that results in restricted access potentially limited visibility and compareability of the information for the user. And ultimately it really hampers the uptake and growth of sustainability disclosure standards, which is not great. So a taxonomy therefore would go a long way to help address these issues by enabling a steady flow of machine readable, really comprehensive and accurate information for users to be able to make much more informed decisions. So now, if I look at this from the perspective of a preparer, the burning platform at its most basic level is the cost of compliance, and we talked about this in our paper, digital transformation, brief business reporting in the fourth industrial revolution, where we said that the international Federation of accountants or IFAC as it's commonly known estimates, that fragmented regulation really costs the financial industry sector alone 780 billion every year. Now multiply that out across all sectors and the numbers become absolutely astronomical. Imagine what we might achieve if we could spend that same money in sustainability areas. So think about education, equality, clean water so much would be possible if we weren't spending well over a trillion dollars on compliance costs around the world.

Adam: (05:52)
Then how do we practically propose to tackle these issues?

Liv: (05:58)
Thanks, Adam. At the heart of this, is that just like the rail road, right? If we only had rail cars without the railroads, those cars would not be mobilized. So we need an infrastructure when it comes to, digitizing non-financial data and what we truly need, and I speak a little bit about that from my, involvement and appointment to the European Lab steering group that was appointed by the European Commission to, look at what kind of digital infrastructure as well as what kind of standards should be mandated as they update their next release of the non-financial directive that impacts any company with over 500 employees that they have to disclose their ESG, to the market place. So Europe being a driver of this is trying to understand that this time around let's do it right. Let's not ask for more glossy, colorful PDF files that are totally unsustainable and not reusable, as David alluded to earlier. This task force is giving recommendation. We are currently in the recommendation stage and one of the things that we as a group have assessed, is the fact that we need a digital infrastructure with that. David also alluded to being involved with, I&P who he has created a task force which IMA is a part of as well, to be able to make that assessment. What kind of an infrastructure would that look like? So what do I mean by that? We believe that unless there is a central repository with taxonomies, for disclosure, for non-financial information that this taxonomy registry can help the standard setters to disseminate their standards to the marketplace in a digital way where software vendors and users can then take that to easily embed them to solutions and search engines so that we can start retrieving information and pinpoint this data looking into the needle in the haystack, as we said. So what is that mean? It means that there's digital taxonomy registrywill be a place for the taxonomy I mean, for the standard sharing to disseminate their standards digitally and also to collaborate, to start harmonizing the definitions around the metrics, because often your standards shared in the non-financial space as for the same metrics, they've kind of defined them differently. So trying to build that kind of harmonize station infrastructure allows for, digital transformation versus just an alphabet soup of taxonomies out there that wil...

Contact Kavya Ramesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kavyavramesh/

IMA Life: Earn What You Deserve, by Kavya Ramesh: https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/february-2020-ima-life-earn-what-you-deserve/

IMA Launches Global Ad Campaign to Highlight How CMAs Make a Difference in Business:

https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/news-and-media-relations/press-releases/2020/9/14/ima-launches-global-ad-campaign-to-highlight-how-cmas-make-a-difference-in-business

Watch IMA’s “The CMA makes all the difference” television commercials on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9TUx2zNJuk&list=PL_PvlGddtOgFQUwJV7pWyXJoBox5f33Or&index=1

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong, and today I'm going to bring you a bonus episode of our series. In this episode, we're featuring one of our CMAs Making a Difference. The CMA is Making a Difference campaign is a part of a worldwide initiative at IMA its goal is to showcase the many ways that earning IMA's Certified Management Accountant certification can set your career on an incredible new path, giving accounting and finance professionals access to exciting career and leadership opportunities. The campaign also tells stories of CMAs who are truly making an impact within their organizations, and in some cases around the world. Today, we're speaking with Kavya Ramesh, a CMA who is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Techno Grow Analytics, LLP Techno Grow provides technology consulting services to the hospitality industry. Kavya is based in Bangalore, and she speaks with my co-host Adam about earning her CMA and the various opportunities it has presented. So now let's head over to the conversation and hear how this CMA is Making a Difference.

Adam: (01:19)
So can you share something specific that the CMA has enabled you to do?

Kavya: (01:24)
All right, so this might come off as a bit unusual, but for me it wasn't just the accounting part of the course, but actually the non-accounting part of the CMA that gave me an incredible edge.  It was strategic planning, decision analysis, risk management, investment decision-making, and to an extent, even the technology and analytics part that, helped me to broaden my horizon and to look for continued innovation and everything I did. So soon after graduating and passing my CMA exams, this is an interesting story, right? So I joined this company, as an associate consultant, and I was a part of their projects division. So I was involved in budgeting and financing projects from scratch. This firm operates in the hospitality sector, and while working here, I got the opportunity to explore a lot of operational aspects of the industry. So the above-mentioned concepts, right, that I learned from the US CMA, they drove a spirit of innovation if I could say. And I realized that I could bring a sort of change in the setup of the form.A new extort process, if you will, that could bring in a lot of change in the way the company operates. So while we were delving into this, I actually got struck by an idea that could in the very near future change the way the entire industry operated. So as a result of that, we have formed a startup today that is called Techno and Analytics, LLP, and I'm one of their co-founding partners. So our startup is basically in the process of free thinking and reinventing the role of technology in the hospitality industry. So we currently have a very diverse team working on our applications, and we're now ready to launch in the market. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, this is brought in our new marketing team and we're working on, how we can strategize our market entry. So all said and done, whatever the case may be, the ability to develop and conceptualize a new idea and to lead a team and to see it grow to this extent, all of this came to me, thanks to the CMA.

Adam: (03:36)
So I think it's amazing that you're part of a startup so early in your career. So what's that like being part of a startup?

Kavya: (03:41)
So I always knew I wanted to do something by myself that I could really connect to and I could make an impact with, right. So when we had this idea of, we jumped right into forming a team and all the process, every step, every day was a learning curve. Seeing that my day starts by working with 50 year olds, people who have seen generations together before I was born and seeing people my age step in and take the lead on the forefront of operations. It's been a great mix of people that I could learn so much from. And technology and analytics was something new to me. So while working towards the startup and these, the applications that we working on, I in fact, got to do a lot of up-skilling or cross skilling for that matter. So I took up some coding lessons. I took a few, designing because we worked on most of this from scratch. So it's like, it's like seeing a baby grow up, you know, infancy to say a toddlers is so far. It's been great every day, I wake up with a drive to, to see, you know, what this day holds for me.

Adam: (04:57)
That's amazing. So looking at that beautiful story that you just told, where do you kind of envision yourself in 5to 10 years?

Kavya: (05:05)
In the next 5-10 years, I envisioned myself as a happy leader who is devoted to serving causes that empower people around me. I see myself as the head of my startup that's on itself, great trust and confidence from the industry. I also see myself as a loving individual doing the best I can for everyone around me. On a personal note, I see myself devoting a lot more time of my day and teaching yoga. So a lesson on fact about me is that I'm a certified yoga instructor. So there's nothing better than seeing my students leave the class with a smile. So that's the way I love to begin my day. And I'd like to see myself doing more of that five years down the line. I think in the next 10 years, I'd have gained a lot more volunteering experience too, and what opportunities IMA would have for me then are only imaginable. And so I really can't wait to give back my most of this institution that has so wonderfully shaped my career. So my goal in the next five to 10 years is basically channeled all that I have learned so far into giving back.

Adam: (06:08)
What's one goal that you want to accomplish in your career?

Kavya: (06:12)
Alright, so my goal in courier and also in life is to have harmony. I believe that for all of us, there are three aspects of life, that make and break who we are and how we living. So these three aspects for me are health, wealth, and love. I would see my career as a successful one. If every day, all my actions are bringing harmony in these three facets of life, health, wealth, and love. I've given this quite a lot of thought since I started at university with the rights and CRT competence and motivation, excellence would follow. But what is that? What truly matters, right? For me, it isn't just the materialistic success it's and that's why my goal is to succeed in all these three aspects, have great health, create wealth and create love. And this isn't something that I look to achieve one day, the goal is to keep accomplishing this e...

Contact Dell Ann Janney: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dell-ann-janney-at-c-sc/
Contact Wendy Tietz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendytietz/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In IMA’s a podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong. And this is episode 101 of our series. Today's conversation includes my co-host Adam Larson, Wendy Tietz, and Dell Ann Janney. Wendy and Dell Ann are two academic leaders in accounting, higher education. In this episode, they discuss the high flex teaching model, which has gained value in popularity, following the recent educational and economic environments around the world. Keep listening to hear how high flex teaching is being implemented and can be used to help accounting education.

Adam: (00:45)
So let's start by defining what is high flex teaching? What is the high flex teaching model, and how has it affected the accounting classroom?

Wendy: (00:53)
So I'll answer that. The high flex teaching model gives students a choice of how to attend class. So they're going to be able to attend face to face,  traditional classroom, or they can attend during class time online and to be able to see what's going on in the classroom or the screen, and have a chat room to communicate with and/or video cameras and microphones. And then the third option is allowing students to view the recording at their own time. So that's the high flex model teaching like that, giving students the option and with this pandemic that really comes in handy to be able to accommodate all the student needs, and at my school I've been doing high flex for about 10 years because I teach large classes and this has worked very well for us. It's especially nice now. I'm not, we don't have the face-to-face option in the large classes right now, but we're still operating under that same mode. And I know Dell Ann has been in the high flex model. So Dell Ann.

Dell Ann: (02:03)
Sure. So last May, when, if we go back to May, when the spring semester ended and all classes went online and students were taking classes remotely, I think that all academic leaders began to contemplate what a fall semester would look like. And Culver Stockton College is located in a rural area, and at the time we had no cases whatsoever of COVID. However, we have students from all across the country and even around the globe. So we anticipated the likelihood that students traveling from more populated areas would arrive and land in quarantine or isolation. So as we began to plan, we decided that faculty needed to prepare to teach both face-to-face, but also allow those students that are in quarantine isolation to attend synchronously online from luxuries of their gorgeous residence halls. So some faculty would have students that were unable to attend completely due to the COVID illness and thus would record their class session for those students to watch the video asynchronously at a later time. So this approach is referred to as high flex.

Adam: (03:22)
So, and I know you have both different, schools that you teach at and they are different models, but what are some of the challenges you've encountered with this teaching model?

Dell Ann: (03:34)
Well, the challenges are many. We can start out with equipment. So in May, we began to determine that faculty would need to bring in their own lab laptops into the classroom, in order to zoom, the, the faculty would need Zoom pro accounts, they would need external web cameras, headsets, and stylists and pad in order to stay at their computer to, to teach their classes. We had all classrooms reconfigured so that the chairs were all six feet apart. That was pretty crazy. In fact, there were a lot of our faculty leaders who were going room to room to rearrange and ensure that that the rooms would actually accommodate the number of students that were originally assigned to it. So for example, our chapel, which normally seats 200 students, ended up becoming a classroom and was re reconfigured to seat 30 students in it. One of the other interesting changes that we made was that all students would be required to sit in the same seat for the purpose of contract contact tracing,and so faculty, we actually created seating chart, which felt very elementary school. And although the students are six feet apart, we still felt that that was important to be able to verify. So I would mention that actually ends up being a pandemic positive if there are any we'll, we'll count this one, because those seating charts have been really a win, not for the purpose of contact tracing, but more so it's really helped the faculty to become much quicker at learning names. So I think the combination of faculty, of the students sitting in that same seat, each class period, and then having the seating chart to glance down at and learn their names, it was definitely a win. I think another challenge was the sanitizing. We felt that as the students entered, we would expect them to sanitize the desk upon their arrival and at their departure. So faculty really needed to monitor and ensure that that happened. And probably one of the biggest challenges with the students that were in person in the classroom was of course we do require all students to wear mask. And it's often difficult to hear students through their mask when they were speaking. Now, the challenges with the students that are online synchronously probably was getting them to participate and keeping them engaged, you know, certainly the opportunity for them to just log in on Zoom, turn off their camera and then possibly head back to bed and fall asleep was pretty good. So, and occasionally of course there were the dreaded technology, wifi issues for students attending via Zoom. As I previously mentioned, we're a pretty rural area. So there are students that live out in the country with limited internet access. And I think from a teaching perspective, probably one of the biggest challenges was staying in front of the computer at all times. So that the camera was on you not being able to write on the board. I'm a very animated professor. So when I'm teaching, I'm moving around, I'm helping my students and all of this makes it incredibly challenging, especially when you're trying to help a student with an Excel issue and you're trying to stay six feet away from them. So the, the last challenge I'd mentioned would be really no breaks. We consolidated, we removed every single break from this semester. So students definitely felt that you could see it in their eyes, and certainly for the students that were here in person, as it got into week eight and nine, that you could just see in their eyes, how stressed they were. So I know that the students needed breaks, and I think I could say that our faculty needed breaks as well.

Wendy: (07:46)
Okay. We had some of the same challenges. Our classrooms were equipped with, cameras that would follow faculty moving around the room. So that was over the summer. That was a nice add on. We also have got camps in every room and every classroom has the same exact, equipment layout so faculty could go,.Of course, my classes with hundreds of students, are not being held in person. Anything above 50 cannot be held in person. So we're just doing the online. But I would, thinking back to when I started doing high flex several years ago, high flex, it's certainly harder to engage students, whether they're in front of you, whether they're online with you or whether they're watching the recording. So you always have to keep those three modes as you're teaching, as you're designing the class, because the class isn't like a face-to...

Contact Rachael Bertrandt Crump: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-bertrandt-crump-cpa-cgma-303b057/

About Rachael Bertrandt Crump: https://www.insight.com/en_US/about/management/rachael-bertrandt.html

Leadership Article with Rachael: https://profilemagazine.com/2020/rachael-bertrandt-insight/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:04)
 Welcome back for the hundredth episode of Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Once again, I'm your host Adam Larson, and I'm pleased to introduce the featured guest for today's episode Rachael Bertrandt Crump. Rachel is a Global Corporate Controller and Principal Accounting Officer for Insight, a leading provider of computer hardware, software cloud solutions, and IT services. In her conversation with Mitch, she discusses what it means to be a global leader, the importance of culture, and how to develop top leadership talent. Let's head over and listen to the full episode now.

Mitch: (00:44)
So our conversation today revolves around a leadership article that you wrote earlier this year about being a global leader, to kick off the conversation. Let's first start by getting your definition of a leader. You know, I'd really like to get an idea of who it is that you see as a leader or who can be a leader in the organization, and then particularly for this conversation, we're going to focus on global leadership and global organization. So what does all of that really mean to you? What does that look like?

Rachael: (01:12)
Sure. So to me, my definition of a leader is anyone or someone who's driven to influence a particular outcome. So really in any organization that can be anyone who has a passion or a drive, around a particular topic, or to achieve a particular outcome. So if everyone can be a leader, right, and an organization just isn't what we might do in our nine to five or how we interact during that work time. I'm a firm believer that, you know, we're training our future leaders, in all of our organizational units today, in our family units, and our schools and the volunteer work and everything we do. And those are, those are our future global leaders, global citizens. So it, it's almost  most important that everyone who steps up to lead is their leading, where their passion drives them to. I think that the diversity and experience that everyone brings, is really what, what kind of brings out passion in someone. And, and that's what makes a good leader to me.

Mitch: (02:30)
Well, I really liked the fact that you brought up, you know, home in school particular. Just my personal background, I actually come from classroom teaching before I started this. I was working with students and coaching and, you know, I think a big part of that growth in an individual is the leadership that they see on a daily basis. So now from our perspective, you know, obviously more professionally, the organizational culture will certainly shape a leader as well. So I'm curious, you know, how exactly does that happen and can culture affect an individual's ability to be a leader, particularly globally?

Rachael: (03:12)
I absolutely believe that that culture, impacts leadership. I think it can propel leadership forward, kind of that Lightspeed, if you will, but I also think the wrong culture can stifle would be leaders. particularly if they have less direct leadership experience and they're looking to step into, you know, a leadership role, whether it's, you know, official or unofficial. They can lose confidence if the organization and the culture doesn't embrace diversity and experience. I think that, you know, maybe many decades ago, experience was measured mainly, based on jobs months, years, sorry, days, months, years in a job and now I think there's a lot more that defines experience based more than just on kind of the time in the seat or the time in the job and I think it's that, you know, that diversity of experience that really gets about how global organizations can be so effective today. Someone coming into the workforce today that, and I use myself as an example, you know, went to the same university in Wisconsin, got the same degree I did, you know, few decades ago. Their experiences actually entirely different than mine. Their context, how they learn the tools, the office tools with which they learned on, and that puts them at a different starting point than it did me, and that experience just because, you know, I've been in the workforce, then maybe I've learned my tools on the job. Doesn't put me, you know, necessarily at an advantage, from a leadership perspective over what their experience might have to offer. So I really think that that is, you know, important in our global organizations today, that we acknowledge the diversity in experience, and how people, how people achieve experience in what we define as experience, because I think that's what really takes, an organization to the next level. And culture has to embrace that, right? I mean, culture can be a whole other  podcast, right. But, you know, culture really has to embrace diversity and to draw it out, to draw out your, your future leaders, because I mean, if we don't, if we don't train ourselves, train up ourselves, right, we're going to be in a, I think a world of hurt, we'll be at a disadvantage, as an organization.

Mitch: (06:01)
Well, you certainly make great points, and I think the one thing that I want to emphasize is, you know, there has been a shift in what someone's experience is, you know, you mentioned that the time piece of it, and I think a lot of businesses today are recognizing that certain skills certainly differentiate, applicants, regardless of, you know, how many years they have on the job, but to your other point, you know, culture, it certainly has existing barriers still when it comes to leadership development. And while, you know, there might be a shift in mindset as far as experience and skills and whatnot. What are some of the other barriers that you think are really affecting these organizations? And then what is hindering individuals from reaping some leadership development from their organization?

Rachael: (06:52)
So I tend to believe that that we ourselves and our unconscious bias is one of our biggest barriers to effective global leadership. We have to think bigger than our own, you know, kind of universe right in the moment. And that can be super fun, mindblowing, but it can also be a bit overwhelming. I also think desire and passion have to come naturally. I believe every human, you know, it, they have it for something in their life, but it, it  they have to feel it and want it for it to come out, and kind of break through their own natural barrier. And then, you know, kind of along the same lines, we're, we're our own best advocate and our own worst enemy, maybe. But other barriers showing compassion and empathy and being vulnerable. So when you think of global leadership that the people that you are leading likely are, you know, very, diverse geographically, across many different regions. And, and so you're serving them as a leader and you're not in there, you know, you're not in their seat. You don't know your day to day in your region likely looks very different than their day to day in their region. And so really being vulnerable and having, that empathetic view for what they, you know, may be going through, I think really makes a difference as to whether you'll be an effective global leader or not.

Mitch: (08:33)
And...

Contact Andrea Williams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-williams-201a9a12/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong, and this is episode 99 of our series. Today's conversation features Andrea Williams, Senior Vice President and Controller at Perdue Foods. In this episode, Andrea talks with Adam about the future of accounting work and the ethical challenges management accountants need to be aware of as their roles continue to evolve. Let's get over to the discussion and hear more about the topic now. 
 
Adam: (00:40)
What do you see as the differences between management reporting and financial reporting? 
 
Andrea: (00:45)
Well, financial reporting certainly has to follow all of the accounting roles that we were trained on as accounting professionals and those roles continue to evolve over time. Management reporting should certainly follow all those rules, but normally management reporting looks at slices of the business and targets insights into subsets of the financial statement. And so it's really important for the management accounting teams that are preparing that information to keep the financial reporting in mind and certainly tied to it and every possible way that they can, but to recognize that they're peeling the onion and that they really need to be careful in how they represent those pieces, that they would still represent what is in the ultimate financial statements. In our business, we have, we use management reporting for certainly for what I  would call, accountability reporting. We provide levels of reporting for all layers of management, from folks that are running a subset of the production floor all the way up, of course, to the executive. And we also provide reporting that is targeted to certain functional areas, you know, the sales teams and the marketing teams and the, the critical aspect of this is that as management accountants, again, we need to really be sure that ultimately these are subsets of the financial reporting and be really careful that we don't mislead folks as we're just providing their slice of the pie.

Adam

So how do those differences, provide some additional ethical challenges that management accountants need to be aware of? 

Andrea:

Well, providing the multiple views, doesn't always easily coalesce, into the total. And so an example of that is, we actually provide, what we call sales value of production to each of our plant facilities. Sometimes they like to call them income statements. We always correct them and say, no, this isn't an income statement. This is a sales value of production. And the critical difference there is that from a production perspective, they're interested in understanding a margin related to products they produce that week or that month or that quarter, even. And of course we are as many businesses, we don't sell out everything that we produce in a particular alignment with a financial week or financial close, and so consequently, we are put in a position of bringing in what we call a representative sales value. It may end up being more or less than what we ultimately realized as the invoice value. And so where this becomes an ethical challenge is that, of course we have algorithms that go out and choose what sales value to use, for example, that's based on history. And so everyone's happy to use that sales value when it, when we're in a rising market, unless happy to use it when we're in a declining market or in a business that is impacted by some commodity values. And, that becomes, can become an ethical challenge because obviously you can't play both sides of the coin and because it isn't, tied to invoice sale, we get into very interesting conversations with our production folks, and we all just need to remember what was the point of what we're trying to represent and be as honest as we can with the business and ourselves and what we're representing. 
 
 Adam: (04:35)
 Definitely. So, you know, you're kind of referring to how, you know, things are constantly changing in the industry and all over the world, and obviously we're still in a pandemic that's happening. how have you seen like the management accountant role evolve over time, especially with all the, everything that's been happening? 
 
 Andrea: (04:52)
 Well, in the most recent day, I would say the, just like everyone else, we all have to learn how to work from our homes, where we were traditionally more used to being in the offices or in the plant, the plant, buildings. So certainly our technology skills have had to improve and our collaborative skills, you know, building  itand, you know, as everyone in the world that seems to be doing as our zoom meetings. So that's in the more recent, the more recent days of how we've had to evolve. I would say over time in my career, there's really been an evolution of what the management accountants are expected to do. When I started, the roles were very, closing focused. The closing calendar was paramount. We, you know, work through task lists that were either leading to, or coming out of closing cycles, and it was still very much, an accounting role. And although we still have those responsibilities, our business partners really, don't expect to live and die by a resource that is connected to closing calendars, and consequently we've had to smooth out our tasks, and actually provide information in a more consistent basis every single week. And then some, some cases every single day. That is not really impacted, by the strict financial reporting. And what that means is then we've added to our plate, a significant amount of what we call estimates. We do a weekly estimate, all throughout the entire business of what we based on information that, you know, certainly happened in that prior week. But, you know, we're making, you know, educated guesses of what something will actually realize based on education and history and foresight and those types of activitieswe're not anywhere in the role when we, when I first started. And so then that's transitioned to not just, you know, that's still looking backwards, and so in the last several years, of course, then now we're being asked to look forward and providing, much more of our time is providing information of what we believe will happen, not reporting on what has happened. That's a significant shift and it requires, um, very demanding skills on, on accounting folks, very different than, you know, the traditional auditing skills or traditional just financial closing skills.
 
 Adam: (07:39)
 For sure. So you, you know, you've described kind of how the roles evolved for that you've seen over time, but where do you kind of see it going in the future? 
 
 Andrea: (07:47)
 So, interestingly enough, I feel like the profession's at a crossroads. A  crossroads being that, are we going to continue as management accountants covering both roles? Are we going to continue to be the ones that, you know, shepherd the books and really make sure that things are tied out, in addition to all the analytical demands, or are we going to split into separate groups? That one group is handling the accounting and one group is deeper into the analytics. I've seen that certainly some of the other bigger companies as they, as they create separate FP&Agroups. and I feel like I'm seeing a trend of that, that's more and more what's requested, certainly at the, at the bigger, at the bigger companies. And so what happens there is that then how do those teams ...

Contact Nicole Gonzalez Cumberbatch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleggonzalez/
IMA's Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/diversity-and-inclusion

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 this is episode 98 of our podcast series. Today's episode features a conversation between my co-host Adam and member of IMA's Diversity and Inclusion committee, Nicole Gonzalez Cumberbatch. Nicole is a senior accounting professional with over 17 years of experience. She is an advocate for leadership and mentorship, and in this episode, she shares some strategies for the working parents who find themselves juggling various priorities on a daily basis. This timely conversation is helpful for many accounting and finance professionals who find themselves working from home and looking for some tips to better balance their time. So to hear more action that you can take, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.

Adam: (00:52)
So Nicole given the COVID pandemic, so many of us parents have found ourselves in a unique environment of juggling our careers and family without substantial caregiver or employer support. What impact has that had on the workforce?

Nicole: (01:12)
Well, Adam it has had a tremendous impact Obviously, economically, you know, we see change drastically due to high unemployment, massive lay-offs companies going out of business. So in that aspect, it's, you know, working parents are now out of work, right? Trying to figure out how to support their families. But on the flip side of that, for working parents, especially with young children, it's been extremely challenging just recently. I read a New York times op-ed that said, there was a quote that said, “You can have a kid or a job. You can't have both.” And I was like, Oh gosh, that's so, you know, that really, I think summed up a good portion of the last seven months. And then just briefly to kind of pivot, and I know you're a male and I'm a female, not trying to be biased, but more specifically female working, working parents only because in general women are the ones who kind of run the household and they were usually the ones that stayed at home. So another statistic I have is that it said, according to this benefits platform called Cleo, one-third of working parents have already left the workforce, and that was from July, do or gone part-time due to COVID related reasons, and 70% of those parents were women. And the reason why that affects the workforce is because as I previous, previously stated, women were usually the ones that worked from home, the mentor, their breadwinners, the ones who worked out outside of the home, and you know, where the support system for the family over the past 10, 20 years, women were joining the, joining the workforce at tremendous numbers. I think recently it said it was like up 50% and equal to men in the workforce. So now we're seeing a setback of that, right? So you see women going back and having to choose. And if that is 70% of women back in July, we're in October, you know, so I'm assuming that the numbers have either have probably more so gone up, and I guess the bigger question is what does that do for the future? I know I've read articles that say, some women will not be going back because there's so much uncertainty with childcare and not having support. sSo it's, it's had a tremendous impact, and I think it's actually frightening, for what the future holds, you know, working parents in general, again, had to struggle with before the pandemic of trying to find support and balance and, all of those things. And now even more so in trying to find childcare amongst the pandemic, when, who else can watch your children, but yourself.

Adam: (03:50)
So what are some actions that parents can take, you know, to work through and to be better prepared during, as these challenges continue to come up, because as we see it, you know, the pandemics not really going away as, as soon as we all thought it may be.

Nicole: (04:04)
You know, I think first off, I think you have to surrender and accept the fact that this is what it is. And that's, I think important in all things of life, right? You just got to kind of surrender to it. I think it's kinda ingrained in us that we want things to go this way, especially as a parents in general. You know, we may want our children to act a certain way or we want to react this way, but that's just not life. And especially during a pandemic, as I'm sure you've seen and myself, you know, things just arise that we can't control. So surrender. Next I would say, adjust your expectations, allow yourself grace for the chaos and imperfect reality that's going to ensue, like we just know that's going to happen and allow for flexibility. you know, I think it's important again, as parents in general, but more so when you're trying to work from home and, and be a caregiver to your children at the same time, like you just have to allow yourself that grace and know some days are going to be more chaotic. Some days are not going to run smoothly and you just have to be okay with that. And then I would say aesthetically, you know, make sure that you have a comfortable working space for yourself and for your children, if they are, you know, doing virtual school, if you have a younger child turn on your TV and Disney plus, you know, just kidding, but no, you have to find ways of maybe creating spaces for them that next to your desk that makes them feel comfortable that mommy and daddy are right there, but they kind of have a comfortable space. And then just a few other things I would say, create a routine, this way you and your child goals kind of know what the day is like, as opposed to just waking up and be like, Hey, what's going to happen today. Make sure you have the right equipment supplies and honestly ask, ask for help. I think one of the biggest things, is again, prior to the pandemic working parents had these issues of trying to balance and finding childcare and all these things and get proper time off, and now in the pandemic everybody's having these issues. I think men are seeing the struggles women have had of trying to run a household and work while the children are kind of there. You know? so I think it's had everyone kind of slowed down and realized like, Oh, wow, this is a thing, this is something that's major. So I would say, ask for help, you know, whatever that, whatever that is, you know, that you need, but ask for help from your employer, your village, your community, and go from there.

Adam: (06:34)
Definitely. I mean, because there's so many new challenges and you kind of have to be flexible. That's the kind of the thing I kind of centered it on is like being flexible because not only do you have, you know, kids working from kids doing their school from home, but then they also have projects that they need to do and you have your work that you have to do and you have to kind of balance it all You have to be flexible and not only do we have to be flexible, but companies have to be flexible with their employees. Like, Hey, this person can't come to this meeting at this time because their kid has something that they need to help them with at that time, and they need to be able to be flexible in that as well.

Nicole: (07:06)
Yeah. And I think the struggles with the smaller companies are probably the biggest thing, like some of the biggest bigger companies, and I'm sure we'll get into what companies are kind of doing this quote unquote the right way. but I th...

Contact Eli Amdur: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliamdur/
Email Eli Amdur: eli.amdur@amdurcoaching.com

Eli Amdur Website and Contact info: http://eliamdur.com/
Eli's Blog: http://eliamdur.com/index.php/blog/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
 Welcome back for episode 97 of Count Me iIn, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm happy to bring you our latest episode on the work environment and personal development, Eli Amdur, Career and Executive coach, Journalist, and Keynote Speaker, joined my cohost Mitch to talk about recent business decisions, what they've meant to those in the workforce and what individuals can do to best prepare themselves for the future. I'm sure you will enjoy this conversation. So let's go listen.

Mitch: (00:34)
What is your perspective on the current business environment and how would you rate businesses in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Eli: (00:51)
Mitch, good question. First, let me say, thanks for inviting me here. I'm happy to be with you and your membership. Current business environment, for sure, it's unlike any we've ever experienced. It's, it's being, it's being influenced by as many serious, conditions as has ever existed together at one time in an  economic meltdown, massive job losses, COVID-19 social and racial and gender unrest. We're doing, we're experiencing as much as we've ever experienced before. What I'm afraid of is knee jerk reactions on the parts of employers, entire industries, even government agencies, but it's, it's natural, but it's something that I think is way overboard. For instance, the thing about working remote. Well, we didn't have a choice on that. We understand that. And having technology that permits us to do it is a pretty awesome thing, but companies already having said that we're going to work remote until 2022. They're getting out of lease deals, they're selling office space. I think they're making decisions that one day soon, they're going to be kind of sorry, they've made as, as suddenly, and as, I should say thoughtlessly as they have made them. I don't think enough thought has gone into it.

Mitch: (02:37)
Well, what are the potential outcomes of these decisions? You know, it's something you're afraid of. It. It might be a little thoughtlessness, but you know, as far as businesses and their sustainability longevity, why might these decisions may not be the best ones for the business?

Eli: (02:52)
That's a, that's a great question, and I think it's because we're reacting to things we can see immediately. We're not holding off on our decisions. You know, I'm very fond of saying, and I've said this for many years, going way, way back to like corporate leadership roles. That if we thought about the consequences of our decisions before we made them, we would make better decisions. So yeah, COVID hits and we got to get everybody out of each other's ways. Otherwise the transmission of the disease will be increasing, which it is now anyway, as you know, but the things we can't see are things that have now become a little clearer to a lot of people, both workers and leaders, and decision-makers in organizations. And that is that we're missing the interpersonal connections that we so very much we rely on and enjoy during our work days and our careers. We are social creatures. We rely on belonging to groups. In human history, those groups have taken all kinds of shapes, like a corporate division of religion, a fan club, a, a community we need that. It is one of the most basic of all human needs. Abraham Maslow pointed that asked to us very well. Once we get done with our physiological needs, for food, clothing, and shelter and things like that, and our longer term security needs the most basic need of all his belongings. We're missing that, people are lonely. They don't like being alone. They want to be part of a team where somebody slapped somebody on the back or shakes hands and  nods approval in a conference room. And those, the lack of those things tend to decrease the effectiveness and the efficiency of performance, but not, not enough companies are realizing that yet. There's still an element of their technology and their ability to work remotely.

Mitch: (05:00)
Now, obviously there are circumstances that are preventing businesses from reopening and people being able to gather in the manner that you're discussing. there are going to obviously be those who have their concerns going forward. Long-term so what can businesses do? How can businesses accommodate the needs of the human being of their employees, keeping in mind their safety, most importantly, but also being able to offer this human interaction and this gathering so that they may be able to feel slightly more accomplished and, and achieve all the benefits that you previously mentioned.

Eli: (05:37)
Well, let me answer that two ways in the very, very short term, nothing. We've got to continue doing what we're doing, because we don't have a way to prevent this disease, and we don't have a way to treat this disease. And with the spikes that are going on predominantly in the United States, more than any other country, now we're headed into the third wave and winter time, it's, it's serious business. We're going to have to sacrifice something and that's our belongingness, our togetherness, our interaction. So in the short term, until there is a vaccine that is safe, effective, and plentiful, because we don't know if it's going to be a one time, or if you have to do a second booster, we don't know that any of that yet. Until that time, there's just very little we can do other than continue to reach out remotely as much as we possibly can, but go longer term, and I can't tell you exactly what that long return is. It's going to be six months from now. Is it going to be eight months? Don't know, but I can tell you that there's, there are indications that companies have already realized this. Recent news has shown that in the world of big tech and I referred to the big four, which is Google, Amazon, Facebook, and, Microsoft have taken up new leases on a couple of million square feet of office space in Manhattan. So they apparently have given this some thought and Facebook is a company, but that early on in this pandemic said that they have that their employees could work remote until 2021 and 2022, but they're buying up office space. I think they know what's going on. Maybe they're getting good deals because of the situation, but, they're going to be calling employees back into work, and I think they understand the thing about the consequences of their decisions. And so I think what companies can do is to let their employees know and their vendors and their customers as well, we're not running away, we're not going to be a one 800 don't bother me.com type of business. but that they are indeed intending to get back to working closely together and to strengthen the interpersonal bonds. If I were to advise corporations and not just big tech, but all corporations, that's exactly where I would go.

Mitch: (08:11)
Now, how about logistically more specific to our audience? Right? We work for accounting and finance professionals at large, you know, their role was already changing prior to this pandemic. And then you add the remote aspect to everything, you know, their jobs have shifted. What can you recommend as far as, you know, accounting and finance professionals, accounting and finance organizations to, you know, best again, accommodate these needs while maintaining the safety of their e...

Contact Amir Tabch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amir-tabch/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. In this special new episode, my co-host Rouba dives into the world of FinTech in the Middle East region through an elaborate discussion with Amir Tabch. Amir has close to two decades of experience as a finance professional advisory board member for multinational companies in various FinTech and wealth tech initiatives. This conversation features the state of the sector in the region, and Amir explains how finance and accounting professionals can leverage these technologies to better support their organizations. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.

Rouba: (00:47)
I mean, you're someone who's acquired a successful career mainly because of your ability to read the trends and the patterns with passion. I mean, looking at the chart, I remember it, one of the stories was that whether it was your wife's contraction monitor or a financial chart, you have an eye for seeing the patterns behind the, when they manifest. So you pride yourself on looking past the complexity to see the certainty. How does one develop such an outlook, especially at a critical time, like now where God knows where the global economy is headed and trends are being accelerated or even annihilated , in some cases overnight?

Amir: (01:26)
Well, as much as I'd like to claim that identifying trends and patterns and forecasting is an inherent skill, it really isn't. Of course, on the other hand the creation is. Now there are essentially a lot of things that can take credit for being responsible when it comes to analyzing these prices and trends and patterns either when one's inspecting them in isolation or in totality. So, first of all, when it comes to looking at trends and patterns, it goes without saying that these analytical skills need to be honed. So one has to be in touch with market realities. We have to also look at human behavior industry changes, social and economic forces, and no amount of experience in the industry can make up for constant and consistent research. To be ever updated and in touch, not just with the events they can place in our industry, but all other events, whether it's culture, whether it's fashion. And the point I mentioned earlier, which is inclination. So being inquisitive by nature allowed me to always look beyond the final results and really go into these matters of causation behind those results. That being said, all who believed that being a man of numbers, someone like me, boring is not really accurate,  To be able to analyze these trends and immediately place the ones that are not in tandem with the market environment, which requires an extremely creative bent of mind. You have to be able to think outside the box when predicting matters of extreme relevance. And one also needs to be very well versed with consumer behavior and producer behavior trends that are a consequence of human psychology. And you have to have an approachable and inclusive outlook to things which allows you more room to acknowledge the possible mistakes and even benefit in detecting trends that would otherwise go unnoticed. And like you said, in such uncertain times, the only thing we can be certain of is the constant, unpredictable nature of things. And that's when we look at these trends and these patterns and these price formations, we can only doing so by living in the moment. And that is something I learned from, from Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda, one of my son's favorite movies. He said, yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present. So Master Oogway a fantastic follower and really good at pattern. So basically living in the moment.

Rouba: (04:23)
If we were to look at this particular area, which is your area of expertise and, you know, something that's been on an evolutionary scale for the past three decades, we see most of   e-trading online banking and wealth tech driving it, but there's a recent report by KPMG that stated that over $135 billion were invested in FinTech last year globally. And, that the transactional transaction value is expected to grow to some $10 trillion in 2023. The Middle East financial services revenue will account for 8% of these figures. So experts find that this growth is directly related to the increasing number of FinTech, startups, growth of the Islamic banking sector and the high mobile penetration, which is above the entire planet. I mean the UAE loan has 173% So the UAE also accounts for one third of the total number of FinTech startups. We talk about 46% in the world, but in your opinion, what is really driving such an exponential growth?

Amir: (05:29)
Well, the underlying cause behind such results is the foundation really to building Syntech development, by the UAE policy makers. They began to implement these forward thinking policies, regarding the FinTech since 2017. Two leading, financial free zones, I've actually development and some tech space global markets on one hand and the IFC Dubai International Financial Center. Now the IFC created the FinTech hive, which was essentially a a hundred million dollar fund that gave companies access to accelerate a program mentorship from leading financial institutions and insurance partners. And in 2018 IFC I see an Accenture, which is a firm I'm sure everyone knows about, but to those that don't, it's a prominent consulting company. They signed a MOU to foster growth of FinTechs and enabled such types of collaboration in the region. ADGM created the reg lab FinTech sandbox where FinTech participants could actually develop and innovate FinTech solutions in a controlled environment. And obviously the after effect of these efforts have not only provided FinTEch startup much confidence and support, you know, also kind of generated an acceptance from the public, making them popular, so to speak. It's kind of like in football or any other sport for that matter when sponsorships not only provide teams with the financial support they require, but also the added benefit of being part of the sponsors, PR tactics, which can help grow the public state and the team. On another front, the demographics and these kind of things definitely play a role. almost half of the population in the MENA region is younger than 25. And this factor alone allows for growing market of early technological adopters. Now, the younger, the population, the more flexible and adaptable they are to these types of technological investments and UAE in particular acts as a gateway to a wider region, and enables FinTechs to enter emerging markets across Africa, South Asia, and of course the middle East. Now this expanded region along with being an $8 trillion market is home to 3 billion people, with 70% of them, having limited to no access to financial services. Now, although the middle East constitutes about 1% of the global FinTech investment, this sector is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 30%. This means that for a mere and significantly smaller investments, the growth levels are multifold in amount. Now at the same time as ADJM and BRC created these environments to foster FinTechs and enabled them to grow, the Central Bank of the UAE and the SCA, the Securities and Commodity Authority, they established a dedicated  FinTech office to set national regulations specific to the industry. In 2018, they launched the production strategy, which aims to convert 50% of government transactions to e-payment services to allow these FinTechs to partake in the game. And they're also then, different investment funds who have come up over the years, like the, [inaudible] f...

About Brad Ledford: https://www.dhg.com/people/userid/278?filter=bledford
Contact Brad Ledford: bledford@dhgsearch.com
 or https://www.linkedin.com/in/expertrecruiterbradledford/

DHG Search:https://www.dhgsearch.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:00)
 Welcome back to episode 95 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson, and I'm here to preview today's conversation and introduce our featured guest speaker, Brad Ledford. My cohost Mitch talked to Brad about the changing job market and the new norms and job seeking, interviewing and hiring. Brad is the President of DHG Search, where he provides advisory and recruiting services for candidates in finance, accounting, audit and tax. In this episode, he explains what recruiting looks like today and describe some new opportunities in the workforce to hear a great career-related discussion, keep listening as we head over the conversation now.

Mitch: (00:48)
So Brad, to start in broad terms, from what you've seen, how has the job market really changed over the last six months? How did companies change their approach for hiring? What did the overall job availability look like? You know, just from your perspective, what has this last few months done for the job market?

Brad: (01:09)
Yeah. Great question, and there's no doubt, it looks different. The one thing the unemployment rate has jumped from 2.4% approximately now up to 8.4%, and that's down to slightly where it was maybe just just a few weeks ago. So that, that right there in itself is a very good indicator of some significant change in the job market. And what I saw during that window, as COVID-19 started to impact the marketplace, were companies really pushing the pause button or, in some cases, opportunities just drying up. And really from that, I'd say that March to May or February to June window is where that started to really show,and of course, unemployment rates started to spike. You then saw in that same window of times, companies starting to lag their process or slow their process significantly. Even if they already had just started a search or recruiting process. So a lot of times individuals would be, in the beginning stages and all of a sudden feel like, Hey we're where did that search go? Where does that process, end up and companies were kind of, Hey, wait and see mode during that window. And then some just really were not interested at all in hiring, during this last six months. So you've seen a little bit of pockets in both areas where, you know, some companies are starting to come back, but, you know, from that last six months, we've, we've seen a big change and, and how, the market has been impacted. And then part is your second question, I guess, how the companies approach hiring and what does it mean to overall job availability? You know, I think companies started to realize there are some candidates coming on to the marketplace and then they started looking at their job profile and their role and what they needed. And what I saw was companies starting to add more boxes to the checklist that they needed. So instead of it being, Hey, at 2.4, under 3% unemployment, and if these people had these couple of things and then this good accounting skills or certification or background, it jumped to, wow, I need these 10 things checked and their background to consider them for the position. So it really did change how companies were approaching, hiring, and then also, you know, availability, job availability changed. Now I'll also say it was interesting that there was, there was some organizations that looked at this as a scenario of, hey, there's an opportunity to add resumes to their database or add connections or contacts. And so you may have still saw some folks, I guess, taking candidates, but it just, it just slowed significantly.

Mitch: (04:19)
So our listeners, accounting and finance professionals, they span many industries, and I'm just curious again, from what you've seen, are there particular industries that remain more active or even successful in hiring through this? And then I'd like to get your thoughts on the opposite as well. Are there any roles or industries that really suffered more because of the change in the hiring process and the availability and everything you just mentioned?

Brad: (04:47)
Yeah. Great, great question. At the firm, I'm part of Dixon Hughes Goodman, and the team I lead within DHG Search. We go to market as an industry and service specialists, of course. And so that industry piece was very important that we had a wide range of industries we serve during this time, because there were, there was significant change in that as well. You know, a few of the industries that stood out as continuing to hire with course ones that had the essential business aspect to them, and those were construction, healthcare, some real estate, and then the other one that you saw kind of spike during this window of time, is IT, and IT companies, or IT roles because as people were going more remote, IT needed to step in and really add to their team to be able to service their own internal teams or external clients that they were serving. So those, those are a few industries that jump out to me as, as, we saw continued, activity in. And another one that was kind of surprising was automotive space, the automotive dealership space. I have a team, and a leader that does a great job in that space,  and what she saw was definitely they pushed the pause button, but it kind of came back a little quicker than others. And I don't know if that was just where some confidence was or some opportunity was there for individuals to, with low interest rates or whatever the case may be to, to purchase a vehicle. And so we saw that bounce back a little quicker as well. But then there's others that were a mix I'll, I'll put healthcare in that space too, because in some areas of healthcare, it was, we need talent and we need to find talent, but there was some specialty areas where people were not being able to utilize or get out to that then also were impacted. And then the other one that was significantly hurt was hospitality, and the restaurant space. That space, there, there were companies that are no longer in business now due to this pandemic.

Mitch: (06:57)
And how about what things look like today? What is recruiting, as far as what's available and, you know, for our listeners, whether they are passively looking for work or, you know, actively looking for work, maybe they came from one of those industries that really suffered, you know, what can those looking for a job? Or those looking for recruiting help, expect today?

Brad: (07:19)
Yeah. So it looks a lot different today. the first thing I would say you want to do today is make sure you have your own technology ready to be able to do Zoom videos, paint team videos, videos, remotely of course, for these interviews. So that, that's the first thing I would say. That looks way different. A video, a viral video comes to mind as you asked that question and our world looks a little different in, and I think it was several years ago, maybe 2017, 2018, a reporter maybe in the BBC or a professor was on a reporting segment and his child walked through the background of the video, and then the wife walked through the background of the video and he he's trying to do this very serious news report and just, it just goes wrong. Right. So what I would say today, is the first thing is ma...

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Adam: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA’s podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm pleased to bring you another bonus episode for my co-host Rouba Zeidan. For this conversation, Rouba talks with Asha Merugu, senior manager at EY. Asha explains her career journey in the finance industry and shares her perspective on how gender parody is being driven in many private and government sectors in India. Let's head over and take a listen to the full conversation now.

Rouba: (00:38)
So according to the Global Findex database released by the World Bank, roughly one out of two bank accounts in India remain inactive, which is about twice the average of other developing economies. What is the worst, you know, is notable in terms of the gender gap when it comes to this amount? So for example, 54% of women account holders report not actually using their accounts as opposed to 43% of male holders. Do you think that there's a need for financial education amongst women in order to render the more financially savvy?

Asha: (01:18)
No, it's a great question. Obviously, yes, right. So there has to be a financial education amongst women. There is no secondary view about it, but if you look at like in today's era, what is very important, is it just not awomen, like, even men need financial education, but of course they are considering, you know, I have gone in a very small region India and you know, so my mother is a working professional. She was, she is a doctor, and then I have seen as a kid, how challenging it is for working mothers to manage a finance and a home and a work. So finance was always in the hands of the father, right? Like the major decisions were made by fathers and anything to do with the major investments in India is always made by of, you know, father of the family. So that's how the most Indian families, which are traditionally like, you know, middle class and maybe a little bit higher upper middle class families would do except for some exceptions. But, but I agree with you, I think considering the way, you know, the India is going on. Oh, you're right. Like most of the wommen in India does not have active bank accounts. You know there could be majority of the reasons, like, for example, if you take working women, they do have bank accounts, right? So because salary gets credited to bank, but look at the number of transactions that happens in the account. Oh, I mean the service here sees that most women are not very, very, investment savvy. They don't really want to invest and take risks. This is like a majority of the mindset because it's, it's always a protective or culture that we have grown up. Right. We have been grown up as a kid that, okay, you have to save, you have to take care. You know, you have to, or you have to secure yourself, and this is how I think the education system in India works too. And this is what makes women very conservative, especially I feel in India. And most of the women though, they earn salaries and their bank account would be limited to the salary account. You don't find them making the investments, which meant there to make it aggressively. Right. They don't actually spend the portfolios aggressively. Now coming to the question of, you know, like how do you give this education to your question that, do you think there's a need for financial education? Yes. I think there's a very, very, very important need for financial education, especially amongst I think the middle class families and, you know, the working woman category, the Indian government is also doing quite a few things to get this education spread amongst the communities. In fact, I think if you look at Jonathan Yogendra that India, God, which makes every household to have an account bank account, you know, compulsory for the purpose of getting the pension or maybe for the purpose of getting any of the amenities, which our government is passing on, the government made it mandatory. I think that was a great initiative from a government perspective to get women  data, at least as a concept of saving. And there's a concept of you having an account to get your money. That way the woman doesn't just take all the money and put it in the hands of men. In some families, I think it's very unfortunate that this will happen so that the government has done some initiatives by having this agenda huge now. And I think bringing some education, bringing all the schemes through which the small amount of the money reaches, right. It reaches through an account itself. So even though I think the report says a lot, gradually my view is that is India speaking up. You know, the people are becoming extremely, you know, now savvy about using the bank accounts, you know, using digital means and more so because of the COVID right. In the last six months, I think we have seen a great transformation in India. Maybe this question would have been definitely very relevant six months ago. And I see, Oh, you know, because there was an option for people to use and not to use digital means and accounts and et cetera, or, you know, people may be what I think, not, not really compelled to do it, but if you look at now, I think because of all of these initiatives of a government and the COVID and the digital initiatives, which are coming up in India. Digital India is a biggest initiative in India where everybody is forced to use it. I'll give you like a very small examples of how I see in, you know, women are using, you know, bank accounts now, because they're compelled to have ATM's and pay apps and, you know, all of those digital wallets. You know, I live in a very small place, like, you know, like it's actually cost mobility. And I live in Bangalore, you know, which is, which is a very good city, but there are some places of the Bangalore, which has got, you know, a small streets where all the women sit on the floor and they sell jewelry, they sell vegetables and they sell all the types of items. And I see a biggest advancement amongst them, as they do accept digital mode of cash, which means they're getting comfortable, right, to start using digital initiatives. I think I feel, yes, there is definitely a need. I mean, it is definitely important for government to think through more, to provide a financial education, but there is definitely some kind of an advancement happening in India. So that's what I feel.

Rouba: (06:20)
Amazing initiatives actually. It kind of gives you a very promising view of the future, but I mean, despite this rapid, rapid and consistent growth of the financial sectors, we want to zoom in on that. And specifically in India, there's a widening gender gap in the country's financial industry. I mean, with women, underrepresented, underrepresented in employment, at nearly every single level, this is the very same ecosystem that you rose to a leadership position, and yet you remain undeterred. So how has your experience been, and what were some of your guiding principles?

Asha: (06:59)
Yeah. So it's, it's a journey, Rouba, isn't it? It's all about a journey. Leadership is all about, I think the purpose of a life and living life. And I truly believe in it, you would not be able to achieve anything overnight, you know, in life, right. You have to really strive for it and you have to dream for it. And I've believed in this principle that, you know, you're all about your thoughts. If you think you can, you can, if you think you can't you're right, because you thought that you can't, right. So the human mindset is always about the thoughts and the thoughts makes you and, and thoughts breaks you. So of course, I think the women in India definitely has to, you know, has to support each other to, you know, like get into the ecosystem and understand each other and understand that...

Contact Neta Meidav: https://www.linkedin.com/in/netameidav/

Vault: https://vaultplatform.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
 Welcome back for episode 94 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today I'll be bringing you right up to a conversation between my cohost Mitch Roshong and Neta Meidav. Neta is the Co-founder and CEO of Vault, a reporting platform designed to resolve workplace misconduct incidents. In this episode, she discusses the pitfalls with traditional internal reporting or whistleblower policies within organizations, and how technology such as her platform can enhance internal, ethical reporting moving forward. So without further ado, let's hear their conversation now.

Mitch: (00:45)
So we're here today to talk about alternative and innovative solutions to traditional whistleblower policies within organizations. I'd first like to set the stage for our listeners and kind of explain the why for our conversation. So can you share some examples of activities that would require employees to act as whistleblowers?

Neta: (01:04)
Sure, of course. I'm happy to do so. Maybe first it would be helpful to distinguish for the purpose of this conversation, between whistle-blowing and internal, reporting. I think it's important to explain that, the way we see it, whistleblowing is the act of reporting misconduct or ethical breaches externally. For example, to an enforcement agency of sorts like the SEC, whilst, internal reporting is really what, we want to be talking about today and the process which we want to fix and optimize, for, for everyone's benefit. So when we talk about kind of activities that would require employees to act as whistleblowers, I think that the past year showed how that category for internal reporting has it has expanded. So, we of course consider the traditional corporate and financial fraud and corruption issues that require people to, come forward and report, and only today, I, woke up to, the interesting article on the Wall Street Journal about, Volkswagen, which I'll, I'll come back to, later on in this conversation, because I think it's, it's crucial, but the things that happen in every organization, that require, to kind of surface up concerns and, and make management aware.

Mitch: (02:43)
So then in response to these activities and the various things that go on within an organization, what are some of the traditional solutions or policies that companies have in place, whether it is the internal or the external, like you mentioned, and what are some of those normal outcomes in your opinion?

Neta: (02:59)
Sure. So I think, you know, I think company’s are largely trying to do the right thing by saying, come forward to us internally. Speak to your manager speak to someone in the organization, speak to our compliance office, but if you cannot, here's a hotline for you, right. And that's the, the traditional mechanism that we've seen for decades that was, you know, became specifically popular, due to, the Sarbanes Oxley Act and the requirements on, on a third party operated whistleblowing platform that was put in place back in 2002. The issue with such legacy solution such as, third party hotlines is that number one, they don't really do much to build trust, right? They're not helping with building the internal trust that we need to see today, in every modern organization, because essentially what they're saying is if there's an issue, well, call this call center and report a problem, and the company will communicate with this call center and pick it up. But here's an intermediary for you and this is how you need to come forward because the act of reporting is just so scary and difficult, and so here's, here's a route for you. The second thing is if you look at the data and the statistics, they actually tell you that hotlines are in many cases, not only are there not the solution, but I would say that they're part of the problem, because if you look at, the global business ethics survey that was published this year, it talks about, the fact that only 6% of all cases that are reported internally in corporate America are reported to the hotline. In other cases, you find, so one of the biggest providers of hotlines in the world, I was talking about 11% of reporting happens to its platform. So that's a very low number, and that comes to show that people essentially do not really trust that option, and do not find it as a, as an optimal solution for when they are experiencing something that is in fact very difficult, to come forward and speak up about. And I think that is perhaps one of the reasons that we're seeing, the Department of Justice just published its guidelines a few months ago, to measure the effectiveness of your ethics and compliance program, and, now it's time to do so because humanity has moved on and so did technology, and there are other ways to create today. And there are other ways to ensure that people feel like they're comfortable, in, in coming forward and reporting misconduct when, when and where it happens

Mitch: (06:10)
So let's talk a little bit more about your thought process when it comes to this whole situation here. Obviously you looked at these outcomes and recognize there's a gap or there's insufficient resolutions going on. So what did you really try to come up with as far as a need that you recognized when evaluating these outcomes and where did your thought process take you, before we get into these actual innovative solutions?

Neta: (06:36)
Sure. The few guiding principles, that have guided us in looking at this is that we need to look at, these legacy solutions and processes that are in place, and we need to completely, reinvent them by putting the employee at the center of the experience, right? So we need to look at the solution from the outlook of the employee, because essentially we want to encourage people to come forward and report more. So when we're thinking about creating this new employee centric experience, we need to consider several things. Technology is just one of them. It's really, it's an, it's a very important element of it, but it's just one of the elements. And indeed, you know, this we're, you know, the year is 2020. people communicate through their phones through, apps. They're used to digital solutions that are serving them. That's how, that's how the workforce is communicating today, and it's important to bring those solutions forward, to meet, uh, where, where we are and to meet your employees where they are. So that's, that's the first element. The second element is to do with trust and, and there's, you know, that's really important to highlight that trust can only be rebuilt if there is a direct communication between reporter and company. Be it, if the employee is anonymous or not anonymous, it's really important to create that trust internally, and we can do that by taking the intermediary outside of the equation and empowering people to come forward and report.  The third element is to do with psychological safety. So one of the things we looked at with our technology is not only how you create a sense of, you know, not only how you digitize the old ways of reporting, but how you can really create a sense of psychological safety, and, empower more people to report who would have otherwise not reported misconduct when they experienced it. So we were thinking about how can that be created, and  recreated the technology in a way that empowers people to speak up still safeguards everyone's data and privacy from each other, but ensures that people have that sense of, what we call a blind network and t...

Contact Jolene Lampton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolene-lampton-b40127164/

IMA's Ethics Center: https://www.imanet.org/career-resources/ethics-center

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
 Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and today you'll be listening to a bonus episode featuring a conversation about Global Ethics Day. Jolene Lampton, Professor of Management, Accounting, and Area coordinator for MBA and Accounting Programs at Park University, joined Count Me In cohost, Adam Larson, to talk about the significance of ethics and values. Jolene is also a member of IMA's Committee on Ethics and was kind enough to share her perspectives with us on this very important day. To hear more, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.

Adam: (00:47)
Since we're releasing this podcast on Global Ethics Day, I wanted to start out by asking why is this day important, And what does it mean to you?

Jolene: (00:53)
On this global ethics day, I believe it is a day for all of us to search within ourselves, our beings, to bring our values to the surface as we think about a common set of values. People with high self efficacy have conviction within their beings to do the right thing. This in turn gives them confidence. They do not second guess their own intentions. They act in accordance with their convictions. People with high self efficacy can speak about it. They can articulate their values. This is called efficacy. It means you have the ability to produce an intended result. It is intrinsic. It comes from within one's being, your persona. With  conviction, you feel willing or even compelled to speak your beliefs. This is a point where you can exude confidence to others, and this will show in your behavior. On the other hand, people with low self efficacy cannot do this. Rather, they doubt themselves. They are intimidated. When speaking with others about a situation, they do not feel confident on how to act on their own convictions. So you want to achieve high self efficacy. You want to feel good about yourself and be motivated and confident to take action accordingly. On this global ethics day, I hope you will examine your own values and start to speak about them.

Adam: (02:56)
So when we look at ethics from an organization perspective, how important is it for an organization to have its foundation rooted in those ethics?

Jolene: (03:06)
Your values are rooted in your internal beat. They come from within. Even before you go to work for an employer, you should check on their websites to see if their values align with your own. And if you can't find the employer's core values on their website, it's a great interview question. You should ask them what their core values are. When this alignment is achieved. That is the best fit for both the organization and the individual. It's an ideal cultural fit. You want to work for an organization with your same core values, your intrinsic values.

Adam: (03:57)
So you just mentioned that, you know, you want to work with an organization that has your same values and organizations are made up with lots of different people, and how can someone build the confidence to do the right thing and to speak up when they need to? So let's say they've done all that legwork that you said the organization meets up, but then they notice something that doesn't, that doesn't match up with their values. How do they build that confidence to do the right thing?

Jolene: (04:22)
Human beings have special abilities related to learning that sets him apart from other species. Social cognition theory says we learn by modeling and imitating others. Think about it. This is how your own youngster learn to walk and talk. They looked at you as a role model. Then you grew up and you mastered performance, gaining some morals and we acquire the ability to function independently, which is a good thing, and we gain the unique ability to self reflect, which gives us the ability to have self efficacy, which gives you confidence to do the right thing. Giving Voice to Values is an approach that will let this happen more readily. Giving Voice to Values was created by Mary Gentilly in 2010. This approach advocates that you will speak your mind when you know what is right. What you really should do is prepare and practice for actions and not just any action, but the difficult, hard, and risky intricate values-based actions. This is a first step to building ethical muscles, which will give you confidence to act on your own values. The habit of voicing one's values takes practice to make our values just come out instantaneously. So start by crafting your own scripts and responding to others, when you feel compelled to come up with a response, let's begin with the scenario of shared values. When talking about cheating in a cheating episode that you witnessed. There is a shared respect for academic integrity that you should work to build upon in order to reduce cheating behavior. Giving Voice to Values empowers anyone and all of us to voice a sense of doing the right thing. This scenario requires for you to look clear eyed and honestly about the act of cheating. Who we are, who we have been, we can be. To speak up about or wrong, takes a kind of courage that requires a special set of skills like those needed to speak up when you see, when you witnessed your first episode of fraud in action. You need to prepare your script in advance and practice that message out loud in front of a mirror. Remember in such instances, you may need allies and supporters. You may even need to convince your own boss or other official, and you will need credibility with others when you speak or take action, or you may need to just pause and gather more data to make a compelling case. As a mature and capable performer. You are the determinant to take action or select a time after which you've gathered sufficient data. You will decide. If you've prepared scripts in advance, you develop your ethical muscles, just like a weight builder develops muscles. This takes practice a lot of practice. This is what Giving Voice to Values does for you. It prepares your ethical muscles. So you normalize your behavior. Individuals who have exercised their ethical muscles often enough find that it becomes a part of their own self-definition the trick is that when it's normalized and you come up with a stressful situation, you will, calmly react and respond to the case at hand, if you practice voicing your values. This is the position for your behavior to be values-based, and it'll give you a can do attitude. The more you begin voicing your values, the better off you will be.

Adam: (09:16)
So as each person finds that ability to bring that voice to the values, and it's important to know what your values are, how can each person see how their values align to the organization that they're a part of.

Jolene: (09:30)
You should know, your organization's values. Core values should be on your company website. They should be in your policy and procedure manuals. They should be in on your bulletin board or other requisite sheets. And more importantly, they should be in your mind. Begin today, looking for your corporate values and speak about them in your workplace. As you work today, examine how your work reflects your core values. As you're performing reconciliations or preparing reports, think about it. Start sharing with others in your own department, share with your supervisor and your colleagues. They too should be reminded that procedures should align with c...

Contact Loutfi Echehade: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loutfi-echhade-5b3601/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
 Hi everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of Count Me In. I'm your host Adam Larson, and this is the 93rd episode in our series. Today's conversation is between my cohost Rouba, and IMAboard member and financial advisor, Loutfi Echehade. Loutfi is a seasoned financial advisor to family businesses in Saudi Arabia and the region and joins Count Me In to talk about the implications of COVID-19 and the current economic landscape. For advice and how such owners can maneuver their businesses. During these times, keep listening as we go to their conversation now.

Rouba: (00:42)
So, let’s get straight into it. I’m excited to get your insights on the family business segment in the region. So analysts and economists consider family businesses to be the lifeblood of the Middle East region, and crucial to the region’s economic prosperity and stability. Why do you think that is?

Loutfi: (00:59)
Well I mean, you know, family businesses, as you indicated, I mean it represent at least 80 percent, some statistics say 85 to 90 percent of the economy is driven by family businesses. In our region, the largest family businesses are the most critical. They play e a critical factor not only in employment and number of employment, but in contributing to the local economies. So, they drive the whole business, you know, and this is not only in our region. Globally, family businesses really are the main drivers of economic developments, in most of the world.

Rouba: (01:46)
According to the Middle East family survey conducted last year, they found that 78 percent of family businesses report economic environment as their top challenge. How does such a limitation play out when you are facing one of the biggest challenging moments in the economic history since the 1930s, COVID-19?

Loutfi: (02:09)
Family businesses are just like any other businesses. They go through, of course, cycles and they face these kinds of challenges every once in a while. We had a financial crisis in 2007 and in 2008, before that we had the September 11 events, and before that there were a lot of events and major developments in the world. Family businesses, just like any other business, they were able to sustain and maintain their structure and business, primarily because they have certain features that allow them to do that. The flexibility, transparency, level of commitment, long term commitment. But still, they face external pressure, just like everybody else. I work on a number of family businesses in the region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, and the pandemic, COVID-19 has a significant impact on their operations. So they face the same thing just like any other business. If they are one structure, they can manage to go through these events, major events, and heavy burdens in the future, you know.

Rouba: (03:34)
How equipped are regional family businesses for this huge task and what are some of the best practices you have noticed from your practice?

Loutfi: (03:44)
By their nature, family businesses are family-oriented, family-directed. They have a clear strategic planning, they commit to the family values, the family culture. So there weree ups and downs for most of their lives, business lives. They go through a lot of turmoil, roadblocks, headaches, pressures. If they are really well managed, and have proper structure, and that’s where comes family governance. If they really have proper family governance, that unites them, that puts them together. As I said, they are not like the corporate world, like businesses for profit. They don’t focus just on the short term, they focus on the long term. There is also the level of loyalty. In family businesses you find a lot, of course, a lot of family members being united and being committed, but at the same time, there a lot of non-family members aligned, committed and work aggressively, even sometimes more than the family members. So, you have that combination of commitment to the long term, not to focus on the short term, the willingness, the desire, the interest, and the commitment to continue to the following generation. And then they have the loyalty part which also drives them into the future, and into the long term. The way I see family business, just to give you an example, there are a lot of companies now in our region and globally they are firing people of course. They put people on furloughs or extended long leaves and they cut salaries. The family businesses that I deal with face the same problems, but they manage, you know, in a way, to keep these employees with them because they have been with them during tough times, difficult times, as well as in good times. So they look at them as really part of their commitment not only to their employees but to the society in a whole to the community. And that is a little different from directional-wise, different from other businesses.

Rouba: (06:24)
You noted governance, which was going to be my next question. You’ve been providing advisory to family businesses in the region for many years, how committed are they to governance and do they value it? What has been your experience wit this essential aspect of the sector, as you have mentioned as well?

Loutfi: (06:44)
We are on a journey. In the Middle East, you know, of course you know, if you talk about governance, corporate or family governance, not many people will understand, not many people will really decipher it, if you wish.  Everyone will give you different. It did not really have a lot of meaning. But you know, things have changed, I would say in the last decade, in the last 10-15 years, things have changed. In the corporate side, governance regulators have put governance regulations, protocols to ensure that corporations have proper structures to maintain their operations as well to really ensure that they provide right and correct information. On the other hand, the family governance is also something that is a process, a set of protocols.. Most family businesses they have hurdles they understand it, but if you are to tell me, are they committed to implementing it, that’s still, we still have a long way to go. I know a well-known large number of family businesses, well known family businesses. They have already proper structures, proper family governance structure. They have what we call a family constitution that defines roles and responsibilities of family members who share on the corporate side, either as board members or on the C-suite level. They also have what we call certain committers to ensure that there is proper alignment between the corporate side and the family side, and also defines who can be employed in the company and who cannot, the matter of dividend, conflict resolution issues, succession planning, all these are critical components of ensuring a successful and easy and smooth transition into the following generations.

Rouba: (08:59)
With a GPD contribution of more than 60 percent, workforce contribution of 80 percent, a broad range of sectors including food and drink, manufacturing, construction, education and health, and trillions of dollars in revenue, how will the current situation impact employment within the family business segment in the region, and what are governments doing to support and to mitigate this impact?

Loutfi: (09:25)
Of course, you know, the pandemic, COVID-19, as we said earlier, has significant impact on all businesses, all over the world. In the US, we have unemployment reaching over 14 percent. Although I don’t have statistics on the Middle East, like in Saudi Arabia and the GC, but I see a lot of compani...

Contact Liv: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livwatson/
Contact David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-w-29627882/
IMA's Paper - "A Digital Transformation Brief: Business Reporting in the Fourth Industrial Revolution": https://www.imanet.org/-/media/e8faf3260e904bf5984fff9c9cf70382.ashx

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm here to bring you episode 92 of our series. Today's conversation features two guest speakers, Liv Watson and David Wray. They joined my cohost, Mitch to talk about a paper they coauthored with others about digital transformation. The paper, A digital Transformation Brief Business Reporting and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, highlights the staggering compliance costs and boldly calls for digital transformation across businesses. Liv and David share their perspectives with Mitch as they share many facts and examples of what businesses should do to maintain compliance through the data revolution. Let's listen to their conversation now.
 
Mitch: (00:55)
From the research paper, you classify six reg data ecosystem challenges that are contributing factors to the material costs and risk in global compliance that you discovered during the Workiva research. Is that correct?
 
Liv: (01:08)
Yeah, not that the paper really was exhaustedly addressing all of the spectrum, but some of the key challenges for companies to produce regulatory reporting is obviously set in their reg data. The regulatory data, they got it captured that sits in silos in different types of systems throughout the organization, and then sometimes as a reporting goes beyond just financial systems, they are integrating non-financial data. That data is not hardly accessible in any system. So the data processes being able to access data is kind of key to be able to digitize that data. Some of the challenges are the data types, right? You have different data types, different formats of data. So they sit locked up in documents. So the data, even if it's stored digitally, it's not accessible. Standards and supporting documents. I mean, you have many standards to follow many frameworks to follow multiple regulators, asking for multiple data points that are aligned with different supporting documents and regulation. We need to digitize these documents and they need to be machine readable. They need to be discoverable. They can't just be digitized into a word document. Technical standards. There are XBRL. There is XML, there is Excel, there is Word, there is PDF. When regulators ask for data, they need to start considering one data format because, and in machine readable way, because just aggregating all of this data and then try to create documents and report both internally and externally. There's some mission marbles. There are many different ways. Some allows the software vendor to directly connect to these digital repositories, but some you have to upload some, you have to fill out an online form. We need one way or connecting, and then the digital way and data definitions. Let's not forget that. Data definitions is just an issue all around standard sharing many data definition are the same, but mean something different. Some are the same, but describe the front. We need the digital transformation in a central place, just like a library to register these data definition into taxonomies so they can be discoverable machine readable. So during this paper, we discovered some of the key points that is costing industry today. IFAC recently said  over $780 billion a year costing the industry just to address many of these problems that we discovered in our research. So yes, quite a technical challenge that we still have today, Mitchchell, thank you. 
 
Mitch: (04:33)
Well, thank you for that, and with this whole data revolution, you know, I'd like to direct this question to David as the seasoned finance leader, I know you were both in a publicly traded and privately held Fortune 500 companies. What is your personal observation on the willingness of compliance teams to really embrace this whole digital transformation? 
 
David: (04:56)
Thanks, Mitch. It's a great question. I mean what I've noticed throughout my career, and I think it's really accelerating the last few years is that users on the ground are really beyond crying and now screaming out for digital transformation. And that's now being echoed in a very loud way by CFOs. In fact, in 2018, Accenture conducted a study, which is called From the Bottom Line to the Frontline, and they found that about 80% of CFOs said that control compliance and reporting is largely going to be digitized because they want to free up those resources to be able to business partner. That's where they see value. Additionally risk and compliance data accounts for almost three quarters of all of the data requests. So the issue is definitely not going away, and of course it naturally prompts the question around how can we digitize the end to end process, so the talented finance resources can in fact be deployed to better support the business and drive value for organizations. Our paper really captures this at its most basic level, right? The ultimate reporting objective is really trustworthy auditable accessible and machine readable information that is definitely relevant to user groups. And to do so, we've gotta be near real time as Liv alluded to earlier. It probably goes without saying that any transformation success is really going to depend on robust data governance and each business reporting data and compliance framework as well. 
 
Mitch: (06:20)
Thank you, David. And now leave, I'd like to pose the same question to you, but from a software service provider, I know you were supporting roughly three quarters of the Fortune 500 companies. What are your observations on the willingness of companies and their compliance teams to embrace this and the data revolution as well? 
 
Liv: (06:38)
It's an interesting question because as our company tried to build a compliance platform that allowed companies to digitize their processes 10 years ago, we spent most of the time educating the market, what the cloud was, because sitting on system on local hard drive and data setting, you had to change your mind and trust the cloud. What we are seeing 10 years later is something that a cloud is no longer an issue. And now with the virus and these externality that must allow data to be accessible from anywhere. We are seeing a huge change in the demand of, of the solutions that can bring this, technology transfer nation, because business reporting has never been more complex. If you were to kind of just even talk about the cost of compliance and how much data that is being generated today, just in the last five years, 90% of the data has been is being generated. There is a $221 billion last year and spent on data management. The risk of noncompliance and fines are getting much higher. So the challenge is good data governance is what is going to be a use differentiator to the profession and this, and David I also say I am a, new, competency frameworks allows for a lot of these new technology skills says that the profession needs to adapt to be able to drive the digital transformation. And in our research that David, my coauthor here and we did, we also discovered speaking to accounting professionals that yes, they know they need to change and transform and software and embrace the cloud and digital technology like ...

Deepika Chawla is a business woman, presently serving as Vice President of a Fortune 100 company. With 27+ years of rich and diverse work experience in Financial Shared Services and Banking Industry, Deepika believes She believes “Your legacy is in the leaders you create and the knowledge you share”. She is a Qualified Chartered Accountant who is extremely passionate about supporting women and the community she serves. Deepika has won various recognitions for promoting Diversity in the workplace & society.  She has been named as one of the 25 most inspiring women in the Coffee Book ‘Big Dreams Bigger Achievement’s and has also been decorated with the Champion Award from ‘We Are The City, Organization in collaboration with EY, for her passion, resilience and tenacity in supporting diversity. She is actively involved in mentoring youth / next generation leaders across organizations & colleges and has attended a number of events at various universities and colleges as a speaker and panelist. A TEDx speaker, Deepika supports multiple NGO’s of Cancer, Education & Thalassemia and is also on the advisory board of two of them. A mother of two children - boy 24 and girl 20 - she recently celebrated 27 years of marriage.
Contact Deepika Chawla: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepika-chawla-181a319/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:00)
 Welcome to episode 90. One of Count Me In, IMA's a podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm here to introduce you to our next featured guest Deepika Chawla. Deepika is a senior finance professional and qualified chartered accountant in India. She currently serves as the vice president of a fortune 100 company and has over 27 years of diverse work experience in financial services and the banking industry. In this episode, she speaks with my cohost Rouba Zeidan about her journey to the top, and the challenges she and other women face in the finance industry to hear Deepika’s, perspective on how women can make the most out of their careers and finance, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.

Rouba: (00:55)
So good afternoon, Deepika, thank you so much for joining us.

Deepika: (01:01)
Hi Rouba, thank you so much for having me here to talk something, which I am so passionate about.

Rouba: (01:09)
Same here. I'm looking forward to your thoughts and your experience. So, women in Asia occupied just 1.1% of CEO and CFO positions and country held positions, according to a 2012 capitalist study, why do you think that is?

Deepika: (01:29)
Yeah, good question, and really close to a lot of women's heart. So, most of the people feel that women spend more time performing unpaid work in childcare and housework and may not be able to handle a senior position. Remember they feel that they may not be able to handle this a senior position. Not to shatter the unconscious bias that assumes women should be the sole caregiver or associated with housework organizations should really create a safe and inclusive workplace where men feel comfortable being with [inaudible] and do duties and household activities, giving both men and women an equal opportunity to look at their by supporting each other. Now, really from that perspective, it is so very important that that comfort should be there to the women that they can go and work or, you know, they could be CEOs and CFOs because somebody else can do the caregiver job. Now, secondly, as you go higher women themselves have self-doubts and this will come into our conversation very often because whether they can do the job or not, and they hold back because that is very, very important. They have this self-doubt. Should I be perfect before I applied to a job? While men, at the same time even if they are at a 60% at that job, they convince you that they're the right candidate. And thirdly, and lastly, in my mind, you know, unless the top leadership does not drive the message, this may still go on as these numbers, only what you shared with me. Whichever news you're hearing today, whether it is Uber, Fidelity, lots of companies or, you know, otherwise senior women positions are coming up. When you open the LinkedIn these days, you would see one announcement or the other coming. Now that's primarily because the top, you know, the top leadership approach is to focus on the, the women candidate on the CEO positions. So, I think that's really important. And in my early career, I have seen women having children and taking promotions in the same year. So, you need both the women and the company, and of course the men to believe in that they can do it. So really that is what I think.

Rouba: (04:07)
Makes a lot of sense, actually. I mean, that's, that was a, I'm going to ask you a bit more about your personal experience as a seasoned professional who's been at the forefront of your sector throughout your career. How do you find the industry has changed over the last 20 years? And what are some of the plus points that you've noticed, which mark positive elements of change, evolution and progress.

Deepika: (04:34)
Yeah. Good question, you know, because, let me share because it's important to let people know, and they say, you know, women shouldn't share the age and I always feel very proud of sharing that. So 27 years back Rouba, I'm 51 now this year, but 27 years back when I completed my chartered accountancy, I was really one of those few women who was trying to enter the finance field and not to an MBA, but see basically like a CPA from US, right, or a CA in India. And when I went on to do my first job, I landed up in a different city from my hometown, and trust me, I went through interviews where they actually called me to say, we don't hire women, and I was in shock.  Big, big financial companies. And, I had just completed my CA. I was one 22 and a half years old, and I was in shock. I thought I was like super. And it had really hit me hard, but really, I'm not going to get a job up to doing such a qualification. And from there to where now the plus points, which I noticed to the journey, which I had, and now where we see, we are creating flexible and adaptive operating models, right? We, as companies, we are actually saying focus on diversity. In India, diversity primarily is gender that, right? And then you go on to other things, but primarily first you're looking at women because that itself is a small number. And today we actually have our own focus, making sure that you have equal number of CVs on the table so that you give an equal opportunity to them, right? You ensure that at least they get a proportion to be interviewed, and then you keep tracking till the end to see how many people were hired and was there, you know, some biasness of making, you know, not having always  men into the positions. So that's the second piece. The first one was creating flexible and adaptive operating models that, which never existed that today you would have a daycare center in a lot of cities, right? Under the place of work, where you can think in nuclear families that I can leave my child and pick it up. Virtual has become a very big reality. This is a good opportunity also that I can work, and I can take care of also.  Third is really drawing on nontraditional resources and partnerships. Where I really want to bring the focus on that, you know, we never used to look at secondary means where we want to get women back, but a lot of finance companies are looking at women coming back, from there, after childbirth, or if they have taken a break for getting married at or whatever. It is promoted, it is really well accepted. Adopting a growth and innovation mindset. Which is from the company's mindset, also...

Contact Andy Kettlewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andykettlewell/

"Reimagining Supply Chains to Navigate a Pandemic and Beyond" with the Chicago Council of Global Affairs: https://youtu.be/zAGPc9vlaxU

Andy Kettlewell video for Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, Inventory Management: https://youtu.be/vkSNW6CJN7Q?t=570

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome to episode 90 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to introduce you to our featured guest speaker for today's conversation, Andy Kettlewell. Andy is the Vice President of Inventory and Analytics for Walgreens after serving many years prior in various supply chain and inventory management roles with the company. He spoke to my cohost, Adam, about all the disruption across business and how he has managed to handle the volatility in the marketplace. Andy addresses the impact of supply and demand budgeting for these unexpected factors and how technology has enabled him to make better business decisions. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now. 
 
Adam: (00:54)
Andy, COVID-19 has been disruptive across all aspects of business. How have you handled the demand volatility in the marketplace, and then in turn its impact on operations?
 
Andy: (01:08)
It's a very important question for where we are in a post COVID-19 economy. So we've seen dramatic changes in not only the magnitude of demand changes and demand volatility, but also the frequency and the pace of those changes. And, and to make that real and what we've all experienced in our lives, it's everything from, you know, the run on toilet paper, and you've probably experienced those shortages firsthand and how the news media kind of helped to extrapolate and share that story widely, thus creating a run in a panic situation to other commodity items like hand sanitizer and masks and other items that were needed for a shift in consumer behavior, right? With, with COVID-19 that the marketplace has had to respond to, but what we're also seeing is a shift, in everyday items. So with the traffic patterns and how, how's it impacted all of our lives. So likely you're not going to your office right now. So that means you're not passing the convenient Duane Reade in Manhattan, or your Walgreens, you know across from your office in downtown Chicago and that's changed our consumer behavior away from maybe those instant consumption items to more of those take-home items, right? That as we shift our behavior. There's been a couple of other interesting transformations here across all aspects of the business. So Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, in their last earnings call, likened  the digital transformation of two years of digital transformation that happened in two months. McKinsey and Company's research has shown that we've seen 10 years worth of growth in eCommerce penetration in only three months. And so we're, eCommerce penetration is now North of 30% across all of retail. These are dramatic shifts in consumer behavior that, you know, our organization at Walgreens and every retailer is having to accommodate to. So in the reaction and the operationalization of that, right first and foremost, every firm is having to keep their team members safe and so when within a global supply chain, right, that means, you know, new protocols, new efficiency measures, but everything from how we keep our distribution center team members safe, to our truck drivers, to our store team members to keep operations moving was, was point number one. And that means everything from personal protective equipment to new policies, procedures, different shifts in labor management, to help keep our employees safe, to then keep the product moving. And then from there, very tactical impacts within our supply chain that we've had to address including, we've redesigned all of our demand, forecasting and replenishment algorithms. Now what that means is right, all those consumer behaviors, the systems that go behind that, that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify what you're going to buy in Walgreens tomorrow, have to be much more dynamic. I liken this to a, for most firms like a sand mandala, if you're familiar with that term.The Tibetan Buddhist monks, you know, spend hours and days, you know, building the perfect sand mandala and then they have to wipe it away and then start fresh. That's exactly what most firms are doing with their forecast models across their entire end to end supply chain to become more adaptive and responsive to consumer demand. And then sourcing, right. you know, at the heart of COVID-19, we found areas within the end end supply chain that were very efficient, but didn't have many redundant sources. And what I mean by that, right. is that, I think about that toilet paper example, right? A very efficient supply chain, the factories run 24 by seven to spit out the exact right amount of product that matches demand usage for commercial toilet paper and consumer toilet paper. With everybody not going to their offices or to sports stadiums anymore, the demand for consumer product goes up, that's manufactured on different machines and, and requires, you know, sourcing new partners and, and the capabilities to build that new product. And then lastly, I kind of on the business of response to the demand volatility is around longterm planning, right? A lot of what we do to figure out what consumers will buy  and needis really sociology at the end of the day. Right. and we have to predict how consumers are going to behave in the future, and so that means longterm planning, right? In March, we were trying to figure out gosh are public pools going to be open. And are we going to sell many swim toys at Walgreens to our consumers, to trying to predict whether or not trick or treat is going to happen right now, coming up with, Halloween season. You know, Walgreens is the number two Candide retailer in the United States and whether or not trick or treat happens is a very big deal that has massive balance sheet and cash flow impacts if, those sales don't happen as they normally would, that we have to work through in plan, and to do that, you know, we're trying to tap into new and novel data sources to, you know, try to predict what the next big thing is going to be for consumers or how our consumers behavior will change, versus, you know, the past precedence that's been is that over the number of years. 
 
Adam: (06:20)
So you've talked a lot about how you know, consumers are effective in your operations, and one of the examples you mentioned was like the toilet paper, the great toilet paper shortage that happened when the pandemic started, you know. Can we talk a little bit more about the volatility of the supply impact, especially on the balance sheet, because, you know, you need that supply to be able to sell the products to the consumers. 
 
Andy: (06:40)
Yeah, absolutely. I would, I would suggest that what we've seen through COVID-19 is the most volatile and widespread supply disruption that most supply chains have seen in the last several decades. And the difference here is, is most supply chains are built to withstand normal levels of volatility, and this is everything from gosh, the semi had a flat tire, right, and arrived a day or two late to, you know, if we're doing manufacturing, operations in areas that are prone to getting hurricanes in the Caribbean or in Florida or in Texas, you know, we're, we're, we're prepared to have redundancy in manufacturing or planning to be able to shift assets a...