In this episode, Sidetrade’s AVP of Presales UK, Naomi Smith discusses what keeps a CFO up at night – from supply chain fragility to risk, is digital transformation just a buzzword, and why being a data-driven CFO is now more important than ever.
In this episode, Sidetrade’s AVP of Presales UK, Naomi Smith discusses what keeps a CFO up at night – from supply chain fragility to risk, is digital transformation just a buzzword, and why being a data-driven CFO is now more important than ever.
Welcome to Finance to Futurist, a Sidetrade podcast series on how innovation data and AI are disrupting order-to-cash.
Natalie Silverman:Hi, this is Natalie Silverman for Sidetrade. Welcome to Finance to Futurist. On today's episode, we're uncovering what keeps a CFO up at night from supply chain fragility to risk, is digital transformation, just a buzzword and why being a data-driven CFO is now more important than ever. Please welcome Sidetrade's, AVP of Presales UK, Naomi Smith. Good morning, Naomi, and thanks for sitting down for Finance to Futurist.
Naomi Smith:Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.
Natalie Silverman:I love chatting with new people. So I know this is your first time on the podcast. So maybe you could give our listeners a little bit more about yourself, your background and how you came to Sidetrade.
Naomi Smith:Yeah, cool. So I've always been in FinTech. Always been hugely interested in tech as well, from being a kid with my brother, me and him, Mike, you know, experiencing the internet for the first time together and stuff like that. And then going into businesses around tech. So being first line support, my degree was in information systems as well. So did a little bit of coding. And I think then my interest was really like how people interact with tech. And that was where it really sort of stuff began for me. And the finance part of tech, I guess, the job that I went into, first of all, was around direct debits in the UK. So that was all about collecting cash from individuals. And then from there, it's kind of evolved into B2B transactions was with a number of companies that got bought by bigger companies, so experienced acquisitions, and all of that. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey to get to Sidetrade. But I'm very happy to be here.
Natalie Silverman:We are happy to have you and excited to talk to you more. And we're going to focus today's episode on the CFO. And I know you know, your role here at Sidetrade, being in presales as a Solutions Consultant, you're seeing a lot about the CFO, you really hear what keeps them up at night. So my first question would be what keeps them up at night? What's you know, what's driving them? And what's out there that maybe they're challenged with today?
Naomi Smith:So controversially, I don't think that's ever really changed. I think a CFO is constantly trying to balance cash. So I don't want too much cash, I don't want too little cash, and I need to make sure I'm making my cash work for me. Because if they're keeping hold of a cash that's getting less and less valuable, so they've got to be making sure that their cash is working correct for their business. So my answer would be cash. But then, of course, you know, we need to think about tech, how can tech help them with that? And that's by giving them insights into that cash a little bit more?
Natalie Silverman:That's a great segue. So I know technology is a big part of your background. So maybe for the CFO that's not as tech savvy, or is just finding out how technology can help optimize their role or help really enable them. What would you say to them, when it comes to maybe they're doing more manual processes today, or the finance team is doing more manual things with Excel? How would you help them evolve a little bit in their role? Or how would you help them, you know, leverage technology?
Naomi Smith:So I think it although I don't think that problems have changed, I think their role has changed. So if I think back to the first business that I was in, I literally have no idea who the CFO was, and again, into the next business, no idea who the CFO was, and they're kind of this person that, you know, they're doing a good job, because you never really hear from them. When you you do, then you know, they're not doing a good job. So I think the role is changing the fact that they are becoming more into the rest of the business. So they're getting involved with the rest of the business, suddenly, we're aware of CFOs goals within a business, we know what they're trying to achieve, and how they're trying to achieve it. And they're building the importance of what they're trying to achieve into other roles such as sales, such as marketing. And so suddenly, we become aware of this bigger and we're like, oh, actually, we understand why they need cash and how they're keeping this business going. So they're becoming more visible, they're less like back office person and more like, Hey, guys, this is what I'm trying to achieve. And I need your help from a sales point of view, from a marketing point of view, etc. So to be able to share that kind of drive to the rest of business, they need the tools to show it. So they need to be able to give it to people to visualize who perhaps don't really understand, you know why cash is important. So for them to be able to use tools to visualize their objectives, then makes it transferable to people that perhaps don't understand what a CFO role is.
Natalie Silverman:How about data? So I know we talk a lot about technology, but without data, technology really doesn't do much for the CFO. So tell me, I guess, what does it mean to be a data-driven CFO today?
Naomi Smith:So I guess a data-driven CFO is someone who is able to go and look at the purchase orders don't look so great. For this time, so I'm going to throttle back my marketing, for example. So that for me is definitely a data-driven CFO. And to be able to do that, you know, I say really like it's simple. It's not involves a lot of data segregation, it involves being able to leverage data and also to be able to predict from data. And to be able to do that, of course, you need historic data, you need context. And to be able to do that you need some good tech, right?
Natalie Silverman:Absolutely. Okay, we talk about a data lake here at Sidetrade. And sometimes, you know, a data lake can be scary. And it can sound a little techie to maybe people that aren't as familiar with what that mean. So, so I'd ask you, if you are talking to a CFO right now, how do you pitch to them the idea of a data lake and how does that help them do their job day to day?
Naomi Smith:Okay, so really interesting stuff. So I always start with something that people are going to understand. So a data lake is basically a repository some way to keep data. So what do people know where we keep data is a database, we can all relate to a database, right, so a data lake can hold a database, but it can also hold unformatted data. So if we think about a database, we enter a value into a certain field, it goes into that database. And it means this, a data lake has less rules around how you put the data in there, it's also able to take data from the web, so scraping from websites, it's able to collect behavioral data and interaction data and meta data. And it's kind of like loads and loads of data all together. But with that, and that unstructured approach the data, there's so much context. So therefore, what does that give us it's able to drive an AI, artificial intelligence to be able to then understand exactly what is the meaning behind that data. So if we think about when we use data unsuccessfully, in the past, from a global point of view, so if we think about COVID, and we think about the war in Ukraine, they use modeling to make decisions on both of those things. And they weren't so accurate, if we remember. And then we look at the likes of Google who launched their palm, and they started to talk about what their palm is doing. And that is their AI, who is actually able to understand when a human is being facetious, sarcastic. So you can imagine, you know, and you can see how data can sometimes be great and sometimes not. But where the data lake where you've got that context, you're able to get to the more palm levels than this may be the modeling that tells you that things that aren't going to happen.
Natalie Silverman:With all of my podcast guests, I always throw a curveball question because again, this is finance to futurist. And so is digital transformation just a buzzword, or do you think it's really something that the CFOs are focused on?
Naomi Smith:So digital transformation, for me, can mean absolutely anything from turning letters into emails, for example. So if we think about it from you know, right from when it first started, when we started to, rather than phone calls, send text messages, that's a digital transformation. So it's very, very broad. So if I talk about digital transformation, I'd prefer to be more specific around it. Because I think it can be a very broad term, though, rather than using that term digital transformation, it would be more specific in the areas of digital transformation.
Natalie Silverman:That's fair. And you're right, you know, when it's from an analog to digital, right. And some people, like you said, are still using Excel, bless them. And so even just doing something automated in terms of workflows, right, or going all the way to artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and some of those other buzzwords that we're not going to talk about today, but you're right, well, tell me this. You know, we just mentioned that you were at ICTF in Portugal, what were some of the takeaways that you had after listening to some of the presentations and talking to CFOs?
Naomi Smith:So I think the key takeaway was concerns around supply chain. So for those industries that require the supply chain, there are some genuine concerns around that. And that's where their focus should be. And then secondly, of course, risk impacts that we're experiencing, everybody's worried about financial health of businesses that they're doing business with, and keeping themselves afloat as well. So to start with, it would be the supply chain issues and ensuring that you're able to supply your customers with whatever you're supplying them. And then secondly, would be the risk of perhaps credits, terms, credit limits and stuff like that as well.
Natalie Silverman:Thanks, Naomi for your insights into the future of finance. For Sidetrade, this is Natalie Silverman.
Conclusion:This has been another episode of Finance to Futurist, a Sidetrade podcast series. Make sure you catch every episode by subscribing to our podcast on sidetrade.com or through your podcast platform of choice thanks so much for tuning in this podcast is brought to you by Sidetrade and this for general information purposes only. All rights reserved.