In this episode, Sidetrade’s Chief Product Officer Rob Harvey discusses why it’s more important than ever that CFOs collaborate with CIOs, how finance departments are going beyond a cash culture to create a culture hack, and why more organizations are establishing a finance transformation role.
In this episode, Sidetrade’s Chief Product Officer Rob Harvey discusses why it’s more important than ever that CFOs collaborate with CIOs, how finance departments are going beyond a cash culture to create a culture hack, and why more organizations are establishing a finance transformation role.
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 discussing why it's more important than ever that CFOs collaborate with CIOs, how finance departments are going beyond a cash culture to create a culture hack, and why more organizations are creating a finance transformation role. Please welcome Sidetrade's Chief Product Officer, Rob Harvey. Good morning, Rob. And thanks for sitting down for Finance to Futurist.
Rob Harvey:Thanks for having me back again, Natalie.
Natalie Silverman:All right. Well, you did so well, the first time we thought why not? Let's have you back again.
Rob Harvey:Could be my last.
Natalie Silverman:No, no, no, I think you're gonna be poised for a really good conversation here. I thought I'd set the scene a little bit, I went to an event last week here in the States, I would say a lot of the key themes that came up, it wasn't really about finance. So even though this was an event specifically for CFOs, they really focused a lot on technology, you almost would have thought that this was a technology event. And one of the key themes that they brought up wasn't about creating a cash culture, which I know we've talked a lot about here at Sidetrade. But it was actually about creating what they called a culture hack. And it was about finding the little things you can do every day to create positive, iterative change. I'm sure you're very familiar, obviously, coming from the product team, you know, using a process like an agile or a scrum. So I thought I'd start off our conversation with do you think finance departments are ready for a culture hack or to innovate more?
Rob Harvey:That's a lovely question to start. Thanks, Natalie. So I mean, I think maybe just to set a little bit, my background comes from the business, right? You know, I started out in finance before I transitioned into sales. So when I moved to product, I was able to see quite a few disparities between the different cultures and collaboration styles between those two functions. To give an example, when we used to try to fix something in finance, we would look at the end to end process, we would try to map everything measurable, the ends and outputs, find the points of failure and alike. And it would take time to engage all the necessary stakeholders and gather all of the required data points, while also was trying to do your day job. That waterfall approach kind of led us to long change implementation times and challenges when it came to adoptions of new processes. So in contrast, in the product development process, where we leverage Agile and Scrum methodologies to achieve change in a more iterative manner, it's different. You need to focus on little things that you can do every day and manage projects by breaking them down into much smaller, bite sized pieces. That way, you're able to solve things much quicker, and keep stakeholders much more engaged as improvements get realized.
Natalie Silverman:I really liked that approach. I mean, I think like you said, the business sometimes has worked, I think in a vacuum or silo, you know, in the past, right. And so the fact that finance is now part of, you know, making business decisions, and it's becoming more of a partner to the business, I think that's super important going forward. That leads me kind of to my next question, again, something from this event that I thought was interesting was that almost 30% of CFOs are learning about technology, in you know, what they call autonomous finance, or kind of, I guess, the state of play that we're in today in the finance department on their own personal time. So really, that they're doing a lot of self learning and self research. So you know, again, as our head of product, how would you enable finance professionals to embrace these newer technologies? And I guess, what advice would you give them on where to start? And there was a quote that I thought was very funny. The fact that, you know, finance teams are still accelerating cash flow. They're not colonizing Mars.
Rob Harvey:That is good. Yeah, I mean, and I think that's great to hear that nearly 30% learning about technology and autonomous financing their own personal time. I think that's a great practice and anyone wishing to add value in the role should do so. I think taking time whilst commuting or driving or during a lunch break to read articles or listen to podcasts like your during the morning runs a great way to embed some new ways of thinking and new ideas that you can then leverage and have conversation with peers during work time. Another great practice and it's something that we do at Sidetrade is having a hackathon or hackathons aren't just for techies, but they include team members throughout the business who are unlikely to have any coding skills but possess different types of skills that can add value into an innovation process. I know several companies that do this on an annual or even more regular basis to help the wider organizations look for relevant technology solutions to common business challenges.
Natalie Silverman:Here's another controversial statement that came up at the event and I just wanted to get your thoughts on it. And I asked the same question to Matt, I wanted to find out your opinion, though CFOs that use AI will replace CFOs that don't. What do you think about that?
Rob Harvey:Oh, that's terribly controversial there. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, that question of whether AI will replace any human worker assumes that AI and humans have the same qualities and abilities? Well, in reality, they don't, of course, you know, AI based machines are fast, more accurate and consistently rationale, but they lack intuition, emotion and cultural sensitivity that we need humans to do. Therefore, I think, you know, we'll always need CFOs for sure, just the version of them that can leverage their strengths and delegate tasks to the most efficient agents best place for the task at hand.
Natalie Silverman:I think you're right. I mean, again, at the end of the day, we talk about even our platform, right is called augmented cash. So it's the idea of the best of both worlds right, of being able to leverage both AI and machine learning alongside a human in a collaborative way. So last question for you. Another key theme of the conference was about the partnership between the CIO and the CFO. And with technology playing such a larger role in driving company value and competitive advantage, it seems more important than ever, that CFOs really do collaborate closely and effectively with those CIOs. But also, it can be a challenge to really help communicate and bridge that gap between the CFO and the CIO. Especially because as you know, sometimes the language of finance the other speaking technology, it's a little bit different sometimes, and they might be in a way competing against each other for different priorities. So I just wondered, how do organizations bridge that gap to create that alignment between both technology and finance departments?
Rob Harvey:Yeah, it's a great question. And I've already mentioned you know, that interdepartmental meetups, such as hackathons are a great way to innovate across functions. You're absolutely right. You know, technology plays a larger role in driving company value, and competitive advantage every day. And it's more important than ever, for CFOs to collaborate. I think an important ally for me is pragmatism. I think, you know, by being pragmatic organizations can switch focus away from losing time making those huge organizational end to end process changes and choose to focus on more points, solutions that solve real business problems yet can yield faster incremental return on the investments that they make. I think another really important thing here is just to open up the communication around what the business drivers and goals should be. I think, you know, if you can achieve that alignment between the CIO and the CFO around what the business is trying to achieve, I think it then suddenly becomes much easier to then translate that down through the organization and find ways to collaborate better.
Natalie Silverman:Thanks, Rob, 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 podcasts on Sidetrade.com or through your podcast platform of choice. Thanks so much for tuning in. This podcast is brought to you by site trade, and this for general information purposes only. All rights reserved.