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Contact Sangeeta Sumesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeetasumesh/Sangeeta's Website: http://sss.coach/"What the Finance" Book: https://www.amazon.in/What-Finance-Easy-learn-entrepreneurs/dp/1645467961FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is Adam Larson, and I'm your host who will be introducing you to our bonus episode's guest speaker, Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh. Sangeeta is a chartered accountant and management accountant with over two decades of experience, including leadership positions with multinationals across geographies, and most recently serving as executive director and CFO of Dun & Bradstreet Technologies. In this conversation by cohost Rouba Zeidan talks with Sangeeta about various aspects of being an influential woman in finance, including gender equality, rising up the corporate ladder and the importance of leadership and career optimization amid COVID-19. So to hear more, let's head over to their conversation now. Rouba: (00:59) So good morning Sangeeta, and thank you so much for joining us on Count Me In’s podcast this morning. Sangeeta: (01:07) Very good morning Rouba. It is great to connect with you, and pleasure being on your show. Rouba: (01:13) So I have so many questions for you because India is one of our biggest regions for IMA globally, and we're very keen to learn more about your experience as a seasoned finance professional and a woman. So women in finance in India represent a mere 11% compared to 16% globally. I personally find these figures a little shocking and an indication that much work, I mean, even on the global stage, don't get me wrong and that much work still needs to be done to establish gender equality within the finance sector. But what comes to mind when I mentioned this to you? I mean, what is your takeout from this. Sangeeta: (01:50) To be honest I find it ironical and surprising as well because you're right to say that the percentage is pretty less, but you know, if you look at women, I think woman are actually so good with money management. It is woman who are actually running them,  how big or small the budget, maybe, you know, they like to fit everything in within that, and it's so beautiful and they're so efficient and they don't even need assistance there. To come to think, logically speaking, there must be a lot more women in finance, which I find it surprising that it's not the case. But having said that I think  there are a lot more of the women who are a lot younger who want to get into finance, and I think there are  already quite a few of them in the finance domain compared to lets say a you know few decades ago. So in that way, it's kind of promising, and I think it all it needs is I think most women have to overcome this mental resistance. I think some of them tend to get bogged down because if you look at the CFO's nominee, you know the number two position, you know right hand of the CEO and stuff like that, so woman need to come out of this mental resistance and at the same time, I think they need a lot more motivation and they need to be encouraged by the seniors, the male colleagues, and definitely their family as well. Rouba: (03:08) From your personal experience. Have there been any particular challenges that you faced when it came to promotions and climbing up the corporate ladder? I mean, as you mentioned, it's important to have a support system at home, as well as within the companies that you work in, but for you personally, how has it been? Has there been a limitation and you know, the, the facilitation of you're climbing up that ladder, professionally? Sangeeta: (03:31) I think I have been really blessed, you know, because the kind of mindset my parents in calculating within me when I was younger was that gender has never been an issue. So it's either that you are capable of achieving what you want to achieve or not. So it was like, you know, coming down to my individual cells and I think ignorance is bliss because, you know, during my growing up years in, especially in my career, it was not this so much stops on this gender equality and all that. So, and coming from this background and the mindset, so it was more like, you know, am I capable of achieving this? Can I do this? Can I grow? Can I balance my family and my career? It was always those types of thoughts. So I strongly believe that, you know, a person, I mean, male or female, whoever is able to add value. I think, you know, all the promotions and everything else becomes secondary. So firstly, you must have the confidence in you. You know, I always say, when you want to start off your career, you should just take a pause and ask yourself, why do you want the career for yourself? What is it? Yes, yes. So you need to first be aware and clear of why you want to get up. And of course, if not, you can always explore other options, like, you know, work from home or entrepreneurship or anything like that. So I think this gender thing, you know, I think a person must remove doubt and, you know, focus on adding value. And what is it, how are you contributing to the organization. Then I think your growth becomes quite automatic. In my instance, I think I was really, really blessed. When my son was born, I was promoted as assistant manager, my daughter was born, I was promoted as a manager. You know, everything happened at the same time and yes, I must admit, yeah, it was actually overwhelming because I was a new mom and the new responsibilities at work, and you already facing the postpartum blues as well. So it was a bit of a challenge that way. But I think, you know, once you're able to tide over that and you know, you have your set career goals, your own self. And go by that, I think that's a lot better. Rouba: (05:42) Brilliant and very empowering advice, by the way, in the Arab world, we have a saying that every child comes with his own fortune. So I guess that manifested in the promotions that you are in Sangeeta: (05:53) Yeah. Rouba: (05:53) So you've done really well in your career and as a leader in your industry and amidst such a turning point in history, not just on the Indian economies platform, but also globally. So what kind of leadership transformation are you looking to implement or at least propose and suggest and facilitate within your organization? And is that something that you're working on currently in your capacity? Sangeeta: (06:19) Right, before we even dive into this.. You know, I want to talk about this wonderful experience that I had. So I'm also a high performance business coach. So I think about a year ago, I conducted a leadership workshop for some of the CXOs. You know, we have a CXO club here and I did like a workshop on leadership. So it was all very senior leaders from different industries were present. And what emerged the end of the workshop was something so beautiful.  They came of with five very important aspects for any leader. This will get more out of self realization and everything, and the reason I want to share this here is I think, you know, in respect to the current crisis,  or anything you know as a leader, I think these are very valuable things. So the first thing that they said was, you know, the listening skills. Many times leaders, you know, we're so caught up in our own things that, you know, we don't even listen to what the team members feeling, what are they viewpoints? Yeah, so that becomes very important. So it was surprisin...

Contact Russell Porter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russporter42/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back for episode 85 of Count Me In I'm your host, Adam Larson and today's conversation features IBM's Vice President of Finance and Global Business Services, Russell Porter. Russell has been with IBM for over 20 years, serving in roles spanning most financial disciplines in business units. He is a strong leader with a high aptitude for merging strategy and operations. In this episode, he really focuses his insights on how to lead and manage remote teams during these ongoing times of uncertainty. Russell explains IBM's current status and upcoming plans, as well as what he has done along the way to keep his team motivated and achieving. Keep listening, as we head over to this very timely and valuable conversation. Mitch: (00:55) Many leaders were faced with a task of quickly adapting their management strategies to remote work following the coronavirus pandemic. What were some of the strategies that you implemented in the beginning of this for the whole work from home environment, and how did you go about keeping your team together? Russell: (01:13) Mitch, in any situation, you know, one of the best things we can do is provide some clarity for our people. Discussing what we expect to happen, what we know, what we don't know and, and how we're going to make decisions as we all work through the issues that face us. In addition, one of the things we did was reinforced clarity around our organization's mission, and tried to make sure that each person continually understood their role in that overall mission. That helps people to stay connected and engaged, as we went through, you know, the, the vast uncertainty of those early days of the pandemic. We also noted that we needed a greater focus on empathy. You know, our team members all face different situations from those who are suddenly homeschooling their children to others who are concerned about aging parents and some who were cut off from the bulk of the social engagement that they had by not being able to go to work. You know, there's a saying that everyone's fighting a battle that we know nothing about, and we need to keep that in mind as leaders when we're working with our people, especially when we can't be physically with them, as much as we're used to.  That led us to realize we also had to be more flexible. You know, the work getting done is more important than exactly how it gets done. So at IBM we've got existing flex time programs that we just leveraged across the board. You know it allows people to attend to their daily needs while getting work done at what some would consider off shift hours. Now, not everything can happen that way, but to a great extent, our teams could modify their workdays to be early in the morning, late at night, or even split into pieces based upon all the other priorities they had to address. That took some creativity at times, and we had to change some structures like the workday times or some job design. And it was a great time actually to tap into our team's creativity, because they helped us develop some of those solutions to address the individual’s responsibilities and the individual's requirements and the job environment. The biggest thing we did though was communication, communication, communication. We were fortunate in IBM, we we've implemented agile methodologies in a lot of our work within finance and operations. So one of those, one of those methods is a daily standup meeting, and that really provided us a great check-in opportunity for our leaders and our teams to share those experiences and their concerns, and to make sure that our teams remained engaged in the work, but also that we could talk to them about what was going on outside of the work environment. That regular communication has really helped us to communicate both vertically and laterally across the organization. So a regular checkpoint with the team is key. But also as, as I've seen lots of people talking about the one thing that's missing in this virtual environment is the impromptu run into the hallways connection. That time when you're just walking down the hall and you see somebody and you think, oh, I meant to talk to them about an idea. So reaching out and keeping up networking and your contacts within your organization and outside, and being able to communicate across the small teams that we work in, that was also a big thing. And that was enabled by the technology and tools that we had adopted already. We were already doing video conferencing with WebEx and instant messaging, which we adopted with Slack earlier this year. Cloud based file repositories. All of these went from being ancillary to becoming like the primary mode of communication around the, around the organization, and I think the fact that we are already progressed with those tools, or at least had started with them, helped us adopt and adapt very, very quickly to what became a full time virtual environment. Mitch: (05:14) That's great that you had so much prepared and were able to implement so quickly, you know, I'm sure during this rapid change, and it was certainly a lot of uncertainty for everybody, even with plans in place like this, there must've still been a lot of questions from the team members, right? So what were some of the main concerns that you were hearing from your team while all this was going on, and how did you as a leader, go about addressing them? Russell: (05:40) So I'll tell you the number one question I kept getting was when are we going back to back to the office? And here again, knowing individual circumstances, I've got extroverts and introverts on my team, and the extroverts, you know, when they heard that we are going to be working virtually for a while., they wanted to get back to the office as quickly as possible. And, and working from home, working from bedrooms or living rooms on their own was really driving them a little nuts. So a lot of people thought it was going to be a one or two week closure of the offices to get past a peak period. But as the days turned into weeks, that question of when are we going back to the office became more and more insistent. You know, again, the best we could do was provide the clarity that we didn't know. And, and I'm in the Northeast. So, you know, in the Connecticut, New York area, and we had to tell our people, we didn't know. It was dependent first firstly, upon state regulations, but then also upon, the company's way that they wanted to approach coming back to the office, given that we've never had a time when the virus wasn't somewhere in the IBM office offices, or in the environments, I should say the States where, IBM operates. So, number one question was when are we gonna get back to the office? And we gave as much clarity as we could. Number two, job was, well, how are we going to get our jobs done the way we're used to doing them? And the answer was, we're not. We’re simply we needed to adapt to this new virtual environment there, wasn't going to be, you know, printing of documents, and, and there wasn't going to be the huddling in a physical conference room to go over charts, to go over analysis, to, to present ideas. Suddenly we all had to go virtual and that required a little bit of change, and the way we did things and the way we shared. It wasn't marking up and standing in front of a screen. It was, you know, trying to point at something with your, with your mouse and a little arrow on WebEx. but here again, it was adoption of the technology that helped us adapt and, and continue to be productive as a finance and operations organization. And what we actually found was within FNO, we really didn't skip a beat. We were able to modify the way we did th...

Contact Jason Krantz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkrantz/Strategy Titan:www.strategytitan.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/strategytitan/about/"Data & Analytics in the Boardroom: Raising Your Digital Quotient" Video Series: https://www.strategytitan.com/blog/data-analytics-in-the-boardroom-raising-your-digital-quotient-video-seriesBuild out your “business and finance” centric data and analytical skills with our practice dataset. Perfect for accounting and finance pros looking to develop their data skills: https://www.strategytitan.com/blog/titanized-real-world-dataset-to-develop-your-analytics-musclePodcast: https://anchor.fm/transformationnationAdditional Work: Using data and analytics to make business decisions with confidence during times of uncertainty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentdykes/2020/04/29/why-your-business-must-double-down-on-data/#6e180f597a68FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (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. I'm here to bring you episode 84 of our series. Today's feature presenter is Founder and CEO of Strategy Titan, Jason Krantz. Strategy Titan is a strategic management data and analytics advisory firm, and Jason is a business professional with over 10 years of business analytics, data science, and strategic leadership experience. In this episode, he shares his perspective on data, analytics and strategy and explains how these functions of the organization need to ultimately drive your overall business strategy. Jason talks about the products that have great opportunity to increase your firm's revenue by connecting these strategies, and how aligning your businesses strategies helps mitigate risk. Keep listening and will now head over to a very insightful and analytical conversation.   Mitch: (01:05) Alright, so Jason we just were having a brief conversation before we started here and, you know, we were talking a lot about the importance and the value of this conversation. So to start us off, why is a data and analytics strategy so important for innovation today?   Jason: (01:21) Yeah, in my mind, really what it does is it gets down to identifying opportunities. They're going to move the needle strategically and financially ever. All of us have financial goals, revenue, goals, growth goals, whatever it may be. I'll just give a real example. I like to use examples to illustrate these concepts, to move them from fuzzy to concrete. I used to work for a company $2 billion company. We are an industry consolidators. We acquired numerous companies. We had everybody on different ERP platforms, something I'm sure a lot of people can relate to. Each company really had a different behavior profile on the way that they did things. So, me being in analytics for practicing this company, one of my first jobs was to consolidate all this information and start looking at it, look for opportunities. Now we had pretty big, EBITDA growth goals. We were tightly focused on EBITDA growth as, our strategic objectives. And so as we're looking through this, we find out that we have well over $10 million in uncollected freight. Now this was freight that we're owed. You know, we just had not gone out and collected it. And as we looked at it, started asking questions saying, Hey, why is it that we do this? Like, Oh, well, you know, it's in our contract that we can do this, but we typically let it go. Or, you know, it's just, we we've done it this way for so long. So every company was doing it a different way, but the common theme was this freight recovery. So as we looked at it, we're like, you know, we can actually make about $14 million if we just collect the freight that we're owed. Not only, let's not even account for freight increases for gas, whatever it may be surcharges. And as we brought to some management team, they're like, how could this be? And this is, we got everybody aligned behind it, they said, this was a serious opportunity. This is a process improvement opportunity. This is real money that will impact the bottom line and help us meet our objectives. Now, the reason I share that story is analytics by itself didn't do anything. We didn't actually collect that money or drive that force forward. But what it did is it served as a tool to identify the opportunity that if we never went, I would have gone through that process. We never would have identified that opportunity. We would not have socialized it and gotten everybody to see, wow, this is something...

Contact Sandhya Sriram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyasriram2005/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 I'm here to bring you episode 83 of our series. With most finance professionals looking to make sense of the current economic climate, my cohost Rouba Zeidan speaks with Sandhya Sriram to find out more about where certain priorities lie in business. In this episode, Sandhya shares her expertise on strategic planning during a pandemic and how professionals can best balance organizational priorities while managing their teams, particularly remotely. With so much changing in business on a regular basis, it's important to strategize, prioritize, and stay motivated. So now, let's keep listening for some practical insights on how to do just that. Rouba: (00:57) So let, let's get right into it with, with all companies around the world, migrating to remote work, more specifically work from home, major compromises that have to be made that's ensure that business continuity is done under extremely limited data security circumstances. So that being the case of staff connecting from home, what are some of the best practices you have identified within your practice to protect company data? Sandhya : (01:26) So, I think there are different aspects of remote working. One is how do you secure access to your network when people are connecting remotely? How do you secure access? Now, both of them is not a COVID thing, it was existing pre-COVID as well. But what has really changed is the scale. . Now I am for a minute, not talking about knowledge workers who work with sensitive data, so where they have to be, have to have restricted physical access, you know. Some of these KPOs where people can't take their mobile cant take pictures because they deal with  really sensitive stuff. Now I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about operations in general. I think the new aspect of remote working, which was also there before, but has significantly amplified, is who else can potentially access your data. So everyone is working from everywhere. So your employee could be in a PG. The person in the adjacent room or the adjacent bed, as she or he can afford may have access to the phone calls that your employee makes. Maybe they have access to the data that he or she is viewing, and therefore the level of what can be compromised is what is maybe worrying companies or what they're faced with. Now under normal circumstances, physical security used to give that extra layer of comforting. Yes, it's all within my office. But now what most companies are doing is that they've heightened the security checks, they perform. A lot of companies are doing self testing, vulnerability testing, where they are creating like a Trojan. They are creating circumstances of compromise and they're trying to affect their systems themselves to see where the system can be compromised. They're also heightening the, governance or the control that they have on the data leakage tools that they have deployed. So like you are aware most devices, most laptops, desktops have data leakage tools, depending on the nature or the sensitivity of the work that you do. For example, some companies do not allow say pen drive or any drive to be attached to the laptop. Some companies do not allow, from your phone to be able to, share data into a WhatsApp or your Gmail. Some companies do not allow upload into public server. So they're are a lot of data leakage techniques that exist, and what companies have started doing is to start monitoring the noise that comes out of this, these data leakage tools, because these are continuously looking at data, that's passing through the network and are continuously flagging alerts, saying these are the type of activities that are happening with the data. So they have strengthened the monitoring of these alerts that go. But this is a evolution. You know, there are a lot of tools that are there, deployment and enhancement will be to what people specifically need, but they have to build more tools as well. So for example, what prevents me working from home, taking a picture, no matter what security you put on my laptop, I can still take a picture from my mobile ofmy laptop screen. And I can still, you know, compromise a particular data element. And therefore then companies are looking at how do I look what activities happening on the camera. Now, when companies start looking at your camera, then are they breaching your privacy? Then that becomes the next question. So there is a evolution also that is happening in this space on where companies will draw a line, and that line  will be dependent on what level of security they need from their operations. But if you ask me personally, it is a problem that will solve. It's not an answer. It's not, for example, if you ask me today saying when will economies recover? You know, I don't think that is an answer to that problem yet today, but this is a problem that will solve. People are solving it as we speak. They will enhance and upgrade their solutions to what their needs are, and they will figure answers. Now, some answers may come at a price like compromise of personal, of privacy or, you know, enhanced monitoring. Some answers may come simply with y like more costs, you know, utilization of better tools, and therefore there may be a cost impact of that, but answers will  come Rouba: (06:30) It's ongoing. As you said, that's, by the minute, there are ongoing developments that are unfolding, changes in decision making amid this pandemic. What are some of the top priorities that organizations need to consider in your view and what are some of the measures that they can take to manage them? Sandhya : (06:50) So, first really, first priority of organizations is to ensure safety of the people. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, everyone should continue to work from home, because in some cases  for certain business outcomes, certain people have to come out of their homes, but we need to find that balance. And more importantly, organizations need to make the whatever will be the working environment for the employee, whether it is in home or outside their homes, safe so that they can perform their roles in an effective way. That's the first priority for any organization, and especially in countries like India, where, the number of cases have significantly increased. It's extremely important for companies to ensure safety of their employees. The second priority, according to me is to have an Eagle eye on cash. Now this is the time where revenue profits, all the 20,000 different dashboards that people make are subservient to the cash that the company has in its bank account. If the company is not going to be able to pay its bills in the next quarter, then it's going to be very difficult for companies to find way forward on the business. So immediate action is how do they conserve cash? How do they create adequate measures to keep bringing cash into their bank account? And that means they have to continuously assess how they can build resilience and sustenance in the way they work. The third one for me is adaptability. You know, there are many, many that are seeing significant downturn, but there are pockets that are opening up. We saw Lam making face masks, you know.  There is a saying that says that only the grass that can bend with the wind can sustain the force of the wind. You know, so there is a burning need today for companies than ever before to be adaptable to what is relevant in today’s climate. andHow they can make them sense have a piece of the small pie that is available. The last for me, there ...

Contact Ben Jackson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmgjmba/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00) Welcome back for episode 82 of Count Me In. I'm your host, Mitch Roshong, and I'm here to bring you another conversation about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's guest is Ben Jackson. Ben is a Certified Coach, Speaker, teacher, and trainer, and he's also the managing partner of Ben Stu LLC, a business and leadership consulting company. Ben joined Adam to talk about the importance of internal controls, and having the proper policies in place to manage the emergence of AI and RPA in the accounting world. He addresses some of the risks presented, particularly with the recent remote work environment and how to overcome additional challenges when looking to lead the finance and accounting function. Let's go ahead and listen to their conversation now. Adam: (00:58) So with the advancements of technology, such as AI and RPA across the accounting space, can you discuss your thoughts on internal controls and the new policies and procedures that should be implemented because of these new technologies? Ben: (01:13) Well, you know, with the new technology that's going on, I don't really think that the internal controls really need to change. What I think they need is they need to be updated. See one of the things that we talk about with internal controls is who's responsible. When you have AI and you have, you know, the automatic accounting processes that are working, you need to establish who is that responsible person to make sure that they're working in the best way. So once you establish that responsibility, then you have to go back to where the next step is segregation of duties. Somebody is responsible to make sure that it's working the way it's supposed to work, as in the program. So whoever's that programmer needs to validate it. That the program is executing as expected, and then you need to add in the controller or the accountant who needs to come in and make sure that before you post an action, an action that it's reviewed. So you're really adding a couple extra steps to ensure, but you changed what goes on. So I think that you need to add some testing procedures to make sure that'd be for execution that it's there, and then also as you let these things automatically run, you need to have some spot checks and audits internally that bring forth those changes and then you'll know whether or not something is wrong. Adam: (02:51) So that makes sense. So you're saying that you don't need to change anything. It just needs to be maybe brought into the new age of what's happening around us. Cause internal controls aren't going to change, but we need to make sure that people, the right people are in place to make sure that the they're responsible for doing their duties in essence Ben: (03:10) Correct. You know, one of the things that happens is, you know, when you think about the top six things that happen with internal controls, you know, the first two are really talking about establishing the responsibility, and then segregation of duties. The next thing becomes documenting the procedure. That is a very important thing with internal controls is having a documented procedures. When you have those procedures documented, it makes it easy for somebody to take on a role. For example, if you have change in, people. People changes always make things difficult. Well, if I have AI and you know, automatic processing running, then I need to give the new person who goes and sits in those seats, what really happens and what they need to check for. So if I don't give them what the documented process is, then they're sort of stuck and they don't know that something's automated running in the background, and then they don't know how to fix it, how to look at it, if there's a problem, and who do they go and talk to. So that becomes very important, you know,  in the next step. So, you know, when you talk about AI and you talk about automated processing and letting things just run, you know, we've already established who was responsible, between a tech person and an accountant, to make sure that those two roles are responsible. We've segregated who's really responsible for whatever, and then we have that next thing, which is a documented procedures. One of the things that I like to do when I look at internal controls is to create a RACI. Who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted and who's informed. So that actually helps with internal controls because then you know exactly who you need to go to if something is wrong or when you noticed, things during an audit, you can go, okay, you should know who, who entered the, program for the automatic entries. Now, the problem with AI is AI is always thinking, and because it's always thinking you sort of control the parameters, that it looks at, and that control will always be a consistent review. And again, it doesn't change the fact that the internal control is there. It changes what the internal control should be. Adam: (06:12) Definitely. So do you have some examples maybe you can give of, maybe updating internal controls, or some of the things you've been talking about, some specific examples that you could share? Ben: (06:24) For updating internal controls, I recently consulted with an organization who didn't have a lot of internal controls. And, during the process, I noticed that there were open system users that had the ability to do some things that they shouldn't be doing. So we put in plan in a place where we actually created a table for what the internal control could be or should be based on their current platform. So in doing so, what you do is you sorta look at their current processes and then you assign someone in the finance group to monitor what's really going on. Because the system, the company is a small company. So a lot of people wear many hats. So locking down the system is not a great idea. The better idea is saying, okay, I know what my parameters are. How do I validate that everybody is doing things correctly? So when you do notice an error, we you bring it up to the CFO and the management team and make some decisions on what do we need to change in a process and how do we correct some things so that consistency is improved. One of the things that you do with these controls as you're growing your company, you want to make sure that they're in place so that everybody knows the rules and that it's not risked, there's no risk to the company. So in implementing this, we also identify what the potential risk is. If somebody doesn't catch it, and that becomes important for the stockholders, and when I say stockholders or the stakeholders, it's who we have to report to, because it could be on any scale of company, who you're giving these reports to. They have to know that they could be confident in the data, and that accounting is really looking at what's transactionally happening, whether through systemic processes or manual processes. Adam: (09:05) You mentioned that there are always risks involved with any internal control, knowing that the main risk is what if the internal control fails? Are there some pitfalls that people can look out for as they're looking to maybe update their internal controls or looking to make them more holistic? Ben: (09:23) Are there things that people can do to mitigate risk? Of course. One of the things that I suggest is having a quarterly review, and sort of keeping the scorecard from the review to see how many errors were caught, what were the risks? So it's like doing a risk assessment, and in doing the risk assessment and you sit there and you say, okay, did this control work? You know, how many, how many purchase o...

Contact Andrew Royer:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/royeraccounting/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/royer-accounting/Royer Accounting: https://www.royeraccounting.ca/Andrew's Recommended Readings:Tim Ferris, 4-Hour Work Week: https://fourhourworkweek.com/Mike Michalowicz, Profit First: https://profitfirstbook.com/Dave Chilton, The Wealthy Barber: http://www.wealthybarber.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00) Welcome back for episode 81 of Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm happy to share another conversation with you about various things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's conversation features Andrew Royer, Founder and CEO of Royer Accounting in British Columbia, Canada. Andrew is an entrepreneur who uses the tagline, “Transform Your Business from a Cash Eating Monster to a Moneymaking Machine.” He loves working with other entrepreneurs to help them see cashflow issues and showing them how growth and profit go hand in hand. In this episode, Andrew shares a perspective on various accounting software options, and how it can enhance work productivity to ultimately lead to a more profitable business. For a further explanation on what it means to be efficient and effective in business, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.   Mitch: (01:01) So from your experience working with accountants and clients, what are some of the advantages to utilizing a desktop accounting software?   Andrew: (01:09) Okay, well in some cases you don't really have a choice. If you're in an area that's got a slow or unstable internet connection, you're not going to be able to use an online application. Another benefit is that the, the applications, the desktop versions that are installed on your computer tend to be a lot more robust and have more features available to them. And a couple other, you just, you'll, there's a onetime cost option, which you don't get online generally, and, you have more control over the upgrades. You can decide, you know, when you're going to install it, you don't have to worry about them installing it when you're, you know, you're busy with something.   Mitch: (01:52) That makes sense. And then I guess the opposite here, the online accounting software, what are some advantages to utilizing some of that?   Andrew: (01:59) Yeah, I mean, the, the biggest advantage is that you're not tied to your computer. So a lot of the software, you can access it on your phone. Take your laptop, you sit on the beach, not that you want to be working on the beach, but, it's better than working in an office. But yeah, I mean if you get a call at home, you're able to look information up thats, and enter information when you need to. You don't have to worry about like, so the benefit of the desktop is that you, you get control over the installations, the downside, or the benefit of the online,you don't, have to worry about the installation. Somebody is doing the installations, they're backing up the software, they're installing the updates for you. It's also easy to give access to your staff. You give access to, accountants and bookkeepers, whereas on a desktop version, unless you're getting into a really expensive enterprise kind of options, it's hard to get multiple people involved. And the online makes that, you know, the interconnectedness  is very powerful. You can also make up, so the shortfall of the online, which I had mentioned before was that you have less power than the desktop, but, with the online, you can actually integrate with thousands of apps that will increase the power of the online. So there's a lot of benefits you're not closed and tied to what the desktop gives you. You can add whatever features you want.   Mitch: (03:21) So I guess a lot of it sounds like, you know, there are pros and cons to both of these, for those who are interested in, you know, looking at different software options, whether it's desktop or online, we'll start with desktop to stay consistent here. How do you go about determining which desktop software is right for you?   Andrew: (03:40) In my opinion, it's, it's largely preference. I've used.,I've used most of the different options out there, the big names anyway. So, the primary options are QuickBooks Desktop, and then the Simply Accounting or the Sage version. So those are, those are the two main competitors. There may be some advantages to one or the other based on the size of the company or the particular industry that you're in. But otherwise I find that it's mostly preference. I find more technically minded tend to prefer the Simply Accounting and, the QuickBooks, if you're just getting started, QuickBooks tends to be simpler, easier to use. So a lot of people start with that.   Mitch: (04:21) Then what are some of your options on the flip side? Like I said, what are some of the ways that you can choose the right online accounting software and what are some of those examples?   Andrew: (04:31) Yeah, I think so picking the right online software is probably a little tougher. For our firm, what we've done is we've gone just to be consistent. We've gone with QuickBooks online, just across the board for everybody. This is QuickBooks has been in the market the longest and online,aAnd so they have the most integrations with other software out there. They're, it's easier to find people that are more familiar with it and able, so it's easier to find people in, to work with it and so there's less training involved with that. And, I mean, it's not, it's not perfect. I'd like there's issues with it that drive me nuts, but it's kind of, I can say it's the worst system until you consider the alternatives. So then we look at, like Sage has started the game a little bit later. I think they were digging their claws into the desktop version and really just didn't want to let it go. And so they joined the game a little bit later and, they have a lot less integrations thanthan QuickBooks and otherwise I think between the two, it's more of a, just a preference thing. And then the last one, the one that I've been keeping my eye on a lot is XERO. So they never had a desktop version. So both QuickBooks and Sage, they were basically competing with themselves, trying to create some of the same features that they had in the desktop version. XERO didn't have that liability. So they were able to just create something from scratch, make it the way that they wanted to, with an online interface. Some of the issues that they ended up getting into with that is that, people are used to doing things a certain way with all other accounting software and they've kind of done just something completely different. The biggest benefit with XERO isit works great with the foreign exchange transactions, which can be tougher in both, you know, QuickBooks online and Sage. And really, the only reason that we haven't moved everybody over to it is it's really lacking in the Canadian sales side. So the sales tax handling, they're working on it, but, until that's done, I can't even, consider it, but we're definitely keeping our eye on that one is potentially a future leader in this industry.  Mitch: (06:50) So you've said it a few times where it really come...

Contact Michael High:linkedin.com/in/michaelhigh Michael High in the Media:https://www.afponline.org/ideas-inspiration/topics/articles/Details/bridging-the-gap-between-it-and-finance/https://www.afponline.org/ideas-inspiration/topics/articles/Details/the-power-of-diversity-in-finance/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=May20_week2 Michael High Articles:https://www.afponline.org/ideas-inspiration/discussions/afp-conversations-podcast/Details/shell-oil's-michael-high-on-the-challenge-of-bringing-fp-a-to-deepwater-drillinghttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-vacuum-cleaner-youll-replaced-one-michael-high%2F/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/senior-management-do-your-best-leaders-have-ax-grind-michael-l-high/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05) Welcome back for episode 80 of Count Me In I'm your host, Adam Larson, and this is IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's episode features Shell's, Deep Water Gulf of Mexico Business Unit CFO, Michael High. Mike is passionate about thought and people leadership, diversity and inclusiveness, digital transformation and personal development. In his upcoming conversation you have with my cohost Mitch, Mike highlights the different states of going digital, finance's role in business transformation, and what it takes to effectively lead a business transformation. Thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the episode.   Mitch: (00:49) For a little background and context and this conversation, can you please tell us what finance digitalization is?   Michael: (00:57) Thanks for the question. So in terms of what the finance digitalization is to me, I like to start a bit with a kind of vocabulary for me, at least a lesson that I learned on this journey, and there are three terms that seem to get thrown out together at the same time, and sometimes try to mean the same thing, but I think they have a bit distinct meaning. So the first one for me is just this idea of digitization, which I think is something we've experienced mostly through our lifetime. This is that switch from analog to digital, where we went from filling out paper forms to doing so electronically. And so for some people, when they hear digitalization or even finance digitization, they're, they're thinking about that element of it. And for me, that's at a minimum step one, and then most places were far beyond it, but there are still pockets where actually this is an important part of digital transformation. The second one is digitalization, which for me is kind of a second phase to that. And this is where we're for me thinking about the current ways that we do work and how can we make those current ways and this current business models more productive or perhaps simpler, or make it a little bit easier to collaborate, but it's, by and large within the paradigm of the existing way that work is done. And the third phase for me is this concept of digital transformation, which is actually where you're opening up entirely new ways of doing business, perhaps even new business models, new ways to even approach the market and fundamentally different ways of working. And so, for me, that's where the most value ultimately lies is in that, and I think it's also where you get beyond things like just looking at the IT cost or even the IT side of the equation to actually looking more fundamentally at a minimum data, but also process and also business models.   Mitch: (02:39) So with all those considerations, what is the role of finance in the bigger business transformation for an organization?  Michael: (02:48) I think are some of our foundational skills, even around understanding value management, understanding cost management, these, these core skills actually come to the forefront. And it's really important that we help our business colleagues let's say frame the decision appropriately and evaluate it  appropriately. I think it's kind of easy, especially if you're thinking about digital transformation, just simply from that digitization or even digitalization perspective, the kind of first and second steps that are referred to that, you only think about the first order cost effects of this. And I often have found myself in conversations where it's challenged by, well, Excel is free, so why would I possibly spend more money to do something? And of course, when it's framed that way, it is hard to actually talk your way out of that argument. But when you actually step back and say, actually what we're after here is a fundamentally different way of doing business. You start to realize that the cost side of the equation is actually only a ver...

Contact Rob Mars: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-mars-3738402/CMA Certification Overview: https://www.imanet.org/cma-certificationIMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (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 today I'm sharing with you another bonus episode in our series. As hopefully you've recently heard on our podcast IMA's Senior Vice President of Certifications and Exams and Content Integration, Dennis Whitney, joined us again to talk about how IMA responded to the challenging times, brought by COVID-19 and share some updates on sitting for the CMA exam. In that conversation, he also mentioned how CMA's have been able to help their organizations, weather the storm across the globe, which is a perfect segue for today's episode, where we will hear from Rob Mars and experienced financial executive and proponent of IMA CMA certification. Rob talks about the value of having a CMA and validates many of the points made by Dennis in our previous episode. Rob referred to the CMA as your global passport. So keep listening to hear what that means and other insights from this experienced management accountant. Mitch: (01:09) When we first spoke, we Identified the CMA as really being this global credential. So in your opinion, how has the CMA really helped you from the start of your career to where you are now? Rob: (01:23) Long time ago in the eighties, I started my finance career with Borg Warner. I joined this American multinational as a financial analysist in the European head office in Amsterdam. It was a great organization to work for. Plenty of room for development, with young people, senior jobs, and a strong emphasis on financial reporting, performance analysis and forecasting. I do still recall we put lots of hours into variance analysis and filling up the ROI chart. One of the seniors in the finance division in the US was the key promoter of the CMA, and Borg Warner was also a corporate supporter of IMA. I decided to go for the CMA. At the time, it was still a five-part exam. I had to travel to the US. I remember driving with our Finance Director to Columbus, Ohio, to attend the exam together, and it went well, and onthea way back, you know, I was tasting my first root beer. That was a different taste. I was keen to study for further develop, but a full postgraduate study, found to have it. So CMA was a good choice for me. It gave me a good overview of relevant topics. It gave me training and practical tools for my work, and it gave me more understanding of the US context. In our company we had many CMAs, and the fact that we had gone through the same training also helped us to work across borders and communicate. We had a common language and understood each other better when we discussed things like breakeven, contribution margin, variable costing, absorption costing, financial analysis, etcetera. And if we got in doubt, we could either refer to the same textbooks. So it was a good way to, to work across the borders. Mitch: (03:21) So that leads us very nicely into the next question here. You know, you referred to the CMA as a passport. So what do you really mean by that and how is this really, an international credential? Rob: (03:37) Yeah. What, I worked for seven years with Borg Warner after I joined Nedloyd, an international shipping company. And after two years in the Netherlands, I moved to Tokyo with my family. Later, we moved on to Hong Kong, London in Singapore and South Korea as well. So we enjoyed working and living in Asia and Europe and meeting new people and learning from different cultures. But when it comes to CMA at the time, it was all very different in my home country. When I did my CMA exam, there was no Netherlands chapter, no CMA exam site at all. I got my CMA in 88. To get a university, free university in Amsterdam, we managed to start an exam site first as a trial, and then they started a CMA review course. It's great to see it for more than 25 years, they have run it successfully. And now over two separate CMA training courses, one in Dutch and one in English. Amsterdam is the largest chapter in Europe. Right now, you can find chapters in many more countries. It's a good way to meet like minded finance professionals and network and learn from their experiences. All those countries didn't have them when I lived there. Now more than half of IMA membership is outside of the US. They are fairly active region offices, Amsterdam, Dubai, Singapore, China is truly global now. This is an incredible achievement, and I'm glad to be part of this. Mitch: (05:11) What exactly do all of these chapters have in common when it comes to management accounting, and what are these professionals have to offer with their CMA that really add value to their businesses? Rob: (05:25) What I find with the CMA, it's a part I like, you know, I always love to work on management accounting sideof finance. I have a great respect for all those who are experts in statutory and financial accounting, but I enjoyed the business part role more. I find it important to have people in the team who are experts in both fields. I saw that we could add value to the business with things like decision support and quotation tools, financial analysis, customer product profitability, performance measurement, etcetera. With this we could help steer the business and create more value added. At the time in my team, many people were trained in CPA, local CPA, mostly. And the benefits of those is that you learn the statutory texts and, financial reporting, focused on your own country. The difference with the CMA, you know, business and management, accounting, financial analysis is very of global. It's very international. Mitch: (06:39) So what additionally, working with IMA and the different chapters that holding the CMA, you know, volunteering all the work that you do. Now you're a global board member. What personally do you want to share as far as your perspective on IMA and everything that it's done for you and your career? Rob: (07:03) Good point. So another aspect I enjoyed very much being part of this IMA family. As I mentioned before, IMA  was in my early days, pretty much US focused and centered. Now with a substantial presence in the regions and more than half of our members live outside the US and IMA Board we also have now a more diverse and international members. To meet up with chapter leaders, and members from countries all over the world during conferences is great and I find very valuable. Apart from such networking, I also believe that as an IMA volunteer, gives you an opportunity to train and practice leadership skills, it is an intangible benefits, and truly rewarding. You can start in a local chapter or getting involved into regional or global board or a technical committee. There's a lot to choose from if you want to put yourself into a volunteering role . I  really get delighted to hear from young people, students, young professionals, how CMA is helping them in a career developmet. It's very encouraging. They could improve their harness skills by being part of his IMA community and connect with like minded people from the world. It's great to see this happening. Closing: (08:17) This has been Count Me In IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like, what you heard, and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and financ...

IMA: https://www.imanet.org/CMA: https://www.imanet.org/cma-certificationExam Changes: https://www.imanet.org/cma-certification/getting-started/cma-2020-exam-changesUpdate for CMA Candidates: https://www.imanet.org/cma-certification/getting-started/cma-noticeCoronavirus Update from IMA: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/jeff-thomson-on-the-coronavirusFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (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 happy to bring you another bonus episode with, IMA's Senior Vice President of Certifications Exam and Constant Integration, Dennis Whitney. Last December, I had the chance to sit down with Dennis and he talked about the changes to the CMA exam. This time around Dennis spoke with Mitch and they discussed how IMA and CMAs can make a difference through this time of need. Dennis also shared updates on CMA testing centers, exam windows  and pass rates. Keep listening to hear what IMA has been doing to support its candidates and the value CMAs have had for their organizations.   Mitch: (00:52) So thank you for joining us again, Dennis. I know last we spoke, you spoke with Adam and gave us a nice overview of the CMA exam, the certification, some of the changes that were coming up in January earlier this year. But obviously there were quite a few challenges and some changes to what's going on with the CMA. So if you wouldn't mind just starting off kind of sharing some of those challenges and obstacles that we went through earlier this year.   Dennis: (01:20) Yeah. Hi, Mitch. It's good to be with the, the program again. I appreciate you having me on. So yes, it's been a very difficult year of, in many respects in January, we introduced the new CMA content specification outline, and that went well in January and February, but then we were, toward the end of February, beginning of March, as everyone knows, we were hit with this terrible pandemic. At first it looked like it was only going to be something that was a major problem in China, and we were focused on making arrangements to change our Chinese language exam date, but then of course it spread to become a worldwide pandemic. The first impact we had was for our CSCA exam, which is the strategy certification for CMAs, and we give that exam, two windows, March and September. Unfortunately the March window, I think maybe for less than one week, some candidates were able to take the exam and then Prometric had to close all their testing centers. So that was a disappointment for us, and of course for the CSCA candidates. For the CMA exam, our testing windows don't start, you know, there's January, February, then there's May and June, and then there's September, October. So it didn't impact us or the candidates until May. Fortunately, Prometric started opening their testing sites in may, in the beginning of May, but not throughout the world. And we've seen, you know, as of now, actually all just about all testing sites, not all, but just about all Prometric testing sites are up and running and candidates are able to talk, take the exam. And, we could talk a little more about that later if you'd like, how under what conditions candidates are taking the exam, but so far, candidates are able to continue their pursuit of the certification, unfortunately, during a very difficult time.   Mitch: (03:41) So as you mentioned, this really kind of hit globally, after a couple of months, and even though the testing windows weren't effected, obviously many businesses were. So from your perspective, why have CMAs remained so essential to their workforce and why have they been able to assist their companies so much through this ongoing global pandemic?   Dennis: (04:02) Yeah, that's a great question, Mitch, and of course there, there are different categories of essential workers, including of course our frontline medical workers who have been true heroes during this pandemic. CMAs are also essential. They're essential in an economic sense. And in fact, accountants in general are critically important for the smooth functioning of businesses. They ensure that there's enough cash on hand to pay bills, to make payroll, to also ensure that processing of financial transactions are done and that managers have the results that they need to manage the business. Now, CMAs in particular, they can help companies not only survive, but they also help companies rebuild and grow. So that of course helps our economies, which are hurting during this, pandemic induced recession. And, our economies need to go rebuild and our companies need to rebuild. So this in turn, when CMAs help companies in this way, this protects jobs and it also adds jobs. So, so that workers could provide for their families. First of all, you know, from the survival perspective during the pandemic, companies need to be able to do the best to survive, to keep as many jobs as they can to meet customer demand and keep their companies in business. So that's where the risk management, cost management, and cash forecasting skills come into play. But CMAs can also use their value creation skills to help the companies not only survive, but also prosper. CMAs you know, the exam is really focused. It's a strong focused on planning analysis and decision support, and they can use these skills to help senior decision makers identify growth opportunities, which will help companies prosper, not only now, but well into the future because when the pandemic ends, and you probably reading about this, now in the business press, many companies are going to realize that they need to innovate their business models and revise their long term business strategy. So CMAs can be the trusted business advisors that they need to help guide the way in doing that.   Mitch: (06:47) I think there's a pretty good connection also to, you know, the last time you did an episode with us, you discussed the updated learning outcome statements and the different changes that went into the CMA exam, you know, incorporating a lot of the technology & analytics. So how have some of those, you know, refined skills and the different things that you're now assessing really equipped CMAs as well, and what does that look like as far as moving forward to changing these business models like you just mentioned.   Dennis: (07:20) Well, CMAs, even before this new content specification outline, CMAs, in my opinion, are well equipped to support organizations during this difficult time. But of course the profession does change as it evolves and becomes more sophisticated, more advanced, and that's reflected in the new content specification outline with a stronger emphasis on technology and analytics and decision making. And, you know, so skills like AI, RPA, data analytics, those are tools that can help CMAs provide a faster and more accurate forecast for example. Mining data, performing advanced, predictive, prescriptive analytics. These are new topics on the CMA exam, and adding these topics to actually it's part one of the content specification outline that helps the CMAs, that helps their companies, whether this pandemic. And also, it will help companies prosper while into the future because they have now the skills to better...

Contact Chris Wymbs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-wymbs-b4b4b789/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05) Welcome back for episode 79 of Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Mitch Roshong and today we will be hearing from Chris Wymbs, the Executive Vice President of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer for AMC networks. Chris has significant leadership experience at a Fortune 50 company and as a finance executive with a proven record of success and extensive background in all aspects of finance. In this episode, he speaks with my cohost Adam about the leadership qualities needed to succeed in your career and how one can effectively lead change and innovation in their organization. Keep listening to hear an insightful episode about leadership, innovation and business transformation.   Adam: (00:54) So, Chris, can you tell us a little bit about your career journey and how you got where you are?   Chris: (01:02) Yeah, sure Adam, be happy to. So, it has definitely been a journey it's a good way to depict it. So if I think of the start foundationally, it was early days at Ernst and Young progressing up through the ranks there. Was in the audit realm as well as a support in the advisory services side, worked in a lot of different industries, and I deem that to be foundational to my, as I mentioned to my career progression. From there, I moved on to a little company known as GE at the time, and to an internal audit role, in their corporate audit group, which was exciting and fun and leverage the skills I had from my audit baseline, if you will, or foundation. And then moved into a, at the time a controller role, a global controller role of one of their, financial services businesses, GE Consumer Finance. And there, I really kind of cut my teeth if you will in the operational expertise realm. We were very inquisitive. We had a lot of deals internationally and I got to travel quite a bit, see different cultures, even though I was based domestically and really built out, I'd say kind of the foundation of my leadership skills and more of the executive level, as well as just some financial skills that I really hadn't gotten involved in in my days at Ernst and Young and really owning aspects of the finance organization and building out a team which was exciting and fun. And from there, I progressed into a company, American Express, and took a controller role there. And soon thereafter, less than a year, I moved into more of an operational role. So I was in the FP&A role for a few years. I was in various segment CFO roles over the years, three or four of them. And as I progressed in those roles, it gave me an opportunity to, to steepen and the realms of operational finance, not only from a controllership perspective, but from an FP&A perspective, a corporate finance perspective, and really just continue to build out my financial tool set. And then that brings me to the current role as  I'm EVP of finance and chief accounting officer at AMC networks. And I operate in both the controllership realm as well as the operational finance realm and have a myriad of responsibilities. And as I think of the journey I've gone through, it really has set me up to, to excel in the role I'm in today. And it's, it's comprehensive and it's wide ranging across the finance spectrum. And, and I lead a reasonably sized team and I enjoy that and I am an extrovert by nature. So, being in the leadership role is exciting and fun to me, and it does get me out of bed in the morning, although these days getting out of the bed means just walking downstairs and not getting on a train. So that's kind of in a nutshell, hopefully that covers the question.   Adam: (03:52) So thinking about that journey, could you describe what leadership characteristics have enabled you to get where you are today?   Chris: (04:03) Yeah, another  great question. So leadership, it could mean different things to different people and means different things in different cultures and different companies. And as I mentioned, I've worked in a few different companies, but to me, leadership, there's just some foundational things that are absolutely, you know, core given definitions of what leadership is. And for me, it starts with kind of consistent values, and some of those, if I were to just dispel some of those fundamental values, first and foremost, it's integrity. And, everything I do and everything in the bedrock of my leadership is integrity. So my actions will match the words I speak. I, you know, I will always take the higher road whether, you know, whatever issues it might create. And, you know, if you don't have your integrity, then it's really questionable as to what leader you are. And I don't think you can have the right fabrics of a leader without the key bedrock of integrity. And then from there, it kind of builds out and you can kind of go different ways. And for me, if I were to think about the feedback I've gotten over the years from people who've worked for me, they talk about me being an empowering leader. So giving them the ability to go out and do things on their own without my direct oversight, but still providing them enough oversight and guidance to help them succeed. So that's hard as a leader to balance empowering people, but at the same time supporting people. And I think that's foundational to my leadership approach. And then around that, it's how do you develop people? And that's giving people an empowerment, but also how do you continue to develop them and build their skillset and give them confidence and create a safety net around them at some level, although you do need to let people fail at times, and that's how we often learn the best, but, you know, just giving them an ability to continue to develop and supporting them in that development, whether it be getting additional training, having conversations with them in tough areas, and as they develop and progress and become leaders of people, that's a whole different dynamic there's leadership in the entity, as far as driving things forward, but then there's leadership of your team and those mean different things and helping people develop skill sets and both project and people leadership, you know, it takes some effort and some support to do.   Adam: (06:30) So what counts as innovation in your organization? How would you define it, and what does innovation mean to your employees?   Chris: (06:39) Yeah, innovation, a tough question. Not unlike leadership. How do you define it? It's defined quite different people define it different ways. The way I think about innovation is kind of through a three-pronged definition, if you will, firstly, there's technological innovation, that's we all know what that is, right? It's the next generation of the, whether it be the app or, you know, the platform where using the next generation of, you know, Oracle so on, so forth or SAP for that matter. There's also process innovations. So that to me could be evolving and driving more efficiency and effectiveness in a process, technology unchanged. And then thirdly there's, and this is where I think most people define innovation. It's the new thing. It's the new app that didn't exist before. It's the, you know, it's the Uber, it's the, you know, however you want to define it as the Priceline if you go way back that just didn't exist previously in the travel realm. It's the ideation of something that didn't exist and that at its core is kind of foundationally innovation, but for finance organizations, it's kind of hard to focus and operate in the ideation realm of innovation. So where I tend to hone my team and more is how do we ...