Welcome to the latest edition of the Finance and Accounting Technology Briefing, a biweekly newsletter from StrategicCFO360 and The CFO Leadership Council.
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Finance and Accounting Technology Briefing, a biweekly newsletter jointly produced by StrategicCFO360 and The CFO Leadership Council. Our goal is to help finance pros make confident technology choices and give software providers a better understanding of their customers' needs.
A reminder: the inaugural Finance and Accounting Tech Expo at the Javits Convention Center in New York City on October 29-30 is fast approaching. To register, go to the “Upcoming Events” section at the bottom of this newsletter.
If you have feedback, ideas or product, people and company news for the Briefing, please email the editor at vince@CFOLC.com. We look forward to seeing you in October!
Views From The Front Lines
Conversations with CFOs reveal much about their perspectives on technology, technology products and the struggles and difficulties they have within their IT environments. With the Finance & Accounting Technology Expo fast approaching, we collected what CFOs have been saying about technology in the months since this newsletter launched. Some comments have appeared on StrategicCFO360; others have yet to appear. We hope they spark discussion at our upcoming expo and help fulfill an essential part of our mission: giving software providers a better understanding of their customers' needs.
"CFOs must be metric-driven, shape long-term strategies and understand data sources and dashboards. CFOs also need to be selective—members of the C-Suite shouldn't be drowning in data. If the data doesn't tell you anything, you shouldn't track it. CFOs need to ask which KPIs are required to make decisions, which KPIs add value and which are being tracked purely as vanity metrics.— Peter "Reyn" Holden, CFO, Qu
"Understandably, finance staff can resist a new application because they are comfortable doing things the same way. Sometimes, we need to encourage staff to embrace the technology and explain that it will ultimately benefit them by allowing them to streamline their responsibilities. To counter the resistance, we try implementing these initiatives one at a time; otherwise, it can be overwhelming."— Leslie Cotton, CFO, Labor Finders
"We have a very small team within finance ... developing [AI] query engines that can provide insight into business metrics or insight into various operational drivers. Executives can interact with [the engines] through natural language. You can't produce a report for every executive for every question they ask. You're better off saying, 'Here's an expert; query it for whatever you want.' And let it build the reports the executive wants. Our early experiments look promising, and we want to double down on this."— Anand Govind, CFO, o9 Solutions
"What's important is that we move cautiously and be thoughtful about how GenAI will be used. Is automation meant to improve the cost and efficiency of the organization? Is GenAI a way to unlock knowledge trapped in the organization because we cannot consume data as quickly as the machines can? The CFO's role in all that is our strong mind for governance and having the right foundational governance decision-making processes in place."— Devina Rankin, CFO, Waste Management
"Practical examples of AI delivering significant value in finance and accounting have been rare compared with other functions. We're seeing a market backlash against vendors that promised extensive automation because that automation hasn't materialized. When I speak with other CFOs, the most common question revolves around whether they have seen any tangible AI use cases, and their answer is often no.— Steve Isom, CFO, Bloomerang
"Security has been a challenge. Technology has advanced, increasing the risk of fraud and unauthorized access to our information. We have all seen phishing emails, but now the criminals are more sophisticated. We have seen very elaborate attempts to access funds from our accounts. As a team, we must take this very seriously. We regularly talk to all employees about the threats and have stepped up our defenses."— Todd Pepmeier, CFO, Arrive AI
"Most growth businesses go through having disparate systems that don't talk to each other as well as they ought to. When systems talk to each other, finance can get very crisp on the connection of the business model to the operating drivers and the operating drivers to the financials. Building that tight system has been one of the biggest things I've been focused on.— Sam Kemp, CFO, Built Technologies
"We, as companies, are already too digitally dependent, and we, as CFOs, often take the smooth operations and ordinary high reliability of even the most crucial systems for granted. [The CrowdStrike incident is] another reminder that cyber and IT disruptions are just like any other unexpected risks. The sooner that we, as CFOs, start to treat them like all of the other risks and not something special, the sooner we can start to bring the risk management and effectiveness testing we know how to use from other domains into this one—making our lives more predictable, as we like them to be."— Jamie Gerber, CFO, SimSpace
—Vince Ryan, editor, The CFO Leadership Council. vince@CFOLC.com
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We asked Janice Stucke, the finance chief of CREW Network, about the organization's IT setup. Lawrence, Kansas-based CREW is a networking organization for women in commercial real estate.
I'm charged with moving the company from an outdated ERP to a robust tech stack. We have started with Tipalti for accounts payable, employee reimbursements and credit card reconciliation. We will move to an ERP implementation in Spring 2025. That will require updating an outdated general ledger structure for more than 50 business entities. Simultaneously, we are updating our website shopping cart with Magento (e-commerce software). We intake 90% of our revenue via transactions on our website.
What's your joy, and what's your headache?
My joy is that I love transforming systems—for me, it's like putting together a giant puzzle. I find it fun to implement new tech. Also, I love hearing from others post-implementation about how the technology has bettered their work lives.
My headache is the big hurdle to purchasing IT systems for an NFP: the yearly cost increases, which can become steep after the first contract (usually containing price breaks) expires. Subsequent contracts are less generous. The biggest headache with deployment is making sure a buildout fully addresses all the ways the data is needed. Without fail, after a system is implemented, a key stakeholder will say, "The system won't allow me to do 'X,' which is required to do my job." Getting all stakeholders to think of every little nuance during implementation is challenging.
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you make software companies do for you?
Ensure that sales and product teams understand the nuances of accounting and finance reporting before making promises. I continually enter companies in which what the vendor sales team promised didn't exactly come to fruition in a workable way, which is a considerable burden on the company's resources. I force the tech sales teams to get into the weeds during the sales pitch, and I demand proof that key issues can be dealt with before moving to signing. If CFOs were more open about lessons learned in implementations, collectively, these issues with new purchases would happen less often.
What's your best piece of tech advice for others in your job?
Although new systems implementation is scary, CFOs now have some implementation experience. But thinking through full-scale adoption is not usually planned for in the implementation, and it can make or break a technology project. Thinking through this additional lens early on will make a project an all-over success.
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Have news to share? Drop me a line at vince@CFOLC.com — Vince Ryan, editor
Workday agreed to acquire Evisort, an AI-based document intelligence platform for analyzing and pulling unstructured data from business and legal documents. The deal is expected to close by October 31.
Corporate card provider Brex unveiled Embedded Payments, an API-driven solution for B2B software vendors that want to integrate Brex’s global card and payments capabilities directly into their platforms.
New Zealand-based Xero, a SaaS small business accounting provider, is acquiring Syft, a cloud-based insights and analytics platform with customer reporting, visualizations and live analysis views.
GTreasury has acquired CashAnalytics, a cash forecasting and AR/AP analytics solution, to complement its treasury management systems products.
Cloud-based HR and payroll software company Paylocity agreed to acquire procure-to-pay vendor Airbase for $325 million. San Francisco-based Airbase’s last funding round in June 2021 had valued the company at $600 million.
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Have news to share? Drop me a line at vince@CFOLC.com — Vince Ryan, editor
Smartsheet COO Stephen Branstetter resigned from the company effective September 18, according to a regulatory filing. Vista Equity and Blackstone are reportedly in talks to buy the collaboration software company for $8 billion.
BILL hired Mary Kay Bowman as executive VP and GM of payments and financial services; she will report to CEO René Lacerte. Bowman was most recently head of global buyer and seller platform products at Visa and is the former head of payments at Square.
Avalara named Kevin Sellers executive VP and chief marketing officer. Sellers has held CMO roles at Ping Identity and Avnet and spent more than 20 years at Intel in marketing and investor relations roles.
Asana appointed Josh Abdulla to head of customer experience, overseeing the publicly traded company’s customer success, professional services and support teams. He was most recently chief customer officer of LiveRamp. Earlier in September, Asana tapped Sonalee Parekh, formerly of RingCentral, to head up finance.
Former GE CFO Carolina Dybeck Happe is joining Microsoft as EVP and chief operations officer. CEO Satya Nadella said Happe would help drive continuous business process improvement and accelerate the computing giant’s AI initiatives.
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Stock performance is as of the market close on September 18, 2024
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Plan to join us at the Finance and Accounting Technology Expo, the country’s largest annual trade show for buyers and vendors of corporate finance and accounting software. This year’s event will occur at New York’s Javits Convention Center on October 29-30, 2024. This is an excellent opportunity to network with industry peers, learn from experts and discover new products and services. Register online at StrategicCFO360.com/FATE/register/
Kickoff keynote!
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