Video Transcription
Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining today.
Before we officially get started, I'm just gonna take you through a couple of quick housekeeping items. The first is the live q and a. So you're probably gonna have a lot of questions throughout this presentation, which we expect. So we have some time reserved at the end specifically for you to ask your questions.
And any questions that we don't get to during the call today will be available all answered and ready for you in an email following the webinar, which brings me to my next point, the recording and slides. Everything you see here today, the recording and the slide deck as well as the q and a, like I just mentioned, will be sent to you in an email following the webinar. So be sure to keep an eye on your inbox for that. And lastly, if you get through this presentation and you really like what you hear, our CEO, Christina Ross, is actually gonna be doing a session on this exact topic at the AFP FP and A forum in Austin, Texas from March seventeenth to the nineteenth. So if you're able to sign up for that or you're already planning on going, be sure to check that out.
Alright. And without further ado, I'm going to hand things over to our host for the day, Jim Bullis, who is the head of solutions consulting here at CUBE. Jim?
Yeah. Hi, everybody.
As Alyssa mentioned, Jim Bullis had up our solutions team here at CUBE.
Been here for a little over three years, but I've been in the FP and A slash finance consulting space for the last fifteen. So helping finance departments of all levels of maturity improve their processes. So excited to walk you through the framework, we've put together, and I will steal the screen when you get a second, Melissa.
Alright.
So should be seen in an agenda slide. Does that look good?
Alright.
Joe, our main goal today is to roll out what we call the strategic finance framework.
I'll go through the agenda real quick. But as you're sitting through this, if I could have you have one takeaway, it's gonna be, okay. They laid out this framework.
Just reflect on your own business and, you know, maybe find a couple nuggets that you could use to improve. But we're hoping that this is a lens with which from which you can view your own department, in terms of, like, hey. What are what do I need to be thinking about foundationally? Right?
Because we all, you know, went to finance class back in the day. We know how to run a three statement model, income statement, balance sheet, all that good stuff, but they really don't touch you teach you, like, the foundations of a finance team, how to work and improve. So that's kind of the the essence of the framework is to give yourself an opportunity to reflect on where you're at and where you can you can improve. So we'll start by just talking about, hey.
What does it mean strategic finance?
And then probably most of us on the call are thinking, yeah. I wanna be strategic, but I'm kinda stuck in the tactical. So we'll kinda lay out what those look like, but we'll spend most of the time on our strategic finance framework we're rolling out and then giving you some practical tips, of making yourself more proficient in the context of that framework. So, hopefully, you find some good nuggets. Hopefully, it's a good lens through which to reflect on your own team, but we can get into it here. So we'll hit on the role of strategic finance.
Right? Finance is more critical than ever. You know, back in the day, it was about just the numbers, getting those out, getting those right. Like, I remember when I started consulting walking into office buildings, and they'd have binders full of, like, financial results from, like, the seventies, eighties, and nineties.
They like, even one office. It was kinda cool because they turned it into art, but they had hand drawn, like, charts and graphs that they had framed and put up on the walls and, like, the finance team meetings. Like, that was the goal. Right?
Get the numbers out. Make sure they're right. It's shifting. Now finance teams are being asked to be an active part of driving the business strategy.
Right? So if you're solely focused on looking backwards at at the numbers, you're kind of falling behind. Right? The organizations you're competing against, right, they're they're looking to aim and point towards the future. They're looking to anticipate challenges. They're looking to take the financial plans they're building out, but ultimately align those with the broader business goals of the organization.
And they're looking to help the other departments in the organization by giving them insights and action items they can run with. Right? So it's definitely shifted over, you know, in the two thousands here as we've gone forward from being those scorekeepers to to being more of that strategic partner where we're driving and shaping the business strategy. We're helping influence growth, helping teams make the right decisions. So if you look at those questions on the bottom of the slide, it was always like, hey. What happened?
Like, as he got more advances, okay. Why did that happen? We've added more questions into the fold, which is, hey. What's gonna happen next?
And how do we, as a team, make the best decisions to kinda steer our ship in the right direction? So what you see is more and more being, you know, hoisted on the finance team's shoulders in terms of what they're being asked to help with. Right? It's no longer that just backward looking reactive nature.
So what that means is we have the rise of the strategic finance team, the strategic CFO.
And if you go, you know, pull various, like, roles, CEOs, investors, CFOs, you know, finance teams, what they're gonna say is, hey. We need people with more of a strategic vision when we're building out our teams. Right? The numbers and getting those right are are a given.
Right? You have to do that. But as we look for the attributes of our employees, we want that strategy to be a strong part. So, you know, there's been some studies have been done.
Like, ninety percent of investors say they are looking for CFOs that have that long term strategic vision, like, inherently as part of their essence, I guess, for lack of better term. Right? They're looking for those strategic CFOs as they're trying to build out the teams that are running their portfolio companies.
If you go talk to CFOs themselves, seventy five percent of them say that their expectations have multiplied over the last half decade. Right? So not just like, hey. I've got five, ten percent more. Like, we're talking factors double tripling the expectations of what they're helping with and who they're helping in organization.
And finally, if you go ask CEOs, seventy percent of CEOs say, hey. I'm looking for a partner that can ride along with me that's gonna help drive growth. Right? Again, I'm expecting that a CFO is gonna get the numbers right looking backwards from a reporting perspective, audit perspective, all that good stuff.
Right? But I need somebody who's growth driven that's gonna help steer our ship in the right direction. So that strategic thought process, that lens is really important now more than ever. Right?
Because we're we're looking for finance leaders who are thinking beyond cutting costs and reporting and moving into that forward thinking mindset.
So how do we get there?
Right? Most folks on the call are like, yeah. I wanna be strategic, but I'm just trying to get my job done. And so let's talk through what those two things look like.
Right? So if we think what's, like, a tactical finance team look like, a finance leader. Right? Generally, they're kinda stuck looking in the short term.
Right? They're they're reacting to things that are happening, but you're not spending as much time as you need to on on the foresight, but looking forward.
Right? You don't have time to go, you know, build your narrative to properly communicate with the other stakeholders in the organization and kinda build their understanding and collaborate because you're you're operating in silos for the most part. Right? Finance team's over here, sales is over here, engineering's over here, whoever it might be.
There, you know, there is a sense of collaboration, but it's not as deep as it truly needs to be to, you know, have a collaborative strategic vision there. And what happens a lot of time, you're just so focused on, like, getting a budget out the door. You're not as focused on, like, hey. We set a three to five year plan.
How does this budget fit into that to making sure everything's aligned and that, hey. If we hit this budget, but we're off from that three year plan, like, that's a miss. Right? So it's spending the time to make sure those those are aligned, And you're really not viewing the finance team as a profit center, somebody that's helping drive growth.
Right? It's more of that cost center mindset. So the strategic folks, right, if we go through here, they're more focused on the long term. Right?
You still have to get the short term things done, but you're it's all through the lens of that long term vision.
They spend a lot more time communicating, crafting compelling narratives to make it easier for their other stakeholders to understand what's going on. Right? Maybe somebody in engineering is really talented as an engineering leader, but they don't speak finance. Right? So they're they're working to improve their communication processes with those other stakeholders.
That ultimately drives better collaboration across the departments. They're gonna be sitting in more of those strategy meetings for those other departments because, you know, finances kinda sit in that nucleus of the business, touching everybody. Right? We need to know what this part of the organization is doing over here to make sure that our our goals and resources are allocated effective.
We're aligning our financial strategies with those long term goals like we mentioned. And then, ultimately, we're we're focused on making sure that we can drive revenue growth as opposed to just purely, like, hey. Where can we save money? Right? Obviously, resource allocation and optimization is really important for finance teams, but should be through that strategic lens, not just a pure numbers lens there.
So there's a reason a lot of folks would say, like, yeah. I wanna be more strategic, and I'm just more tactical today. And that's really a problem of capacity more so than capability. Like, if you're moving your way up through, you know, finance departments into more advanced roles, you have the capability.
It's just you don't have the time because you're usually being weighed down by things. So that's gonna be where our framework comes in is, like, helping you free up that time to be more strategic. Right? Because we're stuck in the weeds.
We're getting the day to day stuff done. We're putting out fires. We're getting reports out. I don't have time to be more strategic.
Right? We're stuck in the data. Right? We're wrestling numbers. We're trying to get it organized.
We're cleaning it up. We're stuck in reporting cycles. Right?
I wanna spend time analyzing, but it takes me three days to just get the reports out the door to the folks who need them. Right? So that's twenty four hours that I'm not spending driving strategy, being insightful for the business.
And I'm stuck maintaining models. Right? So I'm updating spreadsheets instead of guiding business strategy. My my template, my file has five thousand formulas in it. And if one of them is pointed at the wrong spot, my whole model is broken, or I need to run a new version of the model. I have to copy paste. Makes it really hard to compare the two, so on and so forth.
So we're stuck, like, just trying to climb through all this mud to get get to that strategy. So that's where our strategic framework comes in. Yeah. And this is gonna be a lens through which you can evaluate your own team, your own department to see where you can improve.
Right? So, again, as we're going through today's session, I I might drop a nugget that is game changing. What I hope and that'd be awesome. But I hope at a minimum, you're you'd spend some time, you reflect on, like, hey.
Okay. Where's my team struggling? What are some steps I can be take? And just having this opportunity to take a step back and reflect, hopefully, will be really fruitful for you.
So the strategic framework is it's a pyramid as you can see here. So it's hopefully really easy to conceptualize and understand. We've broken it up into four core layers. And as you can imagine, the foundation kinda supports everything above it.
And as you can imagine, data management is the key to that foundation. So getting the data right, getting it in the hands of yourselves and your teams easily and quickly is crucial to being able to effectively navigate to the top of the pyramid here.
Next is reporting and analysis. Right? I have to get the results out, but I wanna analyze and gain insights. And based on that, I want to plan. I wanna iterate. I wanna model out what the next twelve, twenty four, forty eight months looks like, ultimately aligning it with that broader business strategy and allowing you to be more strategic and be in the weeds, not like just managing data, but be in the weeds with your your stakeholders, your other departments, and, you know, getting a sense and a pulse for what's going on in the organization.
So as you're crafting up these plans, you have a lot more insight into that. So what are some common things to be thinking about at each layer of the pyramid here? Obviously, data management, and we'll get into some steps in a little bit. But data management, consolidating, cleansing, governance.
Right? Is my data ready to go? Is it summarized to the levels I need to be able to analyze it? Is it clean?
Right?
Am I spending a lot of time fixing errors, adjusting entries because that data is not in the state it needs to be? And we usually think about this through the lens of a GL data, in our financial statements, obviously, because that's critical, but that applies to other data sources. Right? Salesforce, really important data source for, you know, running a business, but a lot of times that data is not clean, really messy.
Like, how can I focus on cleaning? And a big part of that's governance. Right? Do I have the right processes in place to make sure that these mistakes aren't being repeated, that we're catching things, that things are moving quickly?
So getting that data management layer ironed out is gonna make your life a lot easier. It's usually not fun to, like, go handle that, but encourage you to kinda step back. Hey. What what can we do to make our data better from a consolidation and cleansing of governments governance perspective?
Reporting.
So we have reporting and analysis here. Right? Obviously, we still have to get reports out the door. Hey. Here's what we did. Here's our BBAs.
But the analysis part is critical here as we start to get more strategic. What's this data telling me?
How can I pivot this to get better answers? Right? We still wanna get those reports out, but maybe I'm adding in new reports that are specific to departments that are giving more insights and helping them operate better. Right? That's what we should be thinking about as strategic finance professionals.
That's gonna allow us to plan and model. Right? So, you know, these mean different things to different people. And I think planning, hey.
What's gonna happen in the future? That could be next year's budget. That could be a next six months of the forecast. Could be a rolling twenty four month forecast.
What's gonna happen, getting that planning done at whatever duration of time I need? But then breaking it down deeper where it makes sense. Right? And in sales, it's gonna be driver based most of the time.
Are there other aspects of the organization where I can get better forecast and plans because I'm using drivers, assumptions, rates, whatever it might be? But there's a balance there too. A good strategic finance professional doesn't do everything from the bottoms up every single time. I remember working with a company who said, yeah.
We used to do bottoms up plans. They're They're always way off. We took it up like two levels of detail, and now we're within like x percent, like way better accuracy at a higher level because we're not just like dealing in the weeds like a true, like, bottoms up every time. Some organizations that works, but being strategic is finding that right level of detail that works for your organization to execute the right plans.
And then finally, if we're doing all that right, we can start to think more about, hey. How do we achieve our broader organizational goals? How do we collaborate across the organization, communicate that strategy, work towards that strategy because we built up this good framework and basis that we're operating.
So in light of that, I think we have a quick poll, which we just threw some things out there to get the to get the team engaged. But what's the biggest roadblock challenge, for your team? Right? We have messy data or just overloaded by data. Maybe you have some key roadblocks to getting your reports out on time. Is it I'm kinda paralyzed when it comes to planning. Like, I do a budget, but I really wanna be doing quarterly or monthly reforecasts.
Or is it just time to align with the broader stakeholders in your organization having that time to collaborate? What's that look like? So just curious to get a gauge on this audience and and where everybody's at.
Right. There you go.
Cool. Looks like messy data is the top one. Fifty six percent of folks said messy data, kinda interspersed the other fifty percent or so split between the other three. But not surprised, a lot of the organizations we talked to that that's a key is getting that data right in terms of, like, the speed at which you can operate or just collaborating with the other stakeholders in the organization. If you're not working off the same data, really hard to have those conversations.
So this kind of a sneak peek, I'm not gonna run through this slide in detail. You'll get it in the slide deck after.
Just a quick shout out. This session today is not like a cube demo or anything like that. We will do that in a few weeks. So if you're curious, like, hey. Across the different layers of this pyramid, how could a system like Qube help me be faster, greater, better? Awesome. You can come to that, in a couple weeks.
But what I want you to focus on this one is we have the levels of the pyramid going up, but we also have, like, a maturity grade going to the right. Right? So some of you on this call might just be at the first level. Like, hey. This finance department is just getting off the ground. We're trying to get our processes in place, trying to develop cadences.
Like, we're, you know, entry level one here. Some of you, hopefully, a lot of you, are way at the other line. Hey. Our team's humming. We're using advanced technology.
Our team's collaborating really well across the organization.
A lot of you are probably somewhere in between. So we kinda broken up into these different bubbles that you can kind of use to, like, gauge yourself. Like, hey. And maybe in planning, we're actually doing pretty good, but our reporting not nearly where we want it to be.
So, again, it's that lens to evaluate yourself to reflect of where are we, where do we wanna be, what are some short term goals versus long term goals as a finance department that we can start to execute on. And this is a really good, like, way to think through it of each of these layers. What does an advanced organization look like? Where do we fall?
What can we do? So encourage you to look at this slide once we send it, but we're gonna put up a poll real quick in a second here, which is gonna be, hey. Where do you fall on this? Right?
Are you foundational, developing, defined, refined, masterful?
We're not holding this against you. You can throw out whatever rating you give yourself. But just kinda curious where where the audience you know, how you judge yourself and your team right now in terms of where you fall in this maturity curve. So in that one to five level, are you just at the beginnings getting things rolled out, kind of refining those, defining those? Are you masters?
Where are we at in the audience here?
Alright.
Alright. So no masters.
Not surprising. We we've run this a few times. Very few people think they're they're killing it from that perspective, but it's pretty kinda common flow. So just over fifty percent give yourselves at that level too.
So, hey, we're not quite, like we're past the beginning, although we do have a few folks who are just getting the groundwork bay, but a lot of folks view themselves in that kind of same boat. So what we're gonna do now is just give you some practical steps, things to think about as you're looking to, you know, navigate your way up to pyramid and across that maturity, spectrum there, which is for each of these layers, what are some things to be thinking about from, like, a data and technology perspective, just a process or a team process perspective, a people aspect to it. And then, hey. If
you are improving, what are some good cues that are like, hey. You know, things are moving well.
Things are happening. Like, what what means I'm, like, ready or I'm moving up to the next level on the on the maturity curve there? So first, data technology.
Really important one from a data management perspective, try to create a single source of truth.
Right? So that could be a data warehouse, data lake, that could be a BI application, that could be an FP and A platform like a cube. But having that consistent spot where your team is going to grab data is crucial, especially as you collaborate across the organization.
Like, I've seen so much time wasted as people are, like, I wouldn't say arguing, but not using the same numbers, right, to drive discussions. Have any single source of truth where everybody can go and access that is really vital for, like, making sure your conversations are focused what they should be, focused on, not just, like, aligning our are you on the right numbers or the same numbers as me? Next piece is gonna be from a data management perspective.
Really, usually a huge pain managing budget and forecast data. It's a big reason why people don't do it enough is because they don't have a a application that's gonna store that. So an FP and A application like CUBE, huge for that, for managing centralizing that plan data alongside your actual data. But, again, in the meantime, if you pump it into a BI tool or something like that, great as well.
From a process perspective, make sure you're using standard templates, processes. It's gonna help ensure consistency and accuracy in your financial statements by your other reports. Right? If people know what they're receiving, they kind of already internalize what the numbers are gonna look like and can spot things that they're off easier.
But a really big important thing I've seen good competent finance teams do is build a finance calendar, create clear timelines on it, and communicate that across the organization. So, obviously, you're gonna have, like, your internal finance team operating calendar, but a broader calendar of, like, hey. Here's when you can expect your reports. Or, hey.
We can't close the books because sales is always late to submitting their, expenses or whatever it might be. So having a calendar you can work off of as a broader organization will help with your request because people aren't gonna be pinging you because they'll know you're getting the reports on the third day of the month and they're not asking you on the first day. Right? Things like that.
From a people perspective, if you're by yourself, great. Just work on communication. If you have multiple people on your team, really work with your finance team members on business acumen across the organization. Obviously, they should have finance nailed down, but we want them to be able to understand the metrics that are important for engineering or customer success or marketing or sales, whatever it might be.
The more they can get that acumen, the better they're gonna be able to plan and report and communicate insights.
The other thing is to, you know, along with that finance calendar cadence, building monthly financial review meetings where finance is working to present insights, not just data. Right? If it's just data, a PowerPoint can do that for you. But, hopefully, you're analyzing. You're getting to know the different stakeholders in your business, and you're thinking through their lens, and you can find and uncover insights that maybe they just aren't as savvy with numbers or whatever it might be. But building a monthly financial review cadence can really kind of put the impetus on you and the team to, like, go and dig in and help those other areas of the business.
So couple of cues are like, hey. Things are trending in the right direction.
Right? We have finance business partners are actively engaged in decision making across the organization, and you're gonna see your your data processes. Your your time is cut down by, you know, fifty percent or more in terms of how fast you can get out reports or analysis or whatever it might be. So those are some good cues that you're you're doing some good things on that side.
Right. We'll move up the pyramid to reporting.
Right? You know, a lot of us might be stuck in just, like, takes me three three days, like I mentioned before, to get the reports out. Would love to cut that down. Right? So a big piece here is if you can enable self-service reporting, obviously, it's gonna rely on technology, BI tool, FP and A application.
But if you can have cost your internal customers, your stakeholders have a spot where they can go to access the data, it's gonna save yourself a lot of time that you can be repivot or point to analysis and driving strategy because you're not, like, answering one off requests and things like that. So if you can enable it, whether it's like a reporting interface or just dashboards, whatever it might be, but get the data in their hands in an automated fashion, it can make your life a lot easier. The same thing if you can automate, like, variance tracking so you can, like, spit out, like, hey. Here's the top variances.
You can be analyzing those and, you know, not just trying to gather the numbers and do that now, like, collection yourself. Right?
So the more we can kinda standardize our performance management practices into reporting consistency, it's gonna provide that transparency. It's gonna make it easier. But, again, if we can standardize that variance analysis to highlight the trends and key drivers.
And if you have a central source of truth or a good reporting application, that'll help with this because you can you know, instead of just looking at what happened in February, you can show what happened in the last six months and see if there's a trend or give your stakeholders the opportunity to view that trend themselves. But ideally, you know, your finance team is uncovering that early.
But from a reporting perspective, on the people side, training your team to be good storytellers and to present insights is gonna be really big. Right? So if you did get them thinking, hey. How does this team over here think?
Like, what's the best way to communicate them? That's gonna help them paint the right story based on the trends and numbers and communicate well. Right? And that's gonna foster broader collaboration because your stakeholders are gonna trust finance more.
Finance is gonna have a better understanding. So when that person's coming and asking you for a new head count or whatever their request inevitably is, you already have kind of mindset there and you can, you know, rationalize that better instead of just being like the CF. No. You can kinda, you know, sort through it, have some analysis, and, you know, collaborate better with those team members.
Right? So what are some cues that, hey. Things are turning in the right direction. Ultimately, this is turning up to be obvious.
Like, you can click a button and all your reports are updated and refreshed in real time. Somebody makes that journal entry in your source system.
You don't, like, do a big sigh. You just click a button and you see the numbers reflected in the reports. That that's fantastic.
You know, we're shifting the focus from just getting the reports out the door to providing more actionable insights for the team. And then, ultimately, we have scenarios at our fingertips, and we can kinda compare and contrast. Like, hey. We ran three scenarios last month.
I can now report on those. We had a best, a middle, and a worst case. You know, we've kinda settled somewhere in between best and middle. Right?
So how does that when it comes to planning, the next step up the pyramid, how does that impact how we adjust our plans next month? So you have that right at your fingertips. It's gonna make it a lot easier from a reporting standpoint to to communicate that.
Alright. Moving up the pyramid, planning, planning paralysis. Hopefully, you aren't in that or don't consider it that way, but, you know, we wanna get people planning more. Right? Better finance teams are replanning every month, doing rolling forecasts.
How do we get there?
First, adopting driver based planning to improve accuracy and reduce manual effort. Like, take how can we identify based on our business, like, what are those key metrics, those drivers that are gonna drive out that plan? Because if you have it based off those, it's a lot easier to tell how you're gonna be performing out in the future, obviously. Right?
If if pipeline's a big metric, we see that dipping or increasing. Right? We can be like, well, guess what? We're probably based on our close rates.
We're actually do better or or worse than we expected a couple quarters out. That's not something you're gonna see because it takes ninety, a hundred twenty days to close that pipeline or whatever. Right? If you're just looking at the financial numbers, you might not see that risk or that trend.
If you're looking deeper into pipeline data, you're gonna see get some of those leading indicators that are gonna tell you to Actually, adjust my plan because our pipe was a little bit lower this month than we expected or vice versa. Right?
Ultimately, investing in planning applications will help with that as well. Right? If you can get that real time insight flowing in, if you can fire off new scenarios with the click of a button and not have to run, like, Excel models for eight hours to go generate those numbers, having that strong tech stack for an, planning application will really help you there and and be more reactive.
Process standpoint, reduce the time it takes to run a planning cycle. Right? So if I can you know, big reason people only do budgets or forecast maybe quarterly is because it's so daunting to both get ready for a cycle, run it, and then collect and consolidate it. And then Alyssa makes a change after I consolidated it, not to sweep through it again. So if we can reduce the time it takes to run our cycle, we can run them more or we can do different passes. It's gonna make you a lot more quick to change and address items as they come up so you can change those plans.
And it's gonna allow you to collaborate better because you can have more of those conversations. You can spend more time working with your stakeholders, as opposed to just simply, you know, getting numbers into spreadsheets.
Right? So big piece of this is training finance teams to think in that mindset of, hey. Let's run more scenarios. It's gonna be allow us to be more agile when it comes to that decision making.
And then embed the finance team members where you can in those review, those strategy meetings with those other departments. Again, the better pulse they have on the organization, the more they can see like, oh, well, actually, this team over here is doing x. The team's over doing y. That's in conflict or that's in harmony. Like, let's allocate our resources accordingly.
Right? So how we know we're doing well. Right? Our planning cycles are shorter and more iterative. Right? We have finance team that's focused on strategy and not just budgets.
This is really important because if you're thinking for the strategy lens and not just a budget lens, like, think back to COVID that happened in March. Everybody's budget was just completely worthless.
Three months into the year, not even three full months into the year. Right? But if you're focused on your strategy, it's easier to pivot as opposed to just like, well, that was our budget say. Like, I had a customer that was like, they had they had a fiscal year end in June.
So COVID hit right at the beginning of their budgeting cycle. They ran, like, fifty different plans, like, tweaking their strategy based on new information coming every day before they landed on their final budget. And it turned out that budget was still off because, they performed better than they expected during that time frame. And, you know, it was better than their budget.
But the fact that they had that muscle where they could do run scenarios quickly and adjust, like, it wasn't a big deal because they just ran some new forecasts as the they saw the numbers coming through. So having that iterative strategic mindset really gonna help from that standpoint.
And then, ideally, if you have real time data flowing in, your your forecasts are more fresh and live versus being, you know, running off of static assumptions and old data.
Alright. We've made it to the top of the strategy pyramid here. We got our little stick person with their x p and a flag. Right?
We're thinking more strategically. What are some things that we're thinking about up there? Right? This is like adopting new, more advanced tech.
Right?
Predictive analytics. We're supporting real time decision making as data's flowing in. We have a computer sitting there hanging out with our data that's adjusting our predictions going forward, and it's gonna allow us to automate some of that financial scenario modeling to prepare for market shifts. Right?
We have seasonality coming through. Let's let the computer go grab that and run with it. And I see a lot of customers that will use it in one of two ways. Maybe I use it as my starting point.
Like, hey. We have all this great data, seasonality baked in there. Let's let the computers spit it out, then we adjust and tweak off of that. Or, hey.
We built our plan. What does the computer think we're gonna do? You can compare and contrast the two if there's something that's way off. You can kinda have discussions about it.
Like, did we miss something or underthink our seasonality?
Or, hey. We actually know something, like, the Super Bowl is in this town last year, which blew up the our sales in that that period. We know that's not happening this year, so we're gonna pull that back. Right?
Process standpoint, we wanna establish finance as a strategic partner in company wide planning. Right? We wanna get finance ingrained as much as we can to assist and help with those plans. They're not, like, forcing plans down department's throats, but they're actively collaborating.
They understand the pulse of that department. They can work with them, give them insights, so on and so forth. And then, hopefully, we're using predictive analytics to anticipate risks and opportunities. Right?
If a computer can tell us, hey. Something looks off, like, early, you can adjust and plan for that if you're catching it. A lot of times, it just gets buried in the data, maybe an an important account got churned. Like, if finance knows about that, they can adjust their plans before a couple weeks later when, you know, maybe CS, you know, brings that up to them, whatever it might be.
From people standpoint, we wanna shift finance's role from reporting to influence influencing business decisions like we've been talking about, and we would ultimately wanna train our team on executive on level communication to help drive impact and reinforce themes.
Right? So how do we know we're doing well here? Right? Finance is a trusted adviser to the c suite.
Business leaders are coming actively to finance for insights and to help drive decisions.
And, again, we're using more advanced technology. Right? These are the masterful, you know, end of that spectrum where we're forecasting with predictive analytics, things like that, to be more proactive in real time with our data.
So we'll kinda wrap up here in a second. I will get to any q and a that we had, but just a couple key takeaways.
As you think about all this, it's a lot. Right? Don't get too, like, bogged down and like, oh, we have so much work to do. It's not like it's a light switch you can turn on.
It's gonna be a process. Right? So I mentioned at the beginning, like, if you could just take a step and reflect, like, hey. What's going on with our team?
What's something that's maybe actionable we can do? Like, stay focused on those small, easy improvements. That's, like, it's a step by step process.
Like, get going, make some momentum.
It'll allow you to get more strategic faster than maybe you thought. And, again, maybe identify one area to improve today and focus on that. And that could be anywhere. It does you know, obviously, data management is a huge foundation of that pyramid, but maybe something with reporting or planning is more actionable or more important to you today. So, you know, focus on that one thing, get started there, and then get get going. So we'll pause here. I'll stop sharing my screen, and we can kinda see what kind of questions we're we're pumped in here.
Awesome.
Great job, Jim. Thank you. And thank you to everyone who submitted questions.
We'll just dive right in. So the first one we have, when you talk about data management, what does that mean in practice? What are the key components that finance teams need to get right?
Sure.
I think I'm trying to remember from the slide. I think that it was and you can go back and look, but it's cleaning, making sure you have clean like, your data's cleansed, good to go.
It's gonna be consolidating, combining that data, and ultimately having some governance and control. So as you think about each of your systems and your processes, governance is usually the beginning of that. Like, if you have a lot of mistakes coming through, like, what's the root cause of those mistakes? Put some governance on top so people are entering in entries the right way, that you have double checking, whatever it is that can help, like, streamline that.
Ultimately, cleanliness is important. Right? If you're relying on a source system to make decisions, make sure the data's clean. The example I gave, which is the classic example is Salesforce where you're a lot of the data in there is input by account executives.
So having processes, governance in place there to make sure you're getting the right fields filled out so every speaking the same language or making decisions off of I'll give an example of one customer who's like the industry field on their accounts in Salesforce was just probably off. So then but they'd run industry reports since, like, these reports aren't accurate because the designations are off. So having that clean data and governance around it is is great. And then having the tool sets in there to aggregate and consolidate that data is really, really great.
Again, whether it's a data warehouse and you build common structures there, a BI application where you bring in multiple systems in and you kinda have hierarchies for something like CUBE, a FPV application that's really built to, you know, centralized finance data and metrics that are important to finance teams.
Love it.
Next question, kind of related. For teams that are buried in the data overload you mentioned, what's the fastest way to gain control and free up time for that more strategic work?
Yeah. I would say probably getting, like, a central source of truth in place.
Because from teams I see that are in data overload, a big part of it is because they're in overload, they can't get the numbers to their stakeholders fast enough. So the stakeholders are trying to find the numbers themselves, and everybody's working off, like, different numbers. Right? So if you can have that one spot that at a minimum finance can go to to get started, right, it'll be faster in distributing out data to folks who request it.
Or best case, people have a spot where they can come grab that data themselves, but you know that the data they're grabbing is accurate. It's been accounted for. It's not just something somebody dumped in an Excel file that they might have, like, deleted something out of. Right?
You all can be speaking the same language. So that has ripple effects across the organization in a good way in terms of, like, just reducing a lot of friction and headache and just making you faster. So investing in something that can be a central source of truth for your core data is is really powerful.
Awesome.
Alright. Another one we have here.
This one's related to planning. So what's the best way for finance teams to get out of planning paralysis and make forecasting more agile?
Yeah. It's not easy, but I would say if you can aim for, like, a rolling forecast cadence, whether that's quarterly I mean, ideally, it's monthly.
But if you can get in that cadence and having an application obviously helps with that because it takes a lot of that manual work off your shoulders, but it makes your budget cycle less daunting because you've already built up, like, two or three quarters worth of budget. So you're really just kind of, you know, getting people that input that last quarter. Plus, they're hopefully active participants in your reforecasting process. So you don't have to go through, like, the retraining exercises.
They're used to the cadence.
You hopefully can make it smooth and over time. So if you can aim for that, that really, really helps teams. And then, again, you can adjust it. Maybe it's rolling twelve, maybe it's just through the end of this year and all of next year, rolling twenty four. Whatever makes sense for your organization.
But the more you can develop that muscle and cadence will really, really help.
Awesome.
Alright. I think we have time for one more.
So this is actually a good one to end on. Where can I find the assessment you mentioned?
So Oh, that's might be a better question for you, Alyssa.
I think so. So I will share my screen one last time so I can share our resources with you all.
Okay. Here we go. Right at the beginning, our strategic finance assessment. If you were looking at that slide with our maturity model on it, starting at foundational, going all the way to XP and A Mastery, and you wanna know where you or the people on your team fall on this maturity model, the best place to start is with our strategic finance assessment.
It's linked right here. Definitely recommend checking that out following the webinar. And as I mentioned, all of these links are gonna be sent to you in an email so you can keep an eye on your inbox as well. The next one here is to book a custom demo.
So I know we have some customers on the call, so this one isn't quite for you. But for people who are not Qube customers and are curious about how this framework applies to our product or you have specific questions about our product that have come up in your head throughout this presentation, you can either book a custom demo here with us and someone on our team will get in touch with you. Or like Jim mentioned, in a couple weeks, we're gonna be having a dedicated demo specifically related to this topic and how cute can help you bring some of these strategies to life. So keep an eye on your inbox for that.
We will be promoting that soon.
And lastly here is a plug to follow our CEO, Christina Ross, on LinkedIn.
She is one of the minds behind this framework, and she's constantly sharing great advice on her LinkedIn related to this framework and all other areas of of finance. So if you're looking for tips, tricks, just someone to relate to if you're a CFO. She's been at the CFO three times before. She's really great to follow and is posting a lot of interesting, exciting stuff. So definitely recommend you check her out.
And with that, I think we've come to the end of our presentation.
So, Jim, I wanna thank you one more time so much for going through all of this. It's been great. And everyone else who took the time to join us today, thank you for spending your afternoon with us. And remember, keep an eye on your inbox. You'll get all these resources sent to you. Otherwise, have a great day.
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