Ep. 202: Oded Zehavi - How a Digitally-Empowered Finance Team Transforms Business

IMA’s Neha Lagoo Ratnakar speaks with Oded Zehavi, CEO of Mesh
Payments, about digital transformation of the finance team. They
discuss how powerful new software tools and automation
opportunities empower CFOs and their teams to streamline business
partnering, sharpen internal controls, and simplify business
operations.  The good news is it’s much less complicated
than you think.


Connect with Oded


Full Episode Transcript:
Neha:



Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast by and for management
accountants. I'm Neha Lagoo Ratnakar from IMA, and today I'm
speaking with Oded Zehavi about how the enormous potential of
digital transformation is finally coming to fruition for CFOs and
finance teams everywhere. As the CEO and founder of Mesh
Payments, Oded has a bird's eye view into how accounting and
finance professionals are utilizing and customizing powerful new
software tools to streamline business partnering, sharpen
internal controls and simplify business operations. And what
struck me during the conversation was that how appropriate the
word transformation is in this moment. It's like the buzzword
I've heard a million times crystallized into something real for
me. During the course of this interview, you'll hear how
technology has clearly elevated the value the finance function is
able to provide to the business in real time. Let's get started
with Oded to see how businesses are leaning into this exciting
new era of innovation.


Neha:



So let's start with the obvious question today. We are all
witnessing a transformation in the way we work and finance and
accounting is one of the functions that lends itself very well to
remote working. How do you think the CFO's office has changed
since the pandemic?


Oded:



So people usually speak a lot about the fact that everything is
remote now, which is key, by the way, by the way that finance
people operates. I will even go back in time and speak about
something that less people are talking about, which is why the
category, which I mean, which is spend management, have been
really driving from the beginning of the pandemic. And in my mind
it's always start by the fact that before the pandemic, the
finance teams were really focusing about T&E. So everybody
were a lot of fun. Various sales guys were traveling and it's all
about how we collect received, how do we close the books? There
was so much noise so many people involved. What does does it
mean? And so many employees have been brought, and it's really
beyond the fact that he's taken a lot of the time from the
finance teams activities.


Oded:



It also created a lot of noise and camouflage some other problems
that might have been bigger or different. And when the pandemic
started, that was shut eliminated overnight. So now nobody
travels anymore. No receipts have been chased. That noise have
been gone quiet. Totally. And on top of it, there were two other
trends which in my mind have really impact the way finance team
operates. One, as you mentioned, is the fact that now companies
are fully remote and distributed. So a lot of the processes that
historically the finance team could have solved by telling the
employees, you know, what? Come to my desk, yes, tomorrow and
we'll make this happen have not been relevant anymore. And last,
but not least, the fact that many of these companies move a lot
of the infrastructure to the cloud. So now a lot of these old on
premise licensing models have been shut down.


Oded:



And now everything move to more recurring models where you need
to pay every month a much smaller amount with much more
softwares. So the combination of all of that really made a huge
difference when it comes to how finance teams need to treat spend
or treat corporate spend. And what I'm seeing is that over the
last two years, the space itself have been exploding. So many
great companies have come into this space, which are now giving
very new technology, amazing user experience will talk about it
in the second, and last but not least, a new business model,
which in our category, historically, companies have been used to
pay for software that helps them control spend. I'm amazed there
are still companies that are even considering paying for some of
the very, very old legacy platforms on things they are not really
using, where there are so many options like mesh in the space
that enables them to pay only for what they use and sometimes not
even pay anything because a lot of us have been using the model
where we, the merchant that we are paying for are, are really
paying for the service. So a lot of transformation and changes in
the way finance team have looked at spend management and on top
of it and you started by the remote and the fact that companies
are now distributed. So it's not only that are distributed,
they're also global. If we were talking, having this conversation
few years ago, most of the US companies were usually around this
very one site usually in one city in the US it could be San
Francisco or New York or one of these leading countries.


Oded:



The pandemic really shifted a lot of the employees all across the
US and now there are new places where employees from different
reasons want to spend time in like Austin, like Miami, like all
these places which are totally outside of the where traditional
headquarters have been based and last than not least, why stay in
Austin when you can spend the same time and work from a much more
exotic place. And I've seen companies that have become fully
distributed and fully remote. And for the finance teams, all of
these challenges are really something that is transformational.
And they have really invested a lot of time and effort in the
last two years to be ready to give solutions or be, give service
in such a changing world.


Neha:



Wow. I love that, Oded, there's so much that has been happening,
and thank you for summarizing so well how work, softwares,
platforms, our activities have changed in the last couple of
years. Now let's talk about the mindset changes. What have you
seen change in the last couple of years and is there anything
that the CFOs or the finance departments can do to help with this
mindset change?


Oded:



So it's interesting that we are talking today, which is more or
less in the middle or the beginning or some people out the hand
of additional neutrons to change in the mindset of finance team
or finance people, if we can go back when the pandemic came,
everybody stopped and tried to reduce cost and see what happens
that very quickly after a month or two, the world, especially the
high tech scene, have really shifted into growth. Just growth and
growth and growth. And companies have been growing and bringing
more to employees. They're more talents and spending more on
media. And it was really about growth. Not all, but most of the
companies didn't invest enough time about unique economics and
controls and things that are fundamental when it comes to
business. And we are in the beginning of a new transformation or
new mindset change where everybody said saying to the same fine
sense things that they will say to them a year ago, Grow, grow,
grow, stop, stop, stop.


Oded:



And let's focus on the fundamental economics control and
visibility. And it all comes back to the fact that now changes
are happening much quicker, but then nobody knows if we'll talk
again in two months, what will be the mindset then, that it will
be just control, and it might happen the same way it was in the
pandemic. The only thing that we know that is that we don't
really know. From what the impact for finance teams is that they
now need to have an infrastructure, which is ...