BONUS | International Management Accounting Day

IMA's website: https://www.imanet.org/


International Management Accounting Day:
https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/international-management-accounting-day


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00)
 Welcome back everyone and happy International Management
Accounting Day. Each year, IMA celebrates International
Management Accounting day on May 6th. This global day of
recognition commemorates the important role management
accountants play within their organizations. Around the world,
finance and accounting professionals work to bring insight and
help their organizations realize untapped opportunities and
operate more efficiently. While this work happens every day of
the year, on May 6th management accountants are publicly
recognized by IMA. So to celebrate and support the public
recognition, Count Me In has a special bonus episode for you
featuring IMA's President and CEO, Jeff Thomson. Jeff spoke with
Margaret Michaels, IMA's Manager for Brand Content and
Storytelling about the future of finance and accounting. Keep
listening to hear them discuss the valuable ongoing efforts of
management accountants and the race for relevance in a digital
age.

Margaret: (01:03)
Digital transformation enabled by automation, data analytics,
artificial intelligence, and other technologies has been the
headline story when people talk about the future of finance, but
you often bring up the fact that these are really not new
technologies. Can you elaborate on that theme and talk a little
bit about how the foundational concepts in competing on analytics
and other texts laid the groundwork for the transformation we see
today?

Jeff: (01:41)
Sure Margaret. Great question and two related, but somewhat
different concepts. So these technologies have been around and
developing for some time. Artificial intelligence, has been
around for some time, blockchain has been around for some time.
But what's different is that all industries have been impacted by
these technologies and the applications have been exploding. You
know blockchain, for example, the use cases for blockchain were
just a few several years ago, but now blockchain use cases have
absolutely exploded. You know, blockchain was something we've
heard about several years ago, primarily in the financial
services industry, but now blockchain applications are permeating
many, many industries including education, non-for-profits, and
when we think about artificial intelligence, it's not just
artificial intelligence in certain industries, it's artificial
intelligence in many industries and many applications, so the
question is our ability to leverage all of these wonderful uses
of these technologies. Now, and then when we think about, RPA
robotics process automation, robotics process automation has
actually been around for nearly a decade. So when we talk about
new technologies, the technologies really aren't that new, but
it's the application and comprehensiveness of these technologies
across industry verticals that are new. Now, moving to your other
question competing on analytics, it's actually the book,
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, by Thomas
Davenport and Jean Harris. It's actually a book in 2007 that
really laid the groundwork for the transformation to data
analytics that as you said, we're seeing today. And when you
think about it, imagine it was written in 2007 and when you think
about the science of winning in the marketplace, what do you
think about? You normally think about cool apps, things that
consumers see in front of them. Like I said applications,
products and services, things you can touch and feel. You don't
think about nerdy things like analytics, but if you fast forward
today, analytics is the thing we're talking about. Data
scientists, data scientists are the number one sought after job
because data analytics is how we get to know our consumers and
their needs and their wants. They’re how finance team
professionals offer insight and foresight to their CEOs, to their
boards of directors. So that is the competency and skillset that
we as finance team professionals must really aspire to and really
accelerate our competencies.
 
 Margaret: (04:59)
 Great. Now you often say the race for relevance to describe
the current iteration of digital transformation in accounting and
finance as technology evolves faster than the skills of the
people who need to use it. What are the skills finance and
accounting professionals need to focus on to keep up and what
competencies really stand out to employers in a time when skills
are increasingly commoditized?
 
 Jeff: (05:28)
 Yeah so another great question Margaret you're on a roll
today. Yeah, so there's going to be the infamous hard skills and
the softer skills, so we are in an absolute environment of
disruption. In fact, we often talk about the VUCA world that
we're in, and no it's not a Hungarian goulash, it's VUCA
volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, VUCA. And we were
actually in that environment before COVID-19 tragically struck
the world with non-traditional competition, climate, and I can go
on and on. So when I think about behavioral characteristics for
finance team professionals and CFOs, I think about agility and I
know we're going to be talking about agility perhaps in a bit
later. I think about adaptability because if you don't have the
ability to deal with new situations, stressful situations,
totally unexpected situations that your best planning could not
have possibly anticipated then you're not going to be able to
adjust and deal with the situation from a risk management
perspective or a planning perspective. So agility, adaptability,
but also being anticipatory. Having that radar at ability to plan
the best you can, so from a behavioral perspective, what I call
the three A's; agility, adaptability, anticipatory skills. From a
harder skills perspective, and again this is for the finance
team, strategic planning, strategic thinking and then of course
data analytics, data science, everything data, data
transformation, digital transformation. Now I don't want to lose
sight of the table stakes because as we thinking about the
progressive CFO and the CFO of the future, we have to be clear
that there are table stakes. There are things that the CFO team
must do with excellence that are expected. Things like risk
management, internal controls, an ongoing and continuous
commitment to ethics, leadership, executive maturity, executive
presence, and the like. So we can't lose sight of what got us
there and that's a unwavering and relentless focus on, as I said,
ethics, internal controls, accurately and fairly representing the
financial condition of the enterprise. And then we can offer that
insight and foresight and having, enabling the organization to do
great things and create great products and services that will
change the world.
 
 Margaret: (08:38)
 That makes a lot of sense and I'm glad you mentioned
agility and resilience because COVID has certainly highlighted
the need for leaders to help their people become more agile and
resilient. How do you define agility and resilience? How equipped
are finance and accounting professionals to deal with uncertainty
while continuing to innovate and improve processes?
 
 Jeff: (09:04)
 So agility is, and again, this is a, perhaps a Thomson
un-scientific definition, but maybe those are the best. They're
not particularly scientific, but agility in my mind, Margaret is
the ability to quickly move employees and resources, human
resources, and other types of resources, technology resources
into new roles or areas of the organization to support cha...