Ep. 120: Jeffrey Dailey - CFO Strategist for Data and Technology

Jeff Dailey:
https://www.prometric.com/about-us/leadership/jeff-dailey


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Hey everyone, welcome back for episode 120 of Count Me In. I'm
your host Mitch Roshong and this is IMA's podcast about all
things affecting the accounting and finance world. Our featured
speaker for today is Jeffrey Dailey. Jeff is Prometrics Senior
Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and he joined my
co-host Adam to talk about data and technology. During their
conversation, Jeff addresses the challenges associated with mass
amounts of data, how to make decisions based on data and how the
CFO's role has changed because of data and technology. Keep
listening as we head over to their conversation now. 
 
Adam: (00:47)
So Jeff, data is becoming more and more important each day
whether it's your latest smartwatch, a smartphone, your internet,
things on your refrigerator, or your washing machine. It's
getting thrown at us from every direction and even more so in
business and for you at Prometric, how are you facing that
challenge with all the data that we have in business and how have
you adapted as an organization to meet those
challenges? 
 
Jeff: (01:12)
Thanks Adam. Yeah look, I think the role that I play in Prometric
as the CFO is really going to be leading to driving data-driven
decision-making. And in order to do that, we really leverage
analytic capabilities, not just within the finance function, but
across the business. Our business relies heavily on understanding
volume and capacity, of our clients and global candidate base for
those taking tests in our test centers, as well as new modalities
around remote assessment. So we're constantly looking at
opportunities to gather and understand data, but also to use that
to be quicker and more agile in our decision-making, it really
becomes sort of foundational to us driving, data-driven decisions
across the organization, it helps enhance forecasting, it helps
us understand how we're allocating resources across the
operations, as well as our technology investments. 
 
Adam: (02:11)
So if you look at your technology roadmap that you're looking
into the future, what does that look like for you? 
 
Jeff: (02:18)
Well, right now we're in a unique disruption coming out of the
COVID-19 pandemic. And I say that it's created opportunity in
some ways, given all the disruption to our clients and frankly to
all of the candidates that we support. One of the areas from a
global technologies we've gone from what was traditionally
largely a brick and mortar business model, to enhancing our
remote assessment capability, to offer assessments and
opportunities for candidates to sit from any location has been
key when you're going through national and regional restrictions
around social distancing and access to traditionally facilities
where we have tested candidates. So operationally or product, we
have deep investments that we're making across the technology
platform to enhance both functionality, as well as expand in
those areas of key features. Within our finance organization,
we've actually also taken this as an opportunity to really invest
in more, I'll call it cloud native systems and financial
reporting technologies that are going to enhance our ability to
streamline our close that are helping us in terms of forecasting
and helping drive, more data-driven insights across the business
from the finance organization, so we've not only had product
investment, but also investment in our core ERP platform during
this time. 
 
Adam: (03:45)
So what were some of the drivers for the decision to enhance your
ERP solution? 
 
Jeff: (03:51)
Yeah, so I think first off is we have for several years looked
into opportunities to consolidate multiple platforms that we had
that had evolved both over time in different regions as well as,
you know, take advantage of what I think now is really, truly a
much more secure, fundamentally sound and feature rich
opportunity, in what you're seeing in the cloud native ERP
platforms. We see this as an opportunity to not only attack
technology as our focus for the investment, but also process
improvement and there are a number of areas that are features
that we're rolling out that will be further automating the closed
process, automating the financial reporting and forecasting
process, and also just really trying to drive process improvement
in business intelligence deeper into the finance
organization. 
 
Adam: (04:48)
How has it been trying to do an implementation while having,
probably your workforce working from home? 
 
Jeff: (04:55)
Great question. I think we have certainly been working remote for
the most part, since the onset of COVID-19 about a year ago, but
that being said, I think we have a global team and we've always
had deep resources in Asia, as well as here in the US. We're
using new collaborative tools. Certainly we've done a lot with
remote video conference, we've got consultants dialed in they
were helping us with that implementation, but I think the key has
been having really deep sense around understanding of our current
operating model and really having developed sort of the
objectives collectively, while we're working remote, but to see
where we needed to have opportunity for better access, as well as
enhance the security and performance overall of the system that
we're investing into. 
 
Adam: (05:53)
Circling back to data across the business. Why is it important
for the finance function? Cause usually the finance function
looks at their data and all the numbers and make sure everything
makes sense. Why does it make sense to have the data connect
across the organization? 
 
Jeff: (06:07)
Sure, great question. I think for us it really starts with
understanding our client programs and the candidates that we
support on their behalf. Our business is relying on volume and
managing capacity through a global network and I think as I
mentioned, that includes both the brick and mortar global
channels supporting our candidates in center testing, to anywhere
else from pop-up events that we run short term and then
ultimately, expansion of our remote assessment capability. When
you're looking at managing that level of capacity and the
different modalities that we serve, it really has become critical
from an operational decision-making and performance management
capability to have a deep understanding and a deep base around
analytics for the business. We are, you know, obviously each day
kind of managing into the changing capacity restraints for coming
out of COVID. We have had analytics that have provided us more
insight into candidate behavior in terms of return to test
centers, in our case. We've had certainly a large increase in
candidates who are opting to take large-scale global national
certifications and licensure exams online through our remote
assessment tool, and understanding what's driving those decisions
for candidates is critical for us to both enhance the product and
the modality for them to have access to our content. When I look
from a pure finance perspective, it really has been about
harnessing data to help us understand more quickly more
accurately what the business is performing during what's been a
really disruptive time. We have used this as an opportunity to
enhance what we do on a week to week basis in terms of our flash
reporting. We have invested heavily in terms of pivoting how we
do forecasting for the business. We are deeply connected using
data from across operations, IT and our technology and product
teams to really help us understand and allocate resources
appropriately so that we can manage wh...