Ep. 83: Sandhya Sriram - Strategic Planning, Prioritization, and Motivation

Contact Sandhya Sriram:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyasriram2005/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In,  IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch
Roshong and I'm here to bring you episode 83 of our series. With
most finance professionals looking to make sense of the current
economic climate, my cohost Rouba Zeidan speaks with Sandhya
Sriram to find out more about where certain priorities lie in
business. In this episode, Sandhya shares her expertise on
strategic planning during a pandemic and how professionals can
best balance organizational priorities while managing their
teams, particularly remotely. With so much changing in business
on a regular basis, it's important to strategize, prioritize, and
stay motivated. So now, let's keep listening for some practical
insights on how to do just that.

Rouba: (00:57)
So let, let's get right into it with, with all companies around
the world, migrating to remote work, more specifically work from
home, major compromises that have to be made that's ensure that
business continuity is done under extremely limited data security
circumstances. So that being the case of staff connecting from
home, what are some of the best practices you have identified
within your practice to protect company data?

Sandhya : (01:26)
So, I think there are different aspects of remote working. One is
how do you secure access to your network when people are
connecting remotely? How do you secure access? Now, both of them
is not a COVID thing, it was existing pre-COVID as well. But what
has really changed is the scale. . Now I am for a minute, not
talking about knowledge workers who work with sensitive data, so
where they have to be, have to have restricted physical access,
you know. Some of these KPOs where people can't take their mobile
cant take pictures because they deal with  really sensitive
stuff. Now I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about
operations in general. I think the new aspect of remote working,
which was also there before, but has significantly amplified, is
who else can potentially access your data. So everyone is working
from everywhere. So your employee could be in a PG. The person in
the adjacent room or the adjacent bed, as she or he can afford
may have access to the phone calls that your employee makes.
Maybe they have access to the data that he or she is viewing, and
therefore the level of what can be compromised is what is maybe
worrying companies or what they're faced with. Now under normal
circumstances, physical security used to give that extra layer of
comforting. Yes, it's all within my office. But now what most
companies are doing is that they've heightened the security
checks, they perform. A lot of companies are doing self testing,
vulnerability testing, where they are creating like a Trojan.
They are creating circumstances of compromise and they're trying
to affect their systems themselves to see where the system can be
compromised. They're also heightening the, governance or the
control that they have on the data leakage tools that they have
deployed. So like you are aware most devices, most laptops,
desktops have data leakage tools, depending on the nature or the
sensitivity of the work that you do. For example, some companies
do not allow say pen drive or any drive to be attached to the
laptop. Some companies do not allow, from your phone to be able
to, share data into a WhatsApp or your Gmail. Some companies do
not allow upload into public server. So they're are a lot of data
leakage techniques that exist, and what companies have started
doing is to start monitoring the noise that comes out of this,
these data leakage tools, because these are continuously looking
at data, that's passing through the network and are continuously
flagging alerts, saying these are the type of activities that are
happening with the data. So they have strengthened the monitoring
of these alerts that go. But this is a evolution. You know, there
are a lot of tools that are there, deployment and enhancement
will be to what people specifically need, but they have to build
more tools as well. So for example, what prevents me working from
home, taking a picture, no matter what security you put on my
laptop, I can still take a picture from my mobile ofmy laptop
screen. And I can still, you know, compromise a particular data
element. And therefore then companies are looking at how do I
look what activities happening on the camera. Now, when companies
start looking at your camera, then are they breaching your
privacy? Then that becomes the next question. So there is a
evolution also that is happening in this space on where companies
will draw a line, and that line  will be dependent on what
level of security they need from their operations. But if you ask
me personally, it is a problem that will solve. It's not an
answer. It's not, for example, if you ask me today saying when
will economies recover? You know, I don't think that is an answer
to that problem yet today, but this is a problem that will solve.
People are solving it as we speak. They will enhance and upgrade
their solutions to what their needs are, and they will figure
answers. Now, some answers may come at a price like compromise of
personal, of privacy or, you know, enhanced monitoring. Some
answers may come simply with y like more costs, you know,
utilization of better tools, and therefore there may be a cost
impact of that, but answers will  come

Rouba: (06:30)
It's ongoing. As you said, that's, by the minute, there are
ongoing developments that are unfolding, changes in decision
making amid this pandemic. What are some of the top priorities
that organizations need to consider in your view and what are
some of the measures that they can take to manage them?

Sandhya : (06:50)
So, first really, first priority of organizations is to ensure
safety of the people. Now, I'm not saying that, you know,
everyone should continue to work from home, because in some
cases  for certain business outcomes, certain people have to
come out of their homes, but we need to find that balance. And
more importantly, organizations need to make the whatever will be
the working environment for the employee, whether it is in home
or outside their homes, safe so that they can perform their roles
in an effective way. That's the first priority for any
organization, and especially in countries like India, where, the
number of cases have significantly increased. It's extremely
important for companies to ensure safety of their employees. The
second priority, according to me is to have an Eagle eye on cash.
Now this is the time where revenue profits, all the 20,000
different dashboards that people make are subservient to the cash
that the company has in its bank account. If the company is not
going to be able to pay its bills in the next quarter, then it's
going to be very difficult for companies to find way forward on
the business. So immediate action is how do they conserve cash?
How do they create adequate measures to keep bringing cash into
their bank account? And that means they have to continuously
assess how they can build resilience and sustenance in the way
they work. The third one for me is adaptability. You know, there
are many, many that are seeing significant downturn, but there
are pockets that are opening up. We saw Lam making face masks,
you know.  There is a saying that says that only the grass
that can bend with the wind can sustain the force of the wind.
You know, so there is a burning need today for companies than
ever before to be adaptable to what is relevant in today’s
climate. andHow they can make them sense have a piece of the
small pie that is available. The last for me, there ...