BONUS | Doreen Remmen - Today's CFO

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Mitch: (00:05)


Hey everybody. Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about
all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is
your host Mitch Roshong. Thank you for joining us again today.
You're about to hear the third bonus episode of our IMA focused
mini series within Count Me In. We're going to listen to Adam
speak with IMA CFO and senior vice president of operations,
Doreen Remmen. This episode will be especially relevant as you'll
hear Doreen talk about her various responsibilities which really
highlight the changing role of the CFO in today's industry. I'll
let Doreen and Adam fill you in on the rest. So let's head over
to the conversation now. 


 


Doreen: (00:46)


So Adam, it's really nice to have you visit me here in my office
today. 


 


Adam: (00:50)


Glad to be here Doreen. Could you tell us a little bit about your
roles and responsibilities here at IMA? 


 


Doreen: (00:56)


Sure. Well, as you know, I'm the chief financial officer and I
have the traditional role of leading the finance organization. I
ensure that our financial reporting and regulatory reporting are
timely and accurate. I lead the budgeting process and I work with
the external advisors, the accountants and attorneys, who keep us
moving in the right direction. And thankfully I have a very
professional finance team in place that's led by a highly skilled
controller. So I have other responsibilities as well. My title is
senior vice president of operations and my role goes beyond
finance to include information technology, human resources,
customer service and facilities. And here again, luckily I have
wonderful teams in place and talented leaders. 


 


Adam: (01:46)


So during, I also know you work with the board of directors. Can
you tell me a little bit more about that? 


 


Doreen: (01:50)


Okay. Well, my favorite part of my job is being the staff liaison
to the strategic planning committee of the board of directors.
And in this role I ensure that we have a continuous systematic
process for refining our strategic plan every year. And that
includes collecting input from our stakeholders who could be our
members, our staff, our board, our vendors, performing an
environmental scan and risk assessment and communicating the
strategic priorities. 


 


Adam: (02:22)


So we know that there's many changes happening in the accounting
industry. So how do your various responsibilities reflect those
changes? 


 


Doreen: (02:31)


Well, Adam, there's been a lot written about the changing role of
the CFO and I think more and more finance leaders are broadening
their scope and becoming involved in strategy. And I think this
is very true in large companies, where the CFO may have been seen
as a functional trusted advisor in the past. That CFO is now
being called upon to be a true business partner in strategic
decisions. And this requires that we expand beyond a financial
reporting and develop those analytical skills that help us
predict an influence the future. But I'm asked this question
quite often, Adam. And what I've said before is nobody told me at
the beginning of my career that I was supposed to just stay in
the finance function and I had the opportunity to work as the
finance leader in mid size companies typically, but not always
privately held. And as the CFO I was always the next person to
the CEO in every business decision. So people relied on me to
bring my analytical skills to different roles. Uh, in the company
that I worked at before IMA I was able to move into a vice
president of supply chain role. I also worked as the vice
president of sales and marketing for a period of time. Having
competent leaders on the teams that reported to me was really
important. Having a highly competent controller in place enabled
me to trust that she had everything under control. And I could
step away from finance when necessary, go on a sales call, close
a deal, or visit a supplier's factory and try to understand if
they had the quality systems in place that would make them a
reliable partner in a supplier managed inventory program. So
nobody ever told me I was supposed to stick to finance. If I'd
gotten that lesson early in my career, I think my life would have
been a lot simpler. But I've enjoyed my career and I've enjoyed
being in a lot of different roles and I have a lot of different
roles here at IMA as well. 


 


Adam: (04:43)


So as you've already mentioned, how your different roles here at
IMA kind of spread that and you've become that business partner
with, you know, whether it's with the board or helping out with
operations and in the finance function as well. 


 


Doreen: (04:58)


I'm just naturally curious person. I'm nosy. I like to get
involved in different things. And uh, here at IMA I'm passionate
about what is going on because I'm an IMA member and I am a, was
always a really important, support system in my career. So I'm
passionate about making sure that we're doing the strategic
things that will serve the profession in the future. 


 


Adam: (05:23)


So on that same note, measurements and metrics are obviously very
important for the CFO to monitor, as you've already mentioned. So
what are a few keys of your key performance indicators or goals
as a CFO at IMA? And how or why might they be different from
those at a CFO to public organization? 


 


Doreen: (05:41)


Okay. So many of our financial metrics are very, very similar.
Even though we're not for profit, we operate like a for profit
business, in a very disciplined manner. We look at all the
traditional indicators of financial that include profitability,
cashflow and balance sheet ratios that measure liquidity and
stability. Of course we do all of those things, but as a mission
based, not for profit organization, not everything we do has
dollars attached to it. So we look deeply at measures of member
engagement to understand whether we're delivering the value that
we should be. 


 


Adam: (06:20)


So one of the biggest areas of emphasis in finance and accounting
competencies is data analytics. And we had, I may know that a
very important and so how heavily, how heavily do you use or rely
on data analytics for financial decisions and
recommendations? 


 


Doreen: (06:37)


Well, we rely very heavily on data to support our decisions. We
try to walk the walk here at IMA and we know that data analytics
are very important to all of our members. We look at leading
indicators in our data such as the number of new candidates for
the CMA program. We also look at things like pass rates on the
exam by region and it's very important for us to understand the
trends as they're developing. My staff has been exploring new
technology products such as Tableau and the advanced features in
Excel to unlock the secrets and the trends that are showing up in
our database. We also look at external data such as the GDP in
our target markets and the numbers of students that are
graduating from accounting and finance programs at
universities. 


 


Adam: (07:27)


So how do you think the use of those new tools that they're
looking at will help IMA]? 


 


Doreen: (07:3...