Ep. 26: Indra Moeljadi - The Evolving Role of the Business Partner

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Adam: (00:05)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm Adam Larson and
today we're going to listen to Mitch speak with Indra Moeljadi
from Switzerland about the evolving role of a finance business
partner. In their conversation Indra talks about business
partnering technology in analytics, strategic decision making and
storytelling. Let's go to the conversation now. 


 


Mitch: (00:26)


How has your role as a finance business partner and the head of
finance changed over the last few years? 


 


Indra: (00:37)


Yeah, so you know, I said progress in my career. I found out that
it's less about the data crunching and more about finding a story
within a numbers. You know, days of going through the numbers on
a spreadsheet, there's becoming less and less, I mean, they still
exist of course there's the bread and butter, but now I spend
more time putting the numbers into PowerPoint presentation and
then doing some analysis on it and presenting the analysis and
the story to the organization. So as a finance business partner,
you know the asks from the people I spend the most possibly
thought as part they are commercial minded team. So you know,
they're not really great with numbers. You know, they always ask
how can I help them get certain messages based on the financials
across the organization. You know, and to be able to do that, I
need to understand a couple of things. I need to understand the
business, why they say that we do, you know, whether the products
work, all that stuff. I need to understand the organization. So
who are the people that I'm dealing with that I'm interacting
with. And then also the last thing is what message is it that
they want me to convey? Cause that's really important in trying
to, you know, be the right business partner. So for me it's more
about understanding and preparing a story and less about data
crunching numbers. And I've seen that over the past few years.
And I also see people going into finance roles. You know, the
technology is there that enables them to do the data crunching.
So you know, you need to do a bit more than just the data
crunching. 


 


Mitch: (02:10)


How do technology and analytics skills help you and your team
understand the business and the message you are trying to share
as data change the necessary skillsets and how decisions are
ultimately made? 


 


Indra: (02:21)


Yes, I believe so. There's a lot of data out there. You know,
take, take an example. In the past when I started, I started
working almost 20 years ago, still worked on paper invoices and
you know what we do with paper versus we take what's important
only the important bits because we didn't have the resource nor
the capability to store all the information. Nowadays one
transaction has a lot of data points, you know, multiple data
points in there. You have to date, customer location, payment
method, delivery method, stock keeping, unit currency, everything
else. And now we actually have the resources and capabilities to
store all this data. So yes, we need to technological skills
cause we need to be able to go to this data and filter out what
is important. You know, what do we actually need and then once we
find what's important we need the analytical skills to come up
with a meaningful analysis that will aid this with the decision
making process. So yes, and when we talk about strategic
decisions, these are decisions impact in the future. Data that we
have is from the past. You know, the historical data. So how do
we take historical data and make a decision for the future with
it and, and be sort of accurate sort of where we can predict the
future. And technology really helps. There are lots of tools and
can predict and forecast for the future. They can do trend
analysis, they can, you know, it's obviously not perfect but it
really helps a lot. But then on top of the technology, you also
need our analytic skills and our experience. And that's
fundamental because we should be able to predict, you know, when
the peaks and the dips are in the sales from an expenses should
be able to predict and calculate return of investment and then
adding our ethics skills and our experience on top of that. Then
we get a good story and then you know, we can have the right
parameters to make the strategic decision for the
organization. 


 


Mitch: (04:13)


Business partnering, strategic decision making. These are popular
terms today relating to finance, but another one that seems to be
becoming even more important, and I know you referenced it
earlier, is storytelling. So what exactly is storytelling and how
does it fit into the finance function? 


 


Indra: (04:28)


So storytelling and finance to me it's a couple of things. One is
translating the numbers into something coherent for the audience.
Most finance people you know they get a headache when you show
them an Excel table. And I've had that a lot where I give them
access table and they just shake their heads and they don't want
to even see it. So how do you make these people at ease with
numbers? Right? So what do I do? I replaced the numbers for a
story and that makes it understandable for these people. Now a
lot of the senior managers in the organization that I've worked
with, they don't have the time, neither nor the mental capacity
to go through an Excel file. So as a finance business partner,
it's our task to make the numbers understandable and to do that,
you know, providing a story is a really good tool. And then also
another aspect of storytelling in finances, stories have a
distinct pattern, right? We learned that when we're children, as
long as the beginning, a middle and an ending. And if you look
at, you know, strategic decisions that, that a company's making,
they also for beginning. Beginning being the reason why do we
need to do this? And there is a middle, you know, to how, what's
the process to get there? And then the ending, the ending is
being like, what is the objective? Most companies started with
the ending first, but then it all goes from the beginning of
middle and ending. So by putting all of this in the story, it
will help everybody. You know, cause we are as humans, we're
conditioned to learn about stories all around us. Everything is
about a story. That's how we are. This is how we grew up. This is
how we are conditioned as human beings and also storytelling.
It's the most powerful tool to pass on a message, right? But a
good or bad, if you put a right story behind it, a bad message
can become a good story. And vice versa. If you have the wrong
story, a good message become a bad story. Right? And so, so if
you have this tool, you know, use it because then the audience
can relate to it and they can really understand what is going
on. 


 


Mitch: (06:24)


So let's put all of the pieces of this conversation together.
What advice can you give to accounting and finance professionals
attempting to develop a strategic driven story to add value to
their organization? 


 


Indra: (06:35)


So by telling a story, you're adding value to an organization.
Now, would your business partner, would you prefer, would they
prefer it? If you just give them an extra table and then get on
with it. Or would your business partner prefer you tell them what
is going on when you show them the numbers? I think it's most
cases and I think majority, I'm pretty sure they just want to
tell. They just want you to tell them what's going on....