Ep. 19: Ben Wann - Business Partnering

Contact Ben Wann:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wann/


The Numbers Guys:
https://www.the-numbers-guys.com/https://numbersguys.glideapp.io/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAcYwylNFH3iz98JIH94n7A




FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Music: (00:00)

Mitch: (00:05)
Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us again on Count Me In. I am
Mitch Roshong and my cohost is Adam Larson. Our guest for today's
episode is Ben Wann. Ben is a CMA, MBA and CPA and is currently
pursuing his CSCA specialty credential. He is an operational
finance leader and a finance business partner who came to talk to
us at IMA about the future of finance. Adam, you interviewed Ben
for this episode. Give us a quick preview of what Ben
shared.

Adam: (00:36)
Ben is a passionate leader dedicated to process improvement,
finding dynamic solutions and is constantly working to learn and
improve his own skill sets. In our conversation, Ben explains
what it means to be a true business partner and talks about how
these strategic leaders can champion change for the finance
function of their organizations. He is all about opportunity and
growth and I think he will give our listeners a lot of actionable
insight. So now let's hear Ben Wann's perspective on the future
of finance.

Music: (01:08)


Adam: (01:10)
What is finance business partnering and why should we care?

Ben: (01:14)
Finance business partner- it's the mindset that an accounting
professional doesn't just do accounting. We're not just reporting
the numbers, looking back, we're integrated with the business and
we're creating value, an active partnership with the operation
side of supply chain management. You know, we're growing, we're
and adding value wherever we can.

Adam: (01:45)
I recently saw that you wrote an article entitled the business is
to soccer to help explain this philosophy. Could you maybe give a
high level overview of your analogy?

Ben: (01:55)
Yeah, yeah. I had a fun writing this one. So the analogy that I
used is that for most of the time that accountants have been
around, we've been in the goalkeeper position, right? We're
making sure nothing gets past us and in my analogy, I refer to,
you know, like report and mistakes and all sorts of data issues
that we're constantly trying to monitor. But now with different
technology, we have the opportunity to play a different position
on the team. And that's the midfielder. And my main argument in
the article is that finance is now the mid-fielder and that's
position that can fluidly move from defense to offense. So then
making sure that businesses numbers are sound, and then then
moving forward and helping to create some winning opportunities
and some goals by providing, you know, the right insights at the
right time.

Adam: (02:47)
I think that's a great analogy, you know, so in line with that,
you know, what's some advice that you would have for someone who
wanted to champion the change in the finance area? They wanted to
go from the goalie to the midfielder?

Ben: (02:58)
Yeah, that's a question a lot of people are asking. I think that
the big thing that you have to do is start to increase what I
would call your orbit of awareness. So you have to go out there
and read about what other finance business partners are doing so
that you know what you have to do. A lot of times it's too easy
for us are heads down and get siloed. But if you look around, you
can find out what other people are doing to advance themselves.
You know, sometimes it's taking leadership training courses. I
learned how to build your influence, sometimes just become a more
technically strong. But there's, there's a lot of people who've
done it already and just no one who to talk to, like who's been
in a similar situation as you are now. That's a great place to
start.

Adam: (03:30)
You know, there was another article don't ask permission if you
want to change the world. You know, there's a particular line
that sticks out to me, but you know, one that I'll mention in a
moment, but, you know, I was hoping you could explain your
ending. What was your ending message in that article?

Ben: (03:45)
The ending message for me for this article is that you can't wait
for opportunity and if you want to advance in accounting, you
know, opportunity doesn't knock, build the door. I guess the
overall premise too is, you know, don't ask permission to, to
make a change. That makes sense and I've kind of built my career
around this and I had a lot of success around it. So that's why
I'm advocating for this message of probably professionals who are
looking to grow and advance in their own careers.

Adam: (04:15)
And you know, a particular line I wanted to kind of point out
was, you know, the problem here is that my colleague saw a
roadblocks instead of opportunities. Could you maybe comment on
that a little bit?

Ben: (04:30)
Yeah, It's, it's too easy to get stuck, right? So I went to, my
colleague had a few suggestions on how she had this one report
where it was done weekly. So we had 52 separate weeks of reports
instead of one big report that's more comprehensive, you know,
and what she got held up on is that she didn't think she had the
ability to make these changes. I don't know if it she didn't
think she had the technical ability or it was outside the scope
of her work. But yeah, so it takes some time to work through
these things. But I would suggest trying, just try and get some
feedback from maybe your manager, your peers to see if
something's working. That's the best way to start seeing
roadblocks as opportunity.

Adam: (05:13)
So what do you think is on the horizon for the future of
finance?

Ben: (05:15)
For me, I have been, in my career, I've seen the same companies
struggle with the same problem and I think that we're getting
closer to a solution. And the big problem for many organizations
is that we spent way too much time trying to get the data out of
the system and provide some sort of analysis. Usually when we're
done it's taken too much time and it's not comprehensive or
timely enough to solve the problems of business and answer the
main questions. And what technology's doing now is it's providing
a lot of low costs and then what's called low code, no code
solutions that is really going to be key to putting the tools
into more hands.The democratization of data is a term that's been
going around. So more people are being able to access the data.
and it's easier, you can't break the system. So I think that's
going to be a huge thing, if finance wants to move forward, that
we take these steps sequentially, right? We stop spending 70% of
our time doing non-value-added activities and we get the building
blocks in place.

Adam: (06:24)
So what advice would you give to somebody you know, who's, let's
say they're, you know, the higher ups in the company are chasing
whatever the flavor of the month is, whether it's blockchain or
AI or whatever that key term is that they're jumping on and
saying you have to do, you know, what advice would you give to
the people who are actually doing the work to say, hey, how do
you help them slow their horses or get them to realize that maybe
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