Ep. 14: Brian Kalish - FP&A Embracing Big Data and Technology

Brian's Work:



https://www.apqc.org/resource-library/resource-listing/how-cfos-forecast-and-plan-future


https://www.apqc.org/resource-library/resource-listing/challenges-and-opportunities-financial-planning-and-analysis-fpa


https://www.apqc.org/resource-library/resource-listing/transformation-financial-planning-and-analysis-fpa


https://www.digitalistmag.com/finance/2018/05/01/finance-transformation-how-organizations-can-adapt-to-change-06143131


https://info.sapdigital.com/1650_IFPA-CFO-White-Paper_OAP.html



Contact Brian:
LinkedIn - http://bit.ly/2hoZavs
Twitter - @FpandaBTK 


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Music: (00:04)


Adam Larson: (00:05) Welcome to “Count Me In”.
Thanks for coming back and listening to another engaging and
insightful accounting conversation with us here at IMA. I am Adam
Larson and I think you're really going to enjoy today's episode,
as, in a minute we will listen to my co-host Mitch Roshong talk
with Principal and Founder of Kalish Consulting, Brian Kalish. At
the end, please take a moment and write a review and let us know
what you think. Tell us how we're doing and what you think about
the series either on this episode or by sending us a message with
some feedback. So as I understand it, the theme of your
conversation, Mitch, was why and how FP&A should embrace big
data and technology. Tell us a little bit about Brian and some of
his interesting points.


Mitch Roshong: (00:46) Sure thing. Brian is an
avid baseball fan, a history buff, and an extremely successful
FP&A, a professional. For our conversation. He was able to
explain how the emergence of big data is an asset to financial
planning and analysis and that technology is not necessarily
disruptive. One of my favorite quotes from the conversation was,
the science of today is merely the technology of tomorrow. And
Brian does an excellent job shaping the conversation around the
opportunities created in FP&A. This was a really well rounded
and interesting discussion. So let's listen now.


Music: (01:26)


Mitch Roshong: (01:28) Brian, what kind of
impact have you seen big data have on FP&A?.


Brian Kalish: (01:33) Well, I'd say Mitchell off
the bed. You know, my, my gut answer is a huge impact. You know,
in FP&A, we're really in the process of developing an
analytics based culture of data driven decision making. And
certainly utilizing big data is one of the components of that
evolution. It's just incredible the amount of data that just
exists today. I always like learning new things. And one of the
things that I've learned recently is that we are now operating in
a world of Bronto. So B-R-O-N-T-O-B-Y-T-E-S bytes of data, which
is 10 to the 27th power. So, you know, we're now just, you know,
given all the conductivity that that just exists in the world
today. We just have so much data available to us. And what's, you
know, kind of what's really changed is that we now have tools and
infrastructure that permit us to actually analyze all this data
in a useful, timely and, and cost efficient way. And so if you
think about what the whole purpose of FP&A is, which is to
help the organization make better, faster, smarter decisions, big
data really flows into that. So as organizations begin to utilize
big data, what's important from my perspective is really kind of
the persona that FP&A has within the organization. So for
most FP&A groups, you know, the aspiration is the move from
being a reporter to a commentator, to an advisor. And I'd say
kind of at a truly visionary standpoint becoming a strategist and
why this matters and how big data plays into it is it really can
help us answer the questions that the organization has for us. So
whether you're at the corporate level, you're embedded in a
business unit you're helping marketing or HR by utilizing big
data, we can move from just answering the question of what
happened to where did it happen. And then where it really becomes
important is why did it happen, what might happen? And again,
kind of at that top level is, you know, having the impact to
actually make something happen. So you're looking at another way
of dictated will move us up the maturity curve from just
providing hindsight to what I hear most business partners asked
for today, which is insight and I, you know, I'm a little bit
further out the curve. I really think FP&A can actually begin
providing foresight to the organization. So if you think about
the level of analytics that we can use, you know, we can move
from just providing descriptive to diagnostic to predictive and
then ultimately to prescriptive. And certainly big data is one of
the pieces that can help us get there.


Mitch Roshong: (04:36) Sure. So as this big data
flows into FP&A, and I love how you talked about the, the
value maturity curve. As we kind of move along that curve, what
are the challenges that are presented because of big data and the
amount of it that you previously mentioned?


Brian Kalish: (04:54) Sure. So, for me, I kind
of have four pillars of what FP&A is built out of and they're
certainly, you can always find challenges within any of the
pillars. So, you know, what are we talking about as people,
technology, process and culture. You know, you have to have a
culture that wants to consume business new level of analytics. I
was recently with an organization engaged with them and basically
their management doesn't want it, like they're not interested in
it. It's hard to implement it if you don't have a consumer. So
you have to be in a proper culture that is willing to embrace it
and utilize it and, you know, spend the resources to make it
happen. But you also have your, you have to have the right
processes in place because obviously as we're introducing new
data sources, it's important to have from both a data governance
perspective, but also from a decision making perspective. Do you
have the proper governance in place? Do the people have the right
skills? And then I think where we spend a lot of our time with
big data is, is the technology. So it's great that we have access
to this incredibly large database of structured and unstructured
data, internal, external. But do we have the proper technology to
do the analysis? And do we have systems that are actually
powerful enough in place? I mean, these things all exist today. I
mean, there are organizations that are certainly leveraging big
data and utilizing even in artificial intelligence. But for
individual organizations, do they have the proper technology in
place? And one of the things that's I think has been fascinating
is that we've really, and I'm not trying to get too wonky too
soon but just the infrastructure, you know, we've been dealing
with for the last 30 years, what's kind of known as an ETL, which
is extract, transform load environment, which is, you know, data
warehouses and we've very familiar with that. But what's really
incredible, and I think what really poses a lot of tremendous
op...