Ep. 1: Pierce Kohls - The Deceptive Allure of Emerging Technologies

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Mitch: (00:03)


Welcome to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting
the accounting and finance world. I am Mitch Roshong and with me,
as always is my cohost Adam Larson. The topic of this week's
episode is the deceptive allure of emerging technologies. Adam,
can you tell us a little bit more about this? 


 


Adam: (00:17)


Sure can Mitch! A technology's an intriguing topic in today's
accounting profession as the future is here, yet still constantly
evolving. We hear all about new technologies there, benefits,
hype curves, et cetera, but I was curious to hear about how it's
actually implemented. So I reached out to Pierce Kohl's CFO of
TENTE to ask him what he thinks about this trend and what he and
his company are doing with emerging technologies. Pierce
definitely has a great outlook on this topic. So let's take a
listen. 


 


Adam: (00:51)


What kind of technologies do you utilize at your company and how
do you see the impact of emerging technologies affecting the
accounting profession? 


 


Pierce: (00:59)


That's a great question. You know, emerging technologies is such
a great topic, mainly because it includes all those buzz words
that everyone loves to throw around. Things like artificial
intelligence, machine learning, big data, blockchain, and all the
other ones that I'm sure but listeners are aware of. But the
important thing that I want to remind listeners is not to get
lost in the world of emerging technologies and forget about those
existing technologies, which is why I kinda like the title of
this, the topic of this podcast to be the deceptive allure of
emerging technologies. You know, and I trust me, I know this is
something easier said than done because I struggle with this as
well as the CFO of TENTE. I not only lead the finance and
accounting departments, but I'm also responsible for it, which I
actually love because I'm so fascinated with technology and you
know, it's probably something most likely due to my age, but I
don't like things staying the same for an extended period of
time, which is why I'm constantly looking into different ways of
doing things, mainly by utilizing technology. But something that
I see is that people, and like I said, I'm guilty of this as
well, is we tend to get too hung up on this topic of emerging
technologies and we forget about, like I said, the existing
technologies. You know, you take a look at, you know, certain
department leads, you know, they're thinking, okay, how do I
utilize things like artificial intelligence, blockchain when if
you take a step back, the departments that they're leading are
utilizing technologies that are like 10 15 years old, which is
kind of crazy to think about because of how fast we know
technology changes. And I kind of look at technology the same way
you would look at dog and human years where one human year is
equivalent to seven dog years. Technology is not that much
different. And I think it's important for people to kind of keep
that in mind as they think about technology and you know, they
need to keep in mind, it's important to stay up to date and
relevant because if you don't, your competition might, and that
might be a competitive advantage that they get on you. So don't
get me wrong, I also love the buzz words. And TENTE we utilize
technologies such as IBM's Cognos for our BI needs and we use it
for predictive analytics. Something also we use is Microsoft's
power BI, which I would highly recommend people to look into. We
utilize it with our CRM software and it's become a game changer
for our sales reps and sales managers. They got visibility that
basically they've just, they've never had before. So a little
side note there, I really recommend people look into Microsoft
power BI. But moving on, when it comes to technology, the thing
to keep in mind is that it does not need to be emerging to be
worth implementing. You know, the cool thing about technology is
that there are some very simple technologies that can be utilized
that can make a, maybe not a huge significant impact, but can
make people's lives easier. And in my opinion that's one of the
main purposes of technology. You know, there's two main things I
look for when deciding on whether or not to utilize some type of
technology, one, does it make the user's lives easier or to does
it break the bank? So that first one should be a kind of obvious
answer. But trust me, there are things implemented that have made
user's life worse. And then to, it's also an obvious one in my
opinion, but that's more of the finance guy and me coming out.
You know, if it's gonna cost an arm and a leg, you know, you
always gotta have a return before you move forward with
something. But the main point there I'm trying to make is when it
comes to technology, it does not need to be emerging to be worth
implementing. You know, at TENTE, we use things like Expensify
for our expense tracking. We use something called Tax Jar for
automated sales tax reporting. We use Trello for project
management teams and communications. You know, these are all
great uses of existing technologies that are simple to use and
implement and can definitely make a positive impact on the
department. So as you can tell, the point I'm trying to make is
that you don't have to implement emerging technologies to make an
impact. It can be something small that can just maybe make your
life a little easier. You know, another thing we've started
utilizing at TENTE is our banking's mobile application. Mainly
the reason why is because we used to approve payments and
transfers via physical token IDs. And what that meant was if I
wasn't physically at my desk with that token ID payments could
not be approved, which would cause issues because if I'm
traveling or on the road and I don't have that with me, payments
aren't going out. So our banking, our bankers told us that they
came out with this app and basically told us that there was, that
the token ID was actually contained in the app. So no matter
where we were, we could get on our iPhones and basically approve
ACH is and transfers right there on our phones and get all of our
banking information right there on my phone so I don't have to be
tied down to a desk, you know? And that was something that was
very small to implement but may a nice impact and made my life
much easier. So that was just another example there. Now to the
second part of the question, as far as the impact that emerging
technologies are going to have on the accounting profession, you
know, it should be no surprise to anyone that technology has
already in, is going to continue to make significant impacts on
many different job functions and accounting is right there among
the rest of them. It shouldn't be no secret that there are
technologies out there currently that can kind of do certain
accounting job functions that maybe in the past it took, it
required a physical person to do, for example, at TENTE we've
started utilizing a program, called Paymorang where basically we
pay, send a wire or a payment to Paymorang and then they are
responsible for distributing that payment they received to us, to
our vendors. And so this saved us from, you know, headaches like
stuffing and mailing checks, clearing checks off the bank rec.
And not only that, it made the bank rec a lot simpler. There are
some negative things with it. Like you kind of lose out on the
float. But you know, so when cashflow is kind of an issue, maybe
you might want to look into something a little different. But
those are kind of things that we started to look at and utilize
and the department that I lead, another thing to really keep in
mind when it comes to the impact that technologies are having on
the profession is, you know, ...