CFO 4.0 - The Future of Finance

Finance Transformation Live - Transformation Troubleshooter

• Hannah Munro

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In this Transformation Troubleshooter edition of Financial Transformation Live, hosts Hannah Munro and Neil Lynchehaun tackle real-world finance transformation challenges shared by listeners. From project overload to spreadsheet sprawl, they offer practical strategies to help finance leaders navigate complexity with confidence.

In this episode, they cover:

  • How to manage multiple overlapping transformation projects without burning out your team
  • Approaches to reprioritising and phasing work to avoid chaos and maintain momentum
  • What to do when a new CFO questions an in-progress finance system rollout
  • The importance of focusing on outcomes—not just solutions—when defending project decisions
  • How to engage teams stuck in Excel and manual processes without triggering resistance
  • Practical ways to build buy-in, uncover hidden capabilities, and lead change effectively

Links mentioned

Speaker 1:

Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly, moving from cost controller to strategic visionary, and with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition to win at work, drive your career forwards and lead with confidence. To win at work, drive your career forwards and lead with confidence. Join Hannah Munro, managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

Speaker 2:

Hello everybody, and welcome to a brand new episode of Financial Transformation Live and a slightly different format than usual. So the first thing I'm going to ask is if you've got any feedback on this format. We'd love to hear it from you. This is going to be part of our new Transformation Troubleshooter series, where we talk about myself and Neil, different challenges that you may face. So if you have a particular challenge that you would like us to talk about, or maybe a scenario you want to put in front of us, then for those that are watching these live, then please do put them in the chat or, if you prefer, you can send me a private DM and I am keeping an eye out on that. For those of you that are listening to this on demand, then this is your opportunity to send through your transformation woes or challenges and we will pick them up. So, without further ado, let's get started. So we're going to start with a few introductions because, again, I'm very aware that we have a few new listeners and livers today.

Speaker 2:

So, for those of you that don't know, my name is Hannah Munro. I'm MD and Head of Transformation here at ITAS, so we are a financial transformation consultancy that actually specializes in Sage technology. So we work with Sage 53 to Sage Intact and we're all about helping people get the most out of their Sage solution, no matter what size they are. And we've actually been recently recognized for this. We are the Sage customer success partner of the year and I genuinely believe it's down to not just the fact that we're obviously great, got great technical, great support, but that we approach things a little differently and we focus on the transformation aspects of what we do, not just the technology. So and I'm very excited to say I have with me Neil, so Neil looks after our transformation team. He is our transformation and delivery manager. So, neil, I'll let you do an intro, a little bit about your background.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, hannah. I always struggle to introduce myself. I've had a very, very varied career, not linear at all. I think the easiest way to say is that I've had the good fortune to spend the first 25 years of my career in really really high performance environments which were characterized every day by trying to rock the world just a little bit compared to yesterday, moving forwards In those places.

Speaker 4:

One of the experiences I had was being involved in one of the earliest global financial shared services organizations which became seen as a global leader in how shared services can be delivered. That got me snapped up by a big four consultancies where I built out a behavioral change transformation approach which clients loved. They saw that they could get benefits very quickly from really getting focused around how they operated. That was an award-winning offering. It got me time with the C-suite, coaching them on how to find operational excellence within their organization. Laterally I've been kind of working as an independent consultant until I had the opportunity to join ITAS last year. My experiences have taken me through program work, operational leadership, senior leadership a characteristic that has always been a transformation. I've operated across Europe and I've also had the joy of discovering how many, many different sectors of business and actually not-for-profit organizations work as well.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic, thank you. So I'm hoping you guys have got some real confidence in our ability to answer it. And I think between Neil and I we've literally worked on hundreds of projects Mine mostly within ERP, financial transformation, though I have done some sales force aspects and CRM implementations previously in the past. So we come from slightly different backgrounds, which is why the pair I'm quite excited actually to have both of our both of us on this course talking from maybe perhaps different angles. So the format of today's session so I've got three messages that I've received, two of them actually fairly recent. One is a bit more historical, but I thought is a really good one to pick up. So we're going to talk through those. But for those that are listening live, you are welcome to, as I said, pop your questions in the chat. If perhaps you've got a question that you want us to pick up in future sessions we are going to be starting to run these on a more regular basis then please do um, send it to me directly, hannahmonroe itassolutionscouk, and that link will be later on the session or dm me on linkedin, which is probably where you find me most, um, and we will pick it up in our next uh transformation troubleshooter. So let's so, just for those of you that um haven't seen our last session, we actually did, um, I did a session on future proofing your finance, software architecture, things you need to think about to prepare your systems, your processes, for the future. So that is now available on demand and you can access.

Speaker 2:

So let's get on to scenario number one. So, for those of you that are listening to this on demand, I'm just going to read it out. So, hey, I could really use your take on something. We've got a new finance system going in, a Salesforce integration happening at the same time, and we're just starting to roll out a new po process. It's a lot. Honestly, it feels like we're doing everything at once and people are just burning out. There's no time to get anything bedded in before we're on to the next change. It's all starting to feel a bit reactive rather than clamped. Have you seen this before? Are we just taking on too much, or is this kind of chaos normal for a transformation? So, neil, I'm going to go to you first, right? What's your take on this?

Speaker 4:

I think that this is a very common experience for a lot of organizations going through change, and you know they'll give themselves all the hassles as well, like doing it just when the auditors are coming in as well and they're at their busier periods of year end. I think there's, you know there's many answers to this. The first one is, yes, there are a lot of businesses feeling the pain, the same pain. Think, if you find yourself already in that situation. There are a variety of very obvious things to do, such as looking for the opportunity around. You know, can we bring back fill? Can we rethink the sequence of events? Do we have capability in our teams that we're unaware of? You know? Can we sort of move things around in time, bring things forward, and I'm sure everybody in the audience has already thought of that.

Speaker 4:

There are other slightly less obvious things which might surface out, opportunities on how to deal with a situation, and I think there's things around being really super clear about what we're trying to achieve with the transformation. It's something that's often overlooked by the leadership. They'll talk about what we're doing, but not necessarily why and what the goal and aim is of the transformation, what we're trying to achieve, if we kind of take that out and share it with the broader organization, the people involved, the people affected by a transformation. They often find themselves a way in which to simplify what's being burden off the leadership in terms of finding that golden success factor.

Speaker 4:

Obviously, burnout is a big issue, I'd say the other major factor about going into projects is often getting house in order before starting. Um, getting house in order before starting, so trying to put a new solution in on a less than ideal situation is harder than kind of maybe spending some time getting a little bit of house in order, dealing with the things that don't go necessarily to plan before getting started or even getting started on the next step. Um, and then having a cleaner environment to kind of implement a new system into. Hannah, I've spoken quite a lot there, sorry. What's your comment?

Speaker 2:

So I think the key thing is just to think about how the different levels and thinking about these projects right, and what they're trying to achieve with all of them. It does sound like there's an awful lot going on and, having known who this person's role is, that that person is involved with everything. So I think the first piece is to make sure that you're raising to the relevant people, as in your direct line manager, your CFO, your project leads, that you are being pulled across all of these parts of the projects because they do need to make a decision about whether you are involved in everything. You are involved in some of it, and is there an element of this that is more of a priority for the business? Right, because there are so many, there are only so many hours in the day and what? From what I you know, from what I understand about the scenario is you do have a lot of priorities and everything is seen as urgent. The reality in business is that everything can't be urgent. Not everything can be as urgent. The reality in business is that everything can't be urgent, not everything can be a priority, and there will be something in this that will be more of a priority than others right. So I think the first thing is to ask for some prioritization around this.

Speaker 2:

Now, I'm a big believer generally in phasing, right know, even a slight phasing whereby the different stages so you're not doing the training, the testing for each of those things at the same time will give you some breathing room. So I personally would sit down with your PM and look at the overlap between these different projects. They need to look at the resources involved in those projects and then make sure that there's enough of a gap between each of the stages of those different projects to make sure that you do have capacity in order to deliver this, because I think that's the piece is that you can do everything if you don't do everything at once, and I think that's the really important bit. So, maybe with some smarter planning, maybe pushing the sales force piece out until you've actually gotten through an initial wave of testing on your finance platform and then letting the tech, what you know, and then bringing you back in when you actually need to test, that integration might be a good way. So that's, I guess, my first reaction is how do we create some capacity?

Speaker 2:

And, neil, you talked about that actually, I think, and I just want to pull that out. I think that's a really good shout. Is you know, rather than stopping something, is there a way you can just push something, or is there something that maybe you push a couple of things out and then create capacity so that you can do all three in this instance? Um?

Speaker 2:

and I think, yeah, I Neil any further thoughts based on what I've just said.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, absolutely so I think there's. I mean, everybody knows the. Can we push back. There's also the alternative version of that can we pull forward? So there's often there might be tasks that have to be done in a sequence for a project work that run up against kind of, let's say, you know, a peak period of activity in operational work that creates a resource challenge. So there might be some, you know. Look at opportunities around pulling operational work forward into a different timeframe, maybe completing it earlier. Look at how to simplify the job If it's a hard, heavy job. Look at making it easier to be successful and maybe being able to pass that onto a different resource that has capacity.

Speaker 4:

Thinking about resources and capacity, I kind of echo that again, I think teams are often surprised about what capabilities and experiences they have in their own organization. You know we read TVs when we hire people and then we often forget what they've got under their belts some time after. And you know there's an open conversation about a particular piece of work that needs to be undertaken might just be well within somebody's skill set that they've never sung about and they could lend a hand in moving forwards. I think a real good discipline around making sure, as Hannah said about phasing, we don't move on to a next piece before we're ready or too early. Is there's a discipline about not declaring success too early? So there's kind of you know, results kind of appear over a period of time and it's too tempting to say yeah, we've had a result, we've had a success, when we see that leading edge of performance change.

Speaker 4:

You know, let's make sure that we've actually embedded in the success and we've removed any old ways of working so we're not running with two solutions, we haven't got a shadow operation going on, we've realized the benefits of the piece of work that we've just done, you know. And there is the classic let's bring in some resource from elsewhere. There might be a development opportunity within the organization to give somebody, let's say, an experience that they've been interested in but they've not had in their normal role available to them to support the project work. Not everything is going to fit any particular organization but there's a number of things that we can do in terms of seeking out ways of changing how that work is delivered. And again I go back to Hannah's first point, really emphasizing what is it that we're trying to achieve and what does that mean in real, practical terms, identify the differences between those aspects which are mandatory and those other aspects which are discretionary, which perhaps could be put into a second phase or a following phase.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know, just to kind of give a little bit of relief in the planning of the project so I think, if I just come back to the original question on this, are we taking on too much? If you are feeling completely overwhelmed and everybody's burning out, the answer is you are taking on too much right now. How you deal with this? You have a couple of different options, right. You either make each of the projects a little bit smaller, yeah, or you think smarter about where they sit, in what order. So you do that um, or you change.

Speaker 2:

You maybe take one of the pieces of the puzzle out temporarily to give you guys some capacity, because I think the danger with what you're doing at the moment with those three projects and it sounds like there's apps, this is not just the only three that are running from um, from this conversation the danger of doing that is you might not do each of them well and you're better off having two of them done well and in an established and then picking up the third as a, as a, as a later project. Then you are trying to do everything and then creating more challenges later on because they're not done well. So I think that's some of the things to maybe consider in terms of how you move it forward. So chaos is normal. I would say you know it will feel pressured, right, but burnout is not, and I think that's an important piece. And if you do have to work longer hours or it shouldn't, it should be for focused areas of time, yeah, and you should be trying to minimize that upfront.

Speaker 2:

So I would go back to what's changed, did you? Is there something that's been added in to the original plan, perhaps that you haven't planned resource for? Is it that you've underestimated or been given, not been given the guidance as to how much time you were going to be required to input into these projects? And then I think, once you've got that, that's when you can start to have conversations about moving forward. So any tips, neil, for how we can perhaps have those conversations with the senior leadership team, with the senior stakeholders, to to get buy-in, to perhaps delay, minimize, minimise scope, push things out, change almost the original plan that has obviously been put forwards.

Speaker 4:

Okay, I think, in terms of having a conversation with the senior leadership, the first thing is make sure you're confirming what is it we're trying to achieve with leadership in terms of what goals are being achieved and what steps deliver on on getting to those goals. If we're all on the same table though there's no surprises then we can have a conversation about we can achieve x goal by maybe a different date if we move back. The reason I want to move back is that we have an excessive demand for resource here that exceeds our capacity, for example. An alternative would be to modify that plan by taking out an element of of piece of um phase two and creating a new phase four. So it's we can have a very kind of structured conversation. I think there needs to be a reasonable amount of um quantifiable information that goes into that conversation, but it needs to be um around. What are we trying to achieve? How do we think we deliver that? What's the challenge that we're facing? What are we trying to achieve? How do we think we deliver that? What's the challenge that we're facing? What are the alternatives that we are proposing on the table and which of those alternatives would we recommend?

Speaker 4:

Senior leaders like to have an obvious choice and have the one. That's obviously not a right choice. So give it the A, it the ABC choices and make it push C off the table. But it's. I think it's as straightforward as that I would.

Speaker 4:

One of the things I would kind of have bouncing through the back of my mind is if that's the situation that you're in and you're going to the leadership with that conversation, then I question do you feel that the leadership are properly engaged in the project in the first place? Are they getting the information that they need? And there's kind of there's often. You see many articles about the difference between support and permission to run a project and you know leadership should be unblocking every challenge around a project to make it really easy to be successful. If the conversation has really taken them back to basics about the project, then there might also be a follow-up conversation about how they can be engaged in the project moving forwards and get that support and healthy challenge from an earlier stage and I would also say I think making sure you're aware of some of the politics around this, these projects, is really important, especially when you're speaking to leadership.

Speaker 2:

Leadership, you know how visible and how pressure, how much pressure, is coming from, say, the boardroom around this particular project and you know understanding. That might help you phrase things. But what I will say is just a bit of reassurance, is that no senior leadership member, no senior stakeholder wants a project to be seen as a failure. Right, and I think they would rather have two or one of the three projects go in well. They would rather have two or one of the three projects go in well and the others delivered later but still well, than they would have all three fail, because that that can be career ending right, let's, let's know, let's not be so, I think, having it, I would also caution you to make sure that you're coming with and I think and Neil said it when he was talking about the information, but try not to get into feelings. Try to come with facts, figures and impact um, and don't just come with a problem, come with options, um, because that will get you through that process a lot quicker. Um, and normally there should be somebody that is certainly.

Speaker 2:

I'm surprised that it's got to this stage without your senior leadership actually having a conversation to go. I'm concerned. Should we have a conversation about this? So it might be that just the timing of this message, um, is right, but I'm sure you know they will have been seeing this, so I don't think that it will be unexpected with you opening this conversation, and perhaps maybe they don't quite know what the options are and that's you know, that's what you can give them to make decisions around. So okay, so I always find it really hard to explain to people why they should choose itas as their financial transformation or sage partner.

Speaker 5:

So rather than me tell you how awesome we are, I'm gonna let our customers do it so we decided to go with itas because, when we were looking for a partner, we felt that they not only took the time to understand our business and they knew the needs of everyone on the team or everyone that would be using the system, but they also were very transparent in kind of what they could do, what they couldn't do and, prior to having us sign anything or make any agreements, they held meetings with us to walk them through our processes and our business so that they really understood everything that would need to be done and give us realistic timelines as well. And another thing was because we were so new and we didn't have a current system going. We were looking for something that we could implement rather quickly but also do it correctly, and we felt that ITAS would be able to do achieve both of those in terms of, yeah, understanding our business and and implementing it how we wanted it, but also doing it in our rather quick timeline.

Speaker 2:

So that was the first one. I hope that's helpful. Message number two so quick one for you. You we're halfway through a finance system rollout and our new cfo is questioning whether it's the right choice. They want to make sure we're on the right path, but we're already committed a lot to it. I'm torn between staying the course and reopening the whole decision. Have you dealt with this before? What's the best way to handle it without losing momentum? So this actually happens a lot with new senior leaders coming in, so it's not unusual, I think. The question so maybe we just start with the questions that you should ask yourself before you start doing things and putting things in place. I think is are? I think my first question is are they fully aware of the process that you have been through in order to get to this point? So that's my first question, neil. What other questions should questions would you be asking yourself if this was the situation?

Speaker 4:

I think that's a great first question and it's very reasonable that they should want to have a check on what transformations are going underway and what they're trying to achieve.

Speaker 4:

I think the kind of the first question I would be wanting them to be asking of me is why the hell are we doing this? What's it for? It's kind of you know, we got banned from saying burning platform about a decade ago, so, but you know what is the imperative that we're trying to resolve here and what's the thinking in terms of how we address that imperative? That's the first real question that I would expect them to be asking. You know that really is, you know, the question are we doing the right thing here? And having a conversation around that how we're executing a delivery is almost secondary to that question. If we can get past that first question of is it the right thing to do, have we got the right thinking in place, then the next piece is is a tactical conversation about is this the best way to get to that point? Do they have any views on how it could be better achieved to better support it? I think is the uh, is the?

Speaker 2:

secret, and I think this comes up a lot where everyone you know, when you go into situations where everyone knows they need to make a change right, so they've massively outgrown the systems, and so this for me, for anyone that's currently going through a transformation, is why it's really important to make sure you're keeping good records of decisions, evaluations and assumptions that you're making as you go through the process, because even if you all know as a team why this is the right choice, what you're trying to achieve the reality is is that you know people moving roles is. Actually it's become a lot more frequent and a lot more commonplace that new people come into roles actually doing some good. You know hygiene as you're going through this process, getting you know putting together a business case in. You know, even if it's not formally presented, putting it together. You know making sure the right people have eyes on it before you start just kind of covers you when you get to the situation, because then you should be surfacing that information, and what's interesting with this one is the terminology um, make sure we're on the right path.

Speaker 2:

The two things that that could mean is have we made the right choice and do we know the direction that we're going, which is what neil's two things that that could mean is have we made the right choice and do we know the direction that we're going? Which is what Neil's saying, but that terminology almost feels like they're not sure if you're going down the right route to either achieving your goals, but also, are you, are you actually on a route that is going to deliver on those goals. So I think you need to understand if there is a I just want to know how we got here and why we've gone down this path versus is there something that they've been told by somebody else in the organization that might make them think they're not on the right path? So, personally, I would just kind of do a bit of a. This is why we are doing this, this is what we've decided to do, these are the options we've considered, this is how far through the project we are now right. And then at that point they can go either I agree with the choices you've made or I don't, and this is. And then at that point they can go either I agree with the choices you've made or I don't, and this is why yeah, and then you. Then you can jump into the conversation about where you go from here would be, I guess, my suggestion.

Speaker 2:

How you approach neil. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 4:

no, I think that's that's absolutely. Um, absolutely, spot on I. I would add to this that um, there's many occasions where I see um projects get married to the solution that they're putting in place rather than the outcome that they're trying to influence. Um, for example, uh, I I was, for example, I was in an organization where our role was to take cost out, drive efficiency, make it easier for our business to operate, and we were implementing in Italy around an accounts payable process.

Speaker 4:

We had an electronic procurement card solution that we were deploying across Europe.

Speaker 4:

So this is going back to the mid 90s and there was legislation in Europe about BOLO, which is a stamp, a sequential stamp, and basically our procurement card was to take away small value transactions and take away invoice processing for it. The solution for Italy was that we'd have to have both the procurement card and the invoice processing, and when I heard this was going on, I was kind of what are we doing? And the answer back to me my objective is to implement pCard in Italy, and the discussion was no, our objective is to reduce cost of operation, not to increase it. And I think at times it's really worth having that conversation about what are we trying to achieve. And if you get asked that it's a good, healthy conversation to be having, it's a good sense check. We can sometimes get lost in the solution rather than the outcome, in the solution rather than the outcome, um. And if you can have that conversation, be prepared to talk about the outcome rather than the solution, um, and then how we get there.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a really good place to be and I'm always a big believer and you kind of need to understand where somebody's coming from, right, so maybe asking what their brief has been given and what their vision for finance is, because it might be different to your previous cfo, right? And I again, I I don't know the the new and the old cfo question, I'm just in this stage so I can't offer any comment. But thinking about, you know, is there a change in the direction and should it? You know, is it a valid question? Should they be questioning whether this is the right choice? I also think you just somebody's coming new that they are often bringing with them a history of working with either certain platforms as well. So just making sure that they are comfortable with the platform that you're looking at and you're implementing is always a good shout. Okay, so, and and actually ask, rather than worrying about the fact that they're asking, perhaps digging into what is it that you think that you've seen, heard or or experienced before that maybe makes you think we're not on the right path, because you know and ask them, you know, just say, look, I'd rather know now, because you might be able to just address an individual concern and it might just be one thing that they've heard, they've seen or something that they've hit previously in their history. That maybe is triggering this conversation. So I think a couple of things to consider is have you briefed that cfo well enough on what you're trying to achieve and the process that you've gone through to evaluate whether this is the right solution, right?

Speaker 2:

Um, I think there's a second piece around. Has the need for the change that you're proposing and you're trying to deliver changed? Have the priorities, the business change with a new person coming on board and, I think, perhaps three getting into why they? Perhaps there's a, there's a feeling of they're not sure if it's the right path. Where is that coming from? What are the things that perhaps they've heard, seen or experienced previously that maybe they could bring? And then if, once you've got hold of those things, then you can decide on a plan of action. So either you can address the individual concerns, you can give them more information on the process you've been through, or perhaps you being very honest, if the needs of the business has changed, maybe they're looking to grow a lot faster, a lot quicker, and you've chosen a smaller solution. You know you've got to have those conversations because the last thing you want to do is do this kind of new system roll out twice in a two or three year period. So yeah, that's my any final thoughts, neil you might get a nice surprise.

Speaker 4:

they might just just say that's fantastic. I can totally support that, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And do you realize, is that their job as a new CFO is to come in and understand what's happening. Yeah, their job. And it's as much that, even though this is all done before they arrived, they will still copy it if it's the wrong choice. Yeah, because they, they, they were part of the final part of the rollout. So it is not unusual for a CFO to ask for information and actually, by not giving them the detail of the process that you've gone through, that, why you've made the decision and the ins and outs, you're actually probably more likely to create a feeling of doubt than if you just give them chapter and verse, because you know, knowing what I know about this person, they've probably done a really good job of making this selection. They've gone through all their due diligence. So, yeah, and if you haven't, well, you know you probably need to have those conversations. So, okay, right, we are rapidly running out of time, so I am gonna skip on to the next question and, guys, if you're listening to this live and you or you've got some other questions that around this, then please do send them in, because there are so many nuances and when you're sending in questions, the more information you can give us the better, and even if you say this is for confidential, we'll try and not mention it. It will help us answer your specific scenario even more closely. Okay, message number three.

Speaker 2:

So hi, hannah, I've recently started new cfo role and I'm trying to get my head around how things are set up. We're still using sage 50 and I know there are a lot more advanced versions out there, but the team really like it and are comfortable with how it works. Problem is is everything around it is being propped up for spreadsheets, reporting, forecasting, pos, even approvals. It's all. It's all in excel, it's all in excel and in emails, and it's become a bit of a minefield. There's no single source of truth, um, just different versions floating around, and I don't want to come in and throw everything out straight away, especially when the team feels safe with what they've got.

Speaker 2:

But I also can't ignore the gaps. How do I start making progress without the team feeling like I'm tearing everything up? Uh well, can I just say I'm just gonna say the first point is well done for recognizing that the team are comfortable. Right, because you know it can be really easy as a new CFO to come in and go oh my God, this all needs to change, because you're used to more automations, et cetera. It's good that the first reaction is oh right, the team are happy where they are and potentially don't know any difference. So, neil, I guess what's your, what's your initial thoughts?

Speaker 4:

well. This is well. As a consultant, this has been a kind of and in fact, in operational leadership, this has been a kind of a consistent challenge throughout my career. I think there's a piece really about engaging with the team and I like to think that in the approaches that I take through getting businesses started on transformation, there's a piece around creating healthy dissatisfaction. So there's um, you know, work sessions with with the teams about how does this flow, how do we create value, sort of um, maybe throw different perspectives on it and sort of like, how does the customer tell you they feel about that does? Does the customer get to experience this disconnect? What does that do in terms of our ability to respond to the customer or, if, say, we're a finance organization, how we respond to the business. Are we as fast as we could be? Um, is it as good as it could be? Start creating these dissatisfactions in workshops or start asking these questions, and you know somebody in the team will start coming out with, yeah, it could be better in this way or it could be better that way. That's not so good. That's a bit clunky.

Speaker 4:

Quite often in teams there will be those that speak up and there'll be those that are quietly thinking away to themselves. There's a piece around kind of bringing people together, allowing them kind of taking out any team dynamic that might be there and allowing those that don't normally get a chance to contribute to contribute. So kind of, if you're all in the same office, maybe a bit of brown paper and post-it notes up on a wall with some Blu-T-it notes up on a wall with some blue tack to put it up on the wall and talk about. Here's how our process flows. Here's some blue post-it notes. Can we write on the blue post-it notes the pain points that we think are in there, why they're not so good, what's difficult about them? Nobody talk whilst we're doing this. Just right, put them up, you know. And then a similar sort of thing, kind of team ranking around, um, who thinks that they're the most impactful changes. There you can start. You'll be pleasantly surprised, I think by finding that there are hidden gems of information there. Or you know, the things that you've been thinking yourself absolutely surface out and are already in the team somewhere, and by a careful management of the dynamic and how you surface that out and saying could that be better in any way, rather than prescribing how things could be better. Allow, allow the team to discover themselves the dissatisfaction and to surface out how things could be better. And, you know, to describe what the solution should be able to do. They don't necessarily need to come up with the solution, but describe what better would look like. Better would look like um, and then start taking them on a little bit of the change journey. You know, applaud them. So that's fantastic. I'm loving it.

Speaker 4:

How can we take this to the next level? Could it be even better than this? Um kind of? You know, if you think over to the lean world, we go kind of what's, what's the value that's being created? We go down a really really really harsh path of what would a customer pay for. And if you're really really tough about what a customer would pay for, quite often in finance functions you find that a customer would actually pay for maybe less than 1% of what people do. And you can start saying, well, how could we take away that bit of non-value add? Would that be better for a customer, would they really pay for? And you can start creating these conversations. But I think the key characteristic is don't prescribe, go in and break down any dynamics that might be um, stopping people from speaking up and and um contributing. Um engage people, allow them to safely criticize what the situation is today and to be able to say what's important or they think is important about moving forwards in terms of what good could be. Allow them to dream a little bit, say what would it look like if it was absolutely perfect and then maybe scale back to something that is is doable. Um team the teams are super powerful.

Speaker 4:

Um, I had a challenge.

Speaker 4:

I I was working with a client in scotland many over a decade ago and um, they were in the in the business of insurance and financial asset management and they had a big issue where, for years, the actuarial accountants used really, really complex models that needed to be updated and they had like a data farm and these models were just falling out, thinking it'd been an issue for years and the smarts had been trying to, the seniors had been trying to work out how to solve this and we said let's just do a problem solve and the resistance from the leadership was no, the junior people aren't smart enough to work this out.

Speaker 4:

We got a bunch of junior people from the IT people and from the actuarial team in a room together brown paper, post-it notes what doesn't work, and they were close enough to the issue to know what doesn't work and we solved the problem within two hours. It was years old and we solved it in two hours. Engage your people. There will be a mine of information, but just take them on that journey where it's safe to be critiquing what goes today.

Speaker 2:

I think there's two. I think there's a piece I would just ask yourself is is is there satisfaction with the current way of working Because they don't know that it's not right, right? Or because they can't see a potential solution Right, can't see a potential solution right? And once you've figured that out, then you've kind of got a route to go down. Because if they don't know that how they're working is not normal, then you need to try and surface that in normality. And I bet you in your team there's a couple of people that have worked other places and know this is not normal, but they've almost been indoctrinated by the team as they came in and they didn't want to stir anything up. So you've probably got a couple of people in your team that feel the same way as you. But because of the history, maybe it hasn't been heard, maybe they didn't feel comfortable enough to say it. So you kind of need to do your one-to-ones and get around each individual and figure out who actually knows you've got a problem and who doesn't. Now and then you've got to decide how you educate. Now, one thing that a lot of people don't leverage is their peer networks. So it might be that you've worked you as a CFO, have worked at a place that had a really good purchase order process, right, perhaps you could shoulder tap somebody if they're not in a competitive industry and say could I just send one of my AP guys over to you, spend a day understanding how you do purchasing and kind of get them to bring back and present the differences between that old place's way of working yours, because then it's them taking ownership, not you telling people how it could be done. Another way to do this is to ask them to do some research. So can you go on out and have a look at some AP solutions? We've got obviously a great base here, guys. We've spent a lot, but perhaps we don't quite know how best practice looks now in the AP world. Can you go out and have a look at some APs? Just almost, they need a bit of inspiration.

Speaker 2:

And the third thing is to give them something that they can't achieve unless they change. Right, give them a goal, um, and say right, this is where I need you to get to guys, what would stop you? And then again it's creating, as neil said, that dissatisfaction with the way things are working and kind of makes them start to ask questions. So I think those would be the three things I would start with in terms of from a technical perspective, how do I start making progress right? So, once you've created a dissatisfaction and an interest in changing things, or a reason for changing things, and you know, anything you can give them that has time limited and make your sense of urgency is really important. We need to be able to deliver this to the business, or you know we need this for this reason is really good.

Speaker 2:

But with there is a 10, there's something to consider is that perhaps you know where you want to end up. You know, moving in this instance, to a bigger version of Sage, intact or 200 or something, depending on where you're going Is there a middle ground? So could you put in, for instance, a because you mentioned POs an AP solution that works with both H50 but can also migrate up to a bigger platform, because then you're not doing an entire system change, you're making a small change but you're preserving the value because it's useful, moving forwards. So there are some smaller steps that you can take if you're getting a huge amount of resistance. But, to be honest, I think maybe just creating that awareness, as Nila said. Think maybe just creating that awareness, as neil has said, and about how things could be different, might actually help you move things forward.

Speaker 2:

So, guys, we are rapidly at the end of our time together, um, and I'm sure um, neil and I could chat about these scenarios for a? Um, a very long time, but I genuinely hope this has prompted some thoughts and some feelings, and perhaps some. Yeah, I've been there, this is what I've done, and I think, with all of these things, is that there's nothing better than an actual real life scenario to talk through in order to help others find answers to their own scenarios. So, if you have a question, a scenario, a situation you know that you think it'd be interesting to get our perspective on, I'd love to hear from you. I put in my email address or, of course, you can send me a direct mail on LinkedIn. We're going to be doing this on a fairly regular basis. So, looking, I'd love to get your thoughts and scenarios and I'll try and keep them, try and give you answers in a fairly short time frame so that at least you're getting something you can move ahead with. So thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2:

You know, the next Financial Transformation Live I will be doing is planning out your next finance implementation. As we said on the first piece, is that you know it can be very easy, if you don't plan well, to end up in chaos. Right and uh, organized chaos is acceptable. Unorganized chaos is not. So, um, thinking through how you plan before you even start your implementation will avoid a lot of these scenarios that we're dealing with. So if you're interested in that, please join us on the next financial transformationformation Live and, yeah, looking forward to getting your questions and queries for our next session of finance troubleshooters.

Speaker 2:

For those of you that are looking and thinking about your next financial transformation project, I've got a few resources for you.

Speaker 2:

We actually do have a quiz, so, say, we're lucky enough, with Sage, to have a range of solutions from small through to enterprise, and so we've created a really quick questionnaire to help you figure out which is the right one for you.

Speaker 2:

For those of you that want to know how we approach implementations, whether for inspiration or other reasons, we do actually have some new content on our website about how we implement and the process that we go through, and, of course, there is nothing better than learning from success, so we have a whole suite of customer interviews on our website now, um and they the list is rapidly growing because our team and I hope it won't sound like boasting are awesome and do a really great job and the way we measure that is through customer success stories. So please do go and see those interviews and hopefully you'll get some inspiration, because obviously we talk about challenges on this session, but actually the benefits are worth it. You can make some genuine difference with good, strong financial transformation. So thank you so much. Our contacts and details are on there. Thank you for joining us and we'll hopefully see you next time on the Financial Transformation Live. Take care, guys. Speak to you soon.

Speaker 4:

Bye, bye.

Speaker 3:

Hey Google, what's the best accounting software for my business? Give it a couple of years and I'll bet you she'll be able to answer you pretty accurately. But for now it's still one of the few questions Google can't give you an answer for. But we can Take our free quiz and find out which Sage product is the right fit for your business. Wwwcastsolutionscouk.

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