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542. Financial Foundations for Scale: How Clarity Fuels Confident Growth · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the daily influence where our mission is to deliver a daily dose of positive influence that can uplift you personally or be shared within your sphere of influence.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: While not every episode may directly apply to your unique circumstances, we strive to provide insights and inspiration relevant to most people's daily, weekly, and monthly lives.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether you are tuning in during the morning, noon or night, the daily influence is here for you.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, share, and embrace the power of influence in your life.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody brings me here with the I team series and your daily influence and today I am again going to be working with Brandon Cohen as he talks to me about another common issue that we face in our organization and we are going to be discussing the smart strategies that go into
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: dealing with the challenges that growing businesses face many of you may resonate with this and that is how do we align finance and accounting with the growth.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: the growing and the scaling process.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are two very different processes that you've heard us talk about here at the iM team series that we work on all the time at iA.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to focus and highlight some of the work we've done for our client.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an amazingly forward thinking company that is poised for amazing expansion and
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not really struggling.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just want better clarity and understanding the pace of their financial systems and how can we keep up with them and not get overwhelmed with the cost of keeping up with them.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while there was nothing broken, their leadership felt like they needed better visibility, better responsiveness, so they can make more confident decisions in a more real-time environment.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That includes tactical and strategic decisions.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to hear how our strategic and tactical finance teams help stabilize that foundation for them, improve their communications and implement responsive, scalable,
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: and growth worthy structure that supports a faster and smarter decision making environment.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And from improvement alignment to creating financial feedback loops that actually fuel growth and lean into and prepare for scaling.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a conversation that regardless of if you're in growth motor scale mode that you should really hear and listen to.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I hope you enjoy Brandon and my conversation
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: and we look forward to seeing you again soon.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's discuss one of our clients who came to us with challenges in the areas of finance and accounting.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: What was not working in their financial system when we first engaged with that?
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this particular client is a SaaS and that is a type of software software as a service and
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: They provide a service into the hospitality industry and other industries that have widely distributed labor forces.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the struggle they were adding is multi-fold.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were having trouble reconciling and growing and scaling their tactical accounting, keeping up with
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the fluidity of deploying SAS out to their client base.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then past that, they were struggling with collecting that information and turning it into viable financial data that they could use to strategize and create more tactics that would lean into further growth or scaling opportunities that they would have as they continued to evolve.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: as a SAS and grab more opportunities in their areas of influence.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Were there specific pain points like reporting reconciliation or visibility that needed to be addressed as well?
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all of them.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they were struggling with.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't that they couldn't do those things.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was, they couldn't do those things timely.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they were struggling with timely reconciliations, timely delivery of financial data.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens in a fast moving business, especially one that is on the verge of growing, going from growth to scaling is if you can't make quick decisions, you can't take advantage of opportunity.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't provide information that might be needed to your partners, your vendors, your finances to
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: get decisions so that you can make those opportunities and turn them into something valuable for you that you can scale with.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what steps did we take to stabilize or enhance their counting function?
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the first thing we did was understand what their needs are and what the gaps were in their systems.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: We already knew the systems.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They used systems that we were familiar with.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: We wrote a plan that was very structured and it was on a six week life cycle.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So each tactical period had very specific or smart goals and objectives that we had to get through.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the first was understand the gaps, remediate the gaps.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second was start performing at the speed that they needed tactically
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: which allowed us to then start performing at the speed financially or in review and relaying that financial information.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the third was, how do we communicate that better?
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not just from the accounting and finance departments, but how is that transitioned to the operations people and the executives that need to make decisions in a way that's very efficient
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we were able to do that in a three tiered or a three cycle way successfully.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how did our work help improve decision making or planning for leadership team?
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what it's done is it's put relevant information into their hands in a timely way.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So not only is it specific and measurable,
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is making the things that they need to do attainable and providing clarity on what's real and what's not real because we are putting information into their hands in a timely way.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what Smart does.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not always in the smart order SMART, but it's always smart.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always working together and that's what we've been able to do is bring them timely information so that they can be smart communicators and make smart decisions.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what is different now in how they handle their finances and how does that show up in their day-to-day operations?
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the difference is they get it faster and it's accurate and it's relevant.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are able to turn that into clarity so that they can make faster decisions when they're bored or they're executive team meets.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have accurate up-to-date, timely data.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: that allows them to take advantage of every opportunity, which has worked for them because recently they have been able to close on a very large contract that without this data and without this transition to a smart communication and a smart management structure, they would have never been able to take advantage of and close that deal in the way that they were able to now.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: That wraps up our discussion on finance.