This episode features an interview with Aneal Vallurupalli, CFO at Airbase,  the only truly comprehensive spend management platform available to small and midsize companies.

Aneal has spent more than five years in executive-level finance running companies such as Mattermost and Mapbox. He received his Bachelor of Science in Finance from Santa Clara University and is a member of the Forbes Finance Council.

On this episode, Aneal addresses the impact that the pandemic had on the finance world, the importance of holistic data in finance, as well as how the current role of the CFO is changing.

Quotes

*“The really awesome part that I love, and something that I've kind of just embraced... is you know, we've all worked at businesses where we end up needing to build the support functions, FP&A, accounting, capital markets, stock administration, all these things for a company for which we may not be the ideal customer or the product for which the company builds. Well, at Airbase, we are fortunate enough to be a part of a business where we do have input into the product that's being built because we are the number one users. We are the groups that you're selling to at other businesses. And so that has been probably one of my biggest joys of being here.”

*“A few things changed right when the pandemic hit. Number one, you saw a big shift in the financial markets. You saw a big shift in terms of folks trying to understand, 'Is this here to stay? How long is this thing here to stay? Do we need to reconsider our operating plans that we had put in place?' Keep in mind, I think COVID hit around the March timeframe, right in 2020. Right around March, the majority of companies are already done with their annual planning and into their Q1. So, having to replan and retune their model and ultimately their plan for the year, many companies did that. And I don't claim to be an expert as a CFO, but I do claim to have really good people around me that I've seen a lot, that I can call upon, and that was one consistent thing that was occurring across my network was folks were double-clicking on the models that they had built on the assumptions that they had made for growth, for burn, and ensuring that the company could downside protect itself.”

*“Do I have conviction that being data-driven is a good investment for a company? I do have conviction about that. I think that there's a lot of merit to it. Because I think what it instills is the idea that from an early stage of a company you start paying attention to the metrics that drive success for your company. And in the long run, that means that you're able to build a higher predictability around your business. The managers around the company are paying attention to that data consistently and making decisions off of it. So that last part there is the most important piece.”

*“I think that the first thing finance needs to accept is the idea that they can be that agent of change, that catalyst for change at a business... And so I think one of the biggest things that finance leaders need to have conviction about is that they can help the company get to a better place when it comes to being data-driven. And it's not just a finance issue. Everyone else around the company is feeling it, but finance is in a unique position to actually steward that change and be a catalyst for it. And I think that once you accept that, then we become truly a strategic partner to the rest of the business in ways that a sales leader or a marketing leader, our go to market leader, a product leader will embrace finance versus just being the budget stewards.”

Time Stamps

*[01:32] Why Aneal got into finance

*[03:19] How the role of the CFO is changing

*[05:04] Operations at Airbase

*[08:34] Segment: Cash Crossroads

*[11:20] Adjusting business for the pandemic

*[14:58] Segment: The Playbook

*[17:25] The importance of holistic data in finance

*[20:04] Segment: Report From the Future

*[22:18] CFOs are agents of change for the future

*[26:19] Segment: Quick Hits

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Aneal on LinkedIn

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This episode features an interview with Maarika Paul, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Operations Officer at Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ), one of North America’s leading long-term institutional investors, with net assets totalling CA$365.5 billion and investments in more than 75 countries. They manage funds primarily for public and parapublic pension and insurance plans.

Maarika is a Fellow Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Business Valuator with more than 30 years of experience in financial management. She began her career at audit and tax services firm KPMG, where she worked for 10 years. She then worked at BCE from 1994 to 2011, where her responsibilities included performance evaluation of BCE subsidiaries, financial planning, mergers and acquisitions and investor relations. Maarika was also Senior Vice-President, Corporate Communications and, subsequently, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Services. She is a member of CDPQ’s Executive Committee and of the Board of Directors of Ivanhoé Cambridge, the institution’s global real estate subsidiary and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from McGill University.

On this episode, Maarika addresses overcoming adversity as a woman in finance, deploying new investment strategies for CDPQ with net assets totalling over CA$365.5 billion, and discusses the implementation of AI and augmentation for financial analyses in the future.

Quotes

*“When I was young, I was a really shy person. Going out, and like most people, you know, if you want, you need to go out and talk in front of an audience, et cetera, that was really tough. And so I always had to push myself along the way, and I think it's particularly true for a lot of women in roles where they kind of go, you know, I'll just kind of keep on the sidelines and be a little bit quiet. You have to push yourself out there. So was that a personal challenge for me? Yes. I think I've kind of got over that, I actually enjoy doing sessions like this with you and sharing experiences and so on. But that I think was a personal challenge for me. Just pushing myself to be more out there.”

*”People need to know what their roles are, to be clear about what their roles are, to understand how they contribute to the overall organization. And that means being able to communicate regularly on what our goals are, how we're advancing on them and how their part fits into that. And that allows our people to feel valued, to feel recognized. And, that's a big part of what drives folks. And for people who manage others, it's also taking the time to understand what drives everybody. Because what drives you, Daniel, may not be what drives me. I may give you a huge raise, but that's not really what you're looking for. I mean, you'll take it. You won't say no, but you may actually want different recognition and other people are the total opposite. So it's really understanding, having that personal interaction with people, I think that's really important for us, for example, as well, it's being able to ensure alignment and closeness around our offices globally. That was one of our big challenges.”

Time Stamps

*[02:53] Maarika’s path into finance

*[06:56] Unforeseen obstacles in Maarika’s career

*[09:53] Segment: Cash Crossroads

*[13:31] Deploying new strategies when investing

*[19:53] A CFO’s thoughts on inflation

*[21:27] New tech and automation in financial reporting

*[24:40] Segment: The Playbook

*[30:41] Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) in financial analysis

*[38:28] Segment: The Report from the Future

*[43:52] Implementing a Chief Liquidity Officer?

*[45:02] Maarika on AI replacing people in the future

*[47:10] Viewing competitor CFOs as industry peers

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Maarika on LinkedIn

CDPQ Website

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Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Kevin Permenter, Research Director at IDC, the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.

Kevin has over 20 years of experience in finance. As Research Director, Kevin is in charge of providing insights and analysis across Fintech market segments including accounting, revenue management, treasury and enterprise payment management, and more. Prior to joining IDC, he consulted with Fortune 500 companies on strategic planning, market analysis and technology evaluation among other topics.

On this episode, Kevin discusses improving the efficiency of data management, getting actionable insights at near real time, and building resiliency of your business.

Quotes

*”The office of the CFO now, their main job is moved away from adding a half a point of profitability here or shaving off a half a head count here, you know, they've moved away from those sort of really speeds and feeds or tactical goals. And the bigger goal now is resiliency.”

*“I need to be able to move this company and protect the people in it, protecting my shareholders, protecting my customers. I want to protect these constituencies, and the way I'm able to do that is by moving fast. And the only way to do that is to manage the data such that you're getting actionable insights at speed.”

*”What's been happening within data management is a realization that most of your business problems come down to data management. It's either the fact that we're not getting data into the financial operations space in an efficient manner, or the system itself is not efficient.”

*“The companies that have invested in the infrastructure to efficiently manage their data, those are the ones that are agile. Those are the ones that have shortened the time between a business event and a decision so that the CFO, the board, now they have that rock solid information that they need, even across a very complex business environment to make the decisions. They’re the ones that ultimately have an advantage in these uncertain times.”

*“You can have a situation where the treasurer is looking at their dashboard. And they're seeing a ticker go by with all the relevant market information. And that's coming in from a marketplace provider via an API. He's also looking at his bank accounts and those are coming in from the 10, 15, 20, 30, 100 different bank accounts via APIs. So he's got all this information. He’s sitting at the head of this river of information and the plumbing bringing all that information to him are the APIs. So what we're finding is that companies that are working to efficiently move data quickly through the process from transaction to decision, or from transaction to insight, and then insight to decision, the ones that are working to build the plumbing, to build the infrastructure, are the ones that are learning to thrive in this market. And that plumbing, that infrastructure, is oftentimes built upon various APIs.”

Time Stamps

[6:12] About the role of Research Analyst

[10:59] The convergence of financial operations

[16:16] Cash Crossroads

[24:52] Using APIs to streamline operations

[27:39] The Playbook

[34:00] How to tackle uncertainty

[37:49] How to prioritize investment

[41:22] Report from the Future

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn

Follow Kevin on Twitter

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Follow Daniel on Twitter

This is a special episode featuring an interview with Thomas Gavaghan, the Vice President of Global Pre-Sales at Kyriba. 

Tom is a solutions architect. He has multi-billion-dollar companies relying on his guidance so they can achieve their KPIs. Tom has helped more than 12,000 clients identify, target and solve for financial technology challenges. So they can get better visibility on their cash flow and achieve their goals. 

On this episode, Tom and host Daniel Shaffer discuss two key topics: Payments and Visibility. Together, they look back at what previous guests have said about the topics, including Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, Laurie Krebs, SVP and CFO at Red Hat, Danielle Murcray, CFO at AttackIQ, and Benjamin Seal, VP of Treasury Services at Cenveo.

Quotes

*“When you think about a puzzle, you think about a jigsaw puzzle. What do you have? You have a box with a picture on it. You have the pieces inside of it. And your goal was to make the pieces match the picture. One of the things I think is different in financial technology and in our environment, in our space which we're in, we don't know what that picture is. We need to understand first, what does that picture look like? What's the landscape of an organization look like? We have the pieces and we have so many of them, but we have to then figure out how to put them together to match what the customers are ultimately looking to do.”

*”Size of a company does not dictate complexity. I think sometimes in technology selling business type arrangements, you just equate biggest companies with being the most complicated… Companies of all sizes are naturally international in their supply chain, how they get material or resources, and how they sell their product. And with that then comes a lot of nuance and a lot of complexity that they have to manage and they have to deal with.”

*”The more touch points I have, the more systems I have in place that are making payments and sending payments to the bank, each outlet Is an opportunity for fraud. It's an opportunity for someone to come in and infiltrate that connection, that system, and do something perhaps nefarious… It doesn't matter if you’re in finance or you're in another part of the organization. Criminals are trying to infiltrate and get access to those systems. And they can do it so easily if you're not careful by putting the payments centrally, managing incentives, singular type technology, or that pursuit will give companies better ability to monitor that flow, monitor those payments, protect their cash, protect their organization, protect the reputation that they have.”

Time Stamps

*[5:36] Understanding the fintech landscape

*[11:18] Company size does not dictate complexity

*[15:55] Controlling the interest rate environment

*[17:24] The benefits and risks of real-time payments

*[26:28] Why relying on the bank for payment security isn’t enough

*[30:10] What is visibility?

*[34:50] Leveraging data for ML and AI

*[39:30] Excel is a tool, not the answer to reporting needs

*[44:06] Justifying investment in new tech through value engineering

*[47:27] Including clients in their own process improvement

*[49:41] The complexities of the consultative process

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn

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Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Benjamin Seal, Vice President of Treasury Services at Cenveo. He is an experienced Treasury Professional with a demonstrated history of process improvement. He’s skilled in Management, Variance Analysis, Financial Analysis, Finance, and Accounting.  

In this episode we delve into how Benjamin uses digital approaches within treasury to become a strategic business partner across an organization at all levels - being able to stay forward focused at ensuring Cenveo has the capital needed to manage day to day operations. Benjamin discusses his digital first vision that embraces technology to cut down on work time and elevate efficiency, reliability and flexibility. We learn how Cenevo’s innovative approach has optimized enterprise liquidity through a digital transformation of their treasury solutions and practices, allowing them to make small and meaningful adjustments on a regular basis and gather input from teams more quickly, effectively, and with cost savings.

Quotes

*“Mike Tyson always said everybody had a plan until they get punched in the face. And the same concept applies to business as well. Every business has a plan until something goes awry, which is exactly what COVID has shown us as treasuries. This is why treasury is a key strategic business partner. We partner with individuals throughout the company, from the operations, to the purchasing department, to shared services, to even then down that lower level plant level, to stay forward focusing, ensuring that the company has the capital it needs to manage the day-to-day operations. You know, the thing I like to say is without treasury? It would be similar to walking in the woods at night without a flashlight. You might get there, but it's going to take a lot more.”

*“We're constantly looking. We're looking at the past. We're looking at the future. I mean, you know, during the pandemic, everything changed for us. We didn't know if some of our customers were going to continue their sales or when those sales were actually going to come back into the company. So we were kind of consistently reforecast and forecasting. So, one of the big things we had done was we embraced technology as a whole, which allows us to continually adapt. We have anywhere from three to four models at any point in time going in, which we're going to continue to do, because you just don't know if another COVID-19 is going to hit or if some other impact of the business is going to be right around the corner.”

*“What I would recommend to the next generation of finance leaders is to just stay up to date on the technology because it's ever changing and you need to embrace that. And not only becoming innovators, you know, always challenge the norm and you can do that now. Constantly look into your company and avoid the phrases of “it's always been done that way,” or “don't fix something that's not broken.” Constantly question, constantly look for those solutions for the question that no one has asked yet, because eventually they're going to. And, if you have that solution already, that's going to put you one step above.”

Time Stamps

*[4:37] Opportunities and Flexibility in Treasury

*[5 :27] Treasury is a Key Strategic Business Partner

*[7:25] Wide Focus on Past, Present, and Future to Learn and Grow 

*[9:00] Kyriba is a lot More than Just Cash Forecasting

*[15:22] Time Saving Means More Money

*[19:15] Risk Management

*[21:30] Recognizing and Addressing Fraud

*[22:40] Focusing on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

*[27:36] Recommendations for Next Generation of Finance Leaders

*[28:56] AI as a Partner to Treasury and Finance Leaders

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Benjamin Seal LinkedIn

Cenveo on LinkedIn

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Danielle Murcray, CFO at AttackIQ, your expert on real-time, data-driven visibility into the effectiveness of your security program.

Danielle has spent more than 20 years in executive-level finance, running companies under industry titans like Palo Alto Networks, McAfee and Cisco. She received her bachelor of science in accounting from Central Washington University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

On this episode, Danielle addresses building relationships with CEOs, tackling cybersecurity and fraud, as well as assessing and managing risk as a CFO in a pandemic world.

Quotes

*“Very few people want to go back to the office full time, if, and when the pandemic is over. I think that is something that HR leaders and CFOs really need to understand and consider. For me specifically, I spend a significant amount of my time focused on employee engagement and how to keep our employees feeling connected now that we are fully remote in the US, we must have a continuous communication loop. We must collaborate as a team as often as we can. I will tell you that if this pandemic has taught me anything, it's that companies need to find creative ways to keep employees motivated and that over-communication and collaboration have become extremely important to ensure employees still feel like they are part of a team.”

*“I'm a firm believer that a quality risk management program should be intertwined with organizational strategy, which puts it right up into the CFO's alley. I also believe that the most important thing to remember is that when you're designing a quality risk management program, you can never manage out all risks. And I think you have to accept that at the outset. So instead, you want to use the program to determine which risks are worth taking to achieve your organization's goals and objectives.”

*“Being data-driven means to me that strategic decisions are based on data and interpretation of that data. So, it needs to be timely, accurate, clean and unbiased. Most importantly, it has to be trustworthy data. For me, particularly, it's also about building tools, building abilities within all employees and particularly within the finance team. I've used this word a few times throughout our discussion today, which is really building a culture that acts on data … I really believe that a data-driven culture enables companies to examine and organize their data with the goal of making better informed decisions, which is the point of data at the end.”

*“The pandemic has completely shifted the role of the CFO and has really put the CFO front and center. And to me, that leap for CFOs or future finance leaders really must be leadership abilities and the ability to build relationships. I think we can all agree that the relationship between the CEO and CFO has always been one that's based on trust and collaboration and a shared view of the goals and objectives. If that relationship isn't tight then it's going to spell trouble for the company. That relationship obviously remains important, but in order to be successful, the CFO really has to take advantage of the expanded strategic importance of the role and start building relationships, or continue to build relationships with other leadership within the company. It's more imperative than ever before and partnering with those leaders and focusing on broader strategic opportunities and exerting that influence when you build those relationships will really allow for the CFO to help the company capitalize on opportunities and most importantly create value. That is what will separate a good CFO from a great one.”

Time Stamps

*[1:24] Danielle Murcray's ‘calling story’

*[7:54] AttackIQ helping companies in the market

*[9:06] Cash Crossroads

*[10:43] Impact and challenges of the pandemic

*[15:52] Learnings from the pandemic

*[24:37] The Playbook

*[25:06] Risk management as a CFO

*[30:49] Addressing cybersecurity and fraud

*[35:53] What it means to be data driven

*[41:45] Capital forecasting for 2022

*[43:32] Report from the Future

*[50:26] Quick Hits

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Danielle on LinkedIn

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Laurie Krebs, CFO at Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, which was acquired by IBM in 2018 for $34B.

Laurie has spent 35 years in finance, serving in leadership roles for companies like KPMG, Nortel and Cree. While her specialty has been tax, Laurie’s focus is also how to empower people. And it’s her work on team building, D&I and retention that has helped support high-performance individuals drive the impressive growth of billion-dollar companies.

On this episode, Laurie discusses supporting other women in finance, developing a business continuity plan, and working to lead the world in the way of the hybrid cloud.

Quotes

*“In the last few years, the role of the CFO itself has shifted. We're now seen as an even more strategic role than we were a decade ago. We're evolving as a crucial part of helping organizations validate and execute our strategy, but at the same time, we're often seen as one of the first lines of defense in risk management.”

*“Data really helps propel companies forward and we can't live in a world without it today. It's how we track things. It’s how we see what's going off the rails. The more we can dive into the data, the more we understand the problem we’re trying to solve.”

*“It's also helpful to provide employees with highlighting the victory lap when things are working. It's always important to recognize success. As long as you don't get too complacent with it, that's where you get in trouble.”

*“I think one of the other interesting things on technology that we have learned over and over again is to make sure you put the processes in first that drive the result you want from the tool. So in other words, if you just put a tool in place without making sure you have the right processes, the right controls in place, um, then you might as well not put in the tools. So you always have to take the time and make sure that your own internal processes, education system, change management is all aligned to this wonderful tool that you're going to roll out. Otherwise it's not going to be successful.”

Time Stamps

*[0:28] Introducing Laurie Krebs, CFO at Red Hat

*[6:47] Red Hat’s journey to the hybrid cloud

*[8:43] Diversity initiatives

*[9:50] Starting the Women in Finance group

*[13:25] Cash Crossroads

*[20:53] Lessons learned from the pandemic

*[24:33] Considering a tech stack

*[26:03] The Playbook

*[33:12] Report from the Future

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Laurie on LinkedIn

Follow Laurie on Twitter

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council.  The FPC was birthed by the Federal Reserve as an independent, inclusive and equitable governance framework to speed up the nation’s payment system to facilitate the safe, secure transfer of funds in near real time.   

Reed is leading the first cross-industry payments trade.  He is responsible for managing daily operations, working with the board and membership to execute on the FPC's strategic plan, and communicating with their stakeholders.  Prior to the U.S. Faster Payments Council, he served as Walmart’s Senior Director of Global Treasury.

On this episode, Reed talks about facilitating seamless transactions across a network of systems, exceeding user expectations of instant transactions, and protecting against fraud or inadvertent payments.

Quotes

*“We all want payments to be like they are when we do an Uber.  And I think to the extent you can create this flow where the payment is part of an experience.  It's one click on a button and then you get an acknowledgement back immediately that says you're paid and you're good to go, which is what you want. You want to know that the bill has been paid.”

*“We are already starting to see the tipping point for certain use cases.  The big one that comes to mind is disbursements. So payroll, gig economy, government payments, things like that.  That's probably the lowest hanging fruit and folks are moving aggressively towards using these networks to facilitate those types of payments.  And then I think further down the road, it’s going to be things that are more mass market.“ 

*”I think if we've learned anything over the last couple of years, it's that the changes that we've experienced were not really a change in the direction that things were going.  It was an acceleration of trends that were already in place.  So you saw an acceleration of people moving all kinds of different activities to being remote and being digital that used to be in person and be physical.  And payments have not been an exception to that. In fact, I'd say it's been one of the leading things affected by it.”

Time Stamps

4:43 Navigating new payment systems 

6:41 Cash Crossroads: Navigating challenges in the payment ecosystem

13:26 Automating payments

14:38 Introducing new payment networks

15:46 Utilizing RFP

17:20 The appeal of faster payments

18:30 The advent of FedNow

19:30 The Playbook

23:37 Understanding different kinds of fraud

25:49 Preventing inadvertent payments

29:57 Report from the Future

33:58 Building the payment into the experience

35:01 Adopting faster payments, phasing out checks

45:12 The future of faster payments

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with Reed on LinkedIn

Check out FasteryPaymentsCouncil.org

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Find Bob on LinkedIn

This episode features highlights from our first ten episodes focusing on the importance of data.  We hear from Ann Dennison, CFO of Nasdaq, Jaye Connolly-Labelle, Chairman and CEO of RippleNami, Hamza Benamar, CFO of Kyriba, and more.  Together, they bring you the most relevant insights to help you unlock the power of data in your own organization’s finance department.

Quotes

“Finance professionals need to spend less time collecting data. They're valued more for how they can act on data than simply their ability to play scorekeeper. The types of people who are becoming CFOs now are those with more of a strategic mindset and less of a score keeping mindset.” - Eric Ball, Co-Founder and General Partner of Impact Capital Ventures

“There’s a lot of power in sitting on tons of data at the corporate level.  How can we harness that power to help provide information to the business?” - Ann Dennison, CFO of Nasdaq

“Data on a spreadsheet is meaningless.  Data in a real-time dashboard is powerful.  I can get an alert if there’s ever anything wrong so that I’m in the know.  You have to have your finger on the pulse and that is data-driven.” - Jaye Connolly-Labelle, Chairman and CEO of RippleNami

Time Stamps

[2:12] Michael Dinkins, Dinkins Financial, on better data and decision making

[3:52] Jennifer Ceran, Smartsheet, on new fintech solutions

[4:22] Eric Ball, Impact Capital Ventures, on CFOs as a strategic player

[5:30] Jaye Connolly-Labelle, RippleNami, on the importance of real-time data

[7:11] Katherine Edenbach, Emburse, on driving strategy

[7:52] Niklas Bergentoft, Deloitte & Touche, on the liquidity ecosystem

[9:00] Wolfgang Koester, Kyriba, on being data-driven

[10:26] Hamza Benamar, Kyriba, on using algorithms to help with decision making

[12:14] Ann Dennison, Nasdaq, on harnessing data

[14:05] Ross Tennenbaum, Avalara, on leveraging modern tech

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Links

Connect with:

Eric Ball

Jennifer Ceran

Michael Dinkins

Jaye Connolly-Labelle

Niklas Bergentoft

Katherine Edenbach

Wolfgang Koester

Ann Dennison

Hamza Benamar

Ross Tennenbaum

This episode features an interview with Enrique Calderon, former Assistant Treasurer at Fluor, a global engineering construction company with a revenue of $15.7B in 2020 and ranked 181 among the Fortune 500. 

Enrique has spent an impressive 45 years in Treasury.  Prior to his 14 years as Assistant Treasurer at Fluor, Enrique spent 29 years working for AT&T or its divested companies, where he took on an assignment in a joint venture with Telefonica in Spain and became regional treasurer for Latin America and later for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  

On this episode, Enrique talks about what it was like adopting the Euro at a massive organization, how important it is to understand liquidity whether or not your company is flush with cash, and shares some valuable advice on getting promoted.

Quotes

“When the treasurer was a man, we used to say cash is king. And when the treasurer was a woman, we used to say cash is queen.  But cash is the most important thing that you can have in a corporation.  Even better than profits at times, you have to make sure that you have cash flow and that you can meet your needs.”

Time Stamps

*[10:35] Tips on getting promoted

*[15:46] Growing diversity in Corporate America

*[21:45] Introducing the Euro in a massive organization

*[23:56] Look for ways you can reuse skills from previous positions

*[26:27] Why even healtthy companies should understand cash flow

Sponsor

The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com

Connect with Enrique on LinkedIn

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Connect with Bob on LinkedIn