Ep. 299: Razzak Jallow - The Impact of Technology on Finance Leadership and Transformation
Welcome to Count Me In. In today's episode, we're thrilled to have Razzak Jallow with us to explore the exciting world of finance transformation. With a unique career journey from tech and finance to CFO at FloQast, Razzak shares valuable insights into how modern CFO roles are evolving with changing markets and technology. We dive into the benefits and challenges of financial transformation, what organizations should watch for, and how both large and small businesses can successfully navigate this change. Additionally, Rizoc provides a glimpse into the future of accounting and finance teams as technology continues to advance.
Adam Larson:So tune in for an engaging discussion filled with insights and practical advice for leveraging technology in finance. Well, Razzak, I'm really excited to have you on Count Me In today. And today, we're gonna be talking about a lot about finance transformation and what that looks like, especially from the CFO perspective. But I wanted to take a moment just to kinda start off. You don't have the typical career, getting up to a CFO, and I figure we could start a little bit by you could tell a little bit about your story.
Razzak Jallow:Absolutely, Adam. Thank you for having me here. It's a great podcast, and I've really been excited listening to some of the episodes that you've already done across transformation, accounting and finance. My my career has been a little atypical. I've been in tech and finance for my whole career, including positions like VP and head of finance at Looker, just later exit to Google.
Razzak Jallow:Really felt broad experience across finance, whether that be at at SAS companies or fintech companies or B2C companies, hardware companies. But B2B SAS is where I really found my passion and wanted to invest most of my time. I found FloQast in particular to have a fantastic product and mission, and the customers really loved it in an area that, is really underserved quite often. I met a management team there that I thought had the, amazing passion for making the lives better of of finance and accounting professionals and the forever elevated accountants. So it's been a great, great, great experience here.
Adam Larson:That's awesome, and that's great. I think organizations,
Razzak Jallow:you know, like a full class, like those SaaS type companies need someone with that with your type of experience. And I think that the the ways of the typical path to CFO has shifted greatly, especially with the changing of the markets and how technology is so vastly changing. Absolutely. I think the you know, when you think about the history of CFOs and where they came from, originally, a CFO, you know, go back thirty, forty years ago. It was, you know, you had a very strong operational background and then closing the books was was a % of the role.
Razzak Jallow:And now we're seeing that that language of the business accounting be really valuable across everything. And as business models get more long term and more complex, companies are relying on CFOs more and more to help them chart the strategic waters of, of is this metric I see going up? Is this good or bad? Should I do more or less of it? And that's not as readily apparent in today's business models as they were a long time ago.
Razzak Jallow:And so you've seen CFO backgrounds shift from maybe a banking background to help people raise money to more of the analysis background and understanding the long term business model of the company and the ability to really help push the company across all different functions towards this strategic goal.
Adam Larson:So, you know, as we're looking at the modern CFO and how this that role is changing and financial leadership is changing across the board with all the, the things that have to happen, when we'd say the word financial transformation, what does that mean to you?
Razzak Jallow:I like to take a very broad definition of it. It's reshaping, rethinking, modernizing financial processes to empower companies to really unleash their potential, whether that's employee potential or potential for customers. And a lot of that involves systems, but a lot of that involves people and processes. And you'll find that culture is actually one of the big drivers in that. If the company has a culture that is always wanting to push forward, always wanting to improve, you'll find transformation projects move faster, are more successful, and they're more likely to finish on time and have real value for the company and ultimately for customers than ones that have a culture a little bit more of stagnation or this is how it's always been done.
Adam Larson:Mhmm. How do you think somebody goes from this is how it always been done to the culture that you just described? Because it's not an easy transition and it doesn't happen happen
Razzak Jallow:overnight. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really tough question. I I think the way I see it kind of manifest is a few ways.
Razzak Jallow:One is to have a vision much long much farther out than than six or twelve months. So the challenge we often will have internally is forget where we're at today. Three years from now, what should this look like? And if you can kind of see that end state in mind, then all the pain of trying to get there makes a lot more sense where projects can get stagnated is when it says, well, let's just take this existing thing and make it a little bit better. And then you find that you are pushing this giant boulder uphill to get very little benefit.
Razzak Jallow:And part of that culture is really reliant on leadership, making sure that leaders reward the people willing to take the risks. And by that, I mean that not everything, not every project's going to work out. There's going to be a couple that like, Yeah, this didn't work out. And while that's not good, I think you've got to empower employees to take risks and reward them when they take these risks with their career progression. And so let me, let me dive in a little bit on that.
Razzak Jallow:These projects are really hard. They're cross functional. So you have to be able to, to grab teams and project management and lead cross functional teams to completion on this project. But they're also very complicated. So you have to be able to be going really deep and have a really deep understanding of the business and the processes and where the real value is created in these processes and workflows.
Razzak Jallow:And to do that, that's, that's a really hard skillset. And it's also a lot of pain for people that, Hey, look, I've got a, we got a nine to five job already. I don't want to also take on this transformation project, even though it's really important. And so for the people that are willing to, to rise up to that challenge, they're going to drive more value in the business. And they're also at kind of step a little bit aside from, from the normal check boxes in their career path to go do this project.
Razzak Jallow:And so the ones who are willing to do that and do it well, you've got to make sure in the career path and what you reward in the company's culture is people taking that risk and taking that's on that super hard challenge that that other people don't wanna do.
Adam Larson:All that's, of course, easier said than done because, as you said, it can be very challenging. You know, it is as we're talking about financial transformation and transforming our organizations to be better, you know, using technology better and then making our financial processes and closing better and all those things that we need to do within organizations. Maybe we could talk about some of the benefits, but then also what are some things you like, red flags you should look for as you're looking out? So those are two questions. Like, what are some great benefits that people can have?
Adam Larson:I think you've mentioned some of them already, but then red flags. Because when you're getting into this, it's not it's not just cut and dry because every organization is different.
Razzak Jallow:Yeah. I I look at, I think everyone has different red flags. I mean, there's obviously there's obviously a lot that, that have been discussed in the past. I would say the red flags for me are primarily around when evaluating who's going to lead the process. If that person can't articulate the vision of where this is going in the long term or what the steps are to get there, you know, that there's a high likelihood this process is going to start spinning in circles and it's never going to deliver value.
Razzak Jallow:Second red flag is how long it takes to get to value. You know, when you're doing a massive transformation, it can take a while to get everything you promise. But if you can't start getting value in the first three months, the first six months, and you're looking at like multi year implementations before you see any benefit. One you know, I, I question how likely it is you ever get to that benefit. And I think talking to others who have gone down that path with that that that provider or that vendor and getting their feedback on how long it took them to get value.
Razzak Jallow:If they got everything, our promises is good research to do. Until you lose people along the way, right? So these are projects that I mentioned are highly complex. You need some of your best people that are most detail oriented working on it and working on it passionately and willing to sacrifice to get to this, finish line. And if that finish line, if they're not seeing any benefits six months in, or I like to say three months in, you're going to lose them either lose their, their passion and their desire to work on it or lose them entirely out of your company.
Razzak Jallow:And then the project is going to have a really hard problem. So I look at like time to value as a, I don't know if I'd say red flag, but a very, very important factor in this. And then the third red, the third thing that people should be very mindful of is who can use the software. So if you are taking a process that is primarily driven by a finance professional and you're rolling out a solution for that finance professional, whether it's it's accounting, FP and a pricing, biz ops, payroll, procurement, whatever it is. And you're taking that entirely out of the finance person's hands and giving it to a developer or an it team.
Razzak Jallow:There's high risk that doesn't work. There's high risk that, you know, the, the non finance person doesn't fully understand the reason behind every, the accounting process that we do or every finance process that we do. There's also much less likely to be engagement from the finance team. If the tool is so hard to use that, that it needs a developer to use it and can't be used by the individual. So those are three of the things that really jump out to me that anytime we start looking at that, say, hey.
Razzak Jallow:Hey. I this this sounds like this might not work out that well.
Adam Larson:Yeah. Well, and you mentioned, you know, sometimes having to involve developers and keeping that in mind. You know, this transformation that we're talking about doesn't just involve the finance and accounting team. Right? So what does that team look like?
Adam Larson:What does that group look like as we're talking about it for organizations?
Razzak Jallow:Yeah. It's, you know, I'm really glad you, pointed that out because I think what what a lot of one mistake or one thing people don't realize going into financial transformation is how much the finance systems and finance processes are are interconnected Whether that is, you know, sales and customer and revenue and billing data, maybe that's working with, your CRM tool, whether it is your your AP and procurement tools that are heavily reliant on how say marketing is interacting with vendors payroll, etcetera. Most of the company processes in finance are actually very business and partner and operational focused. And so a lot of the times this finance transformation is really a whole company transformation in a way, because it's working with those business partners to come up with a collaborative solution that works better for the whole company. And so, you know, that's why I go back to like, who works on these projects is so critical.
Razzak Jallow:You need people that can engage and lead cross functional teams and deliver not just value to finance, but also deliver value to the whole company and other other departments through these fi through these transformation projects.
Adam Larson:Well, and it it also seems like it's a way to break down some of the silos that sometimes we put ourselves in because a lot of times, maybe somebody from finances and talk to the marketing person and they don't have those conversations, but it's a way to kinda break down those walls and see what everybody's doing and see how we all interconnect.
Razzak Jallow:Absolutely. And I think that's why, as you mentioned earlier, more and more companies are turning to their CFOs to lead this project because it does have to have a vision across all functions. You know, whether you're transforming something as simple as how do we get better customer information for billing. And, you know, if you ask the billing team that they'd say, well, I can buy this database that might have the right email address, or right billing address to figure out the headquarter of the customer. I can all populate that and all these things.
Razzak Jallow:And, and that data might already exist in Salesforce, or it might already be captured during during by the AE or this order desk order desk team during the initial sale. And so being able to to see, hey, across the whole company, what's the most efficient way to solve this problem is really important. And silos often you you just create more systems and more things to break than than the comprehensive solution.
Adam Larson:It really does. Well, and I also think about, you know, size of your business definitely matters because, you know, larger organizations probably have more capital, more people to work on a financial transformation. But if you're a small to medium sized business, you know, what what advice would you give to somebody saying, I really wanna dive into this, but I don't know if I have the capital. I don't know if I have the people. You know, I'm I'm afraid to jump in with a SaaS company.
Adam Larson:Like, what advice would you give to them as they're kinda looking at this?
Razzak Jallow:Yes. I do think that when I talk about this being not just a process and not just a people and and then workflow and technology transformation problem, the people are extremely important. And so if you have, you know, a finance leader that knows how to do things that can save a lot of time when you're debating between software process and people. However, a lot of smaller companies don't have that. And so I think the the key question, if you're in an SMB and you're in a very small team of finance professionals and you're debating, do I solve this with, with people or with product, is to understand like what you're buying.
Razzak Jallow:If you're buying software that does most of the work for you and truly automates it. A lot of times, that's a pretty good ROI. If you're buying software because you don't understand how the process works and you just want someone to teach you how to do it, that's going to be a very expensive buy because you're effectively paying an ongoing recurring basis for something that you just need to learn once. And so, you know, obviously experience is very helpful, but that would be the, that would be the metric if you don't have the experience in what you're trying to automate to to measure. Is am I paying for this because it actually automates my problem?
Razzak Jallow:Or am I paying for this because it teaches me how to do it, and then I'm gonna be paying for it every year, and it doesn't automate that much.
Adam Larson:Okay. I like that approach of understanding why and what. I mean, knowing your why is a huge thing. You know, there's the book that everybody's heard about, and Simon Sinek has read those things. You know?
Adam Larson:But knowing your why is more than just knowing your why about what how you're doing in life, but it's also in your organization understanding that why. And I think that's why mission statement and vision are so important and and is really important for the CFO to be part of that conversation.
Razzak Jallow:Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's good that CFOs are still focused on how do we automate, how do we drive our our organization forward, whether that's finance transformation or or touching the entire company's digital transformation. You know, recently there was a study that 73% of CFOs still agree that digitizing more of the finance function is a really high priority. And I use digitizing very broadly in that, description.
Razzak Jallow:But despite a lot of a lot of companies right now looking heavily at their tech stack and seeing what's driving value or what's what's, just a nice to have, they're still seeing a lot of value in investing in more digitization and more automation in their finance tech stack.
Adam Larson:Yeah. It's it's it's hugely important. I mean, the technology is the key to your finance transformation, your digital transformation, and having the right technology. And so whether that's accessing the knowledge of somebody with the organization or maybe getting somebody outside to say, hey. We need help with this.
Adam Larson:And I think that's the biggest I think that's probably a big first step is understanding how much help do you need, especially in that. Like, do you need to bring in a consultant? Do you have or work with a software company to say, hey. What's the best solution for this?
Razzak Jallow:Yeah. And it's great for CFOs to make sure that they're talking to their whole team. There's an I especially say this is true in smaller teams, not just your direct reports. You often have team members that are highly specialized and know their area and their workflow very well. And they can help guide CFOs on which products and solutions actually drive value and which ones are more nice to haves and kind of make things a little easier.
Razzak Jallow:But ultimately if you turned them off, it wouldn't drastically impact their day to day. And so that communication, not just to the CFO direct reports, but with the whole org on where they see value, it can be very helpful as the CFO does have to take that broader perspective across the whole company.
Adam Larson:So you mentioned about there's times where we can get good ROI for our when we, when we choose the right software and it can automate a lot of things, But that's gonna change how our teams look and how it the aspect of our teams because it they might now be able to do the same functions they did every day. And so it is important to have that human element within technology to make sure we're checking on how things are. But what advice would you give to a team who is to a leader who's looking at his team and saying, we're doing all this digital transformation, but it's gonna change the dynamics of my team and their functions every day.
Razzak Jallow:Yeah. I I think, I think for some people, that can be very scary and for other people, it can be very exciting. This is a, this digital transformation, whether it is with, SaaS software, AI based software, rethinking processes is really powerful because it allows accountants to, in my opinion, do more of what they love and less of what they don't love. Less and less manual work and more and more using their vast accounting skills and business knowledge to drive the company forward. I think a lot of people, anytime there's, there's a lot of digital transformation, it's scary for people.
Razzak Jallow:You know, you think about, you know, we, we went from not having calculators to calculators. We went from having calculators to having Excel, went from having Excel to having an ERP. And now there's even new cutting edge, digital transformation products in the office of the CFO. And each time I think it's more exciting. I think I have way more fun spending time on the big problems in accounting and in the business and in finance.
Razzak Jallow:And Excel can automate a lot of that for me than if I had to do that with a pen and paper or with a calculator. And so I think the scary thing is it is new tools, right? So you've got to learn a slightly different way to get some of the things done. But if you look over the last forty years, accounts have proven they're really, really good at adapting the times and really, really good learning new tools. And you know, the, the accounting and finance professionals are better for it and they'll, they'll keep being better for it.
Razzak Jallow:Now, as you, as you think about it as a leadership, what does that mean? I go back to a little bit of what we were talking about earlier. You've got to reward people for learning the new tools for embracing new tools for driving change. I had a conversation with a direct report once that, and this was just Excel, but she was a little scared. Cause she said, Hey, look, you know, like, she was an Excel Excel goddess.
Razzak Jallow:And so she's like, well, you know, I, I built this amazing Excel macro and I think I just like automated away my whole job. Like, am I gonna lose my job? I was like, no, keep, keep doing that everywhere you go. This is great. Like, and that's, that's, that's great, skill progression.
Razzak Jallow:That's like highly valuable to companies. So I think helping people see the ROI of embracing embracing new things and new tools can be really helpful.
Adam Larson:Are there any success stories that you've seen or you've been a part of that you can, you know, just share some of the highlights that, you know, our audience could, to benefit from?
Razzak Jallow:Sure. I think I'll talk about our recent migration to a new FP and a planning tool that was a little different. I'll resist the urge to be self serving and talk more and more about FloQast as that's a huge portion of our, of our really platform of the controller and everything runs through that. But I'll, I'll hop over to FP and a for this one. I think finding the right scope and the right tool was extremely important.
Razzak Jallow:There are dozens of FP and a tools out there. They range everything from great for SMB to great, to large businesses. Some are very self serve some need large dedicated developer teams to get value out of. And so figuring out for us that we wanted something a little more powerful than, a lot of the SMB tools, but also something that the FP and a team could own and run the models. We really didn't want to have to, as I said, go out and be reliant or beholden to an ITQ to, to update our models and scenarios, whatever we wanted.
Razzak Jallow:And then we want something that was pretty enough that our business partners would actually be willing to log into it and use it a little bit as well. And so narrowing those requirements were really powerful and powerful for us. And we are getting a lot of value and engagement, both from FP and a being able to iterate quickly as well as roll up bottoms up forecast from our business partners really well. And so we had to sacrifice other things that, Hey, we're a software company. We didn't need all of the crazy supply chain and logistics that some other FP and a tools did.
Razzak Jallow:So, so really figuring out the right scope and the right tool for us, not the shiniest one, not necessarily the simplest one, but kind of the the just right, porridge for ourselves. Definitely. And I appreciate that that explanation. But, you know, as you were talking, I was just thinking, somebody might be listening to this
Adam Larson:conversation and say, okay. You mentioned FloQast. What is that? So maybe you could talk a little bit what is FloQast, and what do you guys offer for CFOs? Because you're a CFO who I'm sure loves to talk to our CFOs and say, hey.
Adam Larson:This is great.
Razzak Jallow:Absolutely. I'm really glad you asked that question. So FloQast is an accounting automation platform. It's built around the platform for the controller. So when you think about, especially mid market and small enterprise companies, almost everything rolls through the controller.
Razzak Jallow:You have FP and A on one side with an FP and A tool, and you've got most of the company, the finance processes within the controllership. And so we started off ten years ago, automating the close and now, and optimizing the close. The close is the one time that the whole company has to come together and agree on numbers and they've got to do it every month. And so everything we see everything in the company either flowing into or flowing out of the close. And recently we've launched our Sox compliance product.
Razzak Jallow:When you think about, as you're going through IPO, you're eventually gonna have to be Sox compliant and all of the processes and Sox compliant flow out of the close. And so we're building this platform around the office of the controller. We've done it in the past through workflows. And the last couple of years, we've been rolling out a lot of AI automation as well to help automate those workflows and build an AI platform that people can build around. What we hear from our customers is that they, they love the ease of use.
Razzak Jallow:They love the quick time to value and they love how the AI we've rolled out is automating those workflows, but allowing the account still be in control of everything going on and just making their lives easier and faster so they can spend more time on operations. And for a CFO, I don't need to reiterate how important it is to have a clean and fast close. You want it done early. You want it done right. We massively reduce the time to close.
Razzak Jallow:We massively reduce the likelihood of an error. We massively reduce audit time and we reduce the likelihood that you're going to have to reopen your books later to make an adjustment. And so that's a really powerful finance teams. It's also really powerful for controllers. One of the big things that's out there that I think this audience probably knows pretty well is there's a massive shortage of accountants and CPAs out there.
Razzak Jallow:There's less and less entering the profession every year versus more and more leaving the professional either through retirement or just leaving for, for different professions. And so there is a massive talent gap as regulations, compliance, and business complexity continues to grow at a rapid pace. And so we see it as our job and our mission at FloQast to forever elevate accounting and to fill in that talent gap, because there's way more demand for accountants than there are accountants out there. So it's really important technology to fill the gap, but also technology to make your accountants' lives easier so you can develop and retain them because that's not as easy as when one leaves going and finding a replacement. There's very few out there and the ones that are looking aren't always looking to stay in accounting.
Adam Larson:Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I think what we've been talking about this whole conversation really shows that importance of having the right people in place, especially when you're looking into your finance transformation, whether that financial rotation includes something like a FloQast or some other tool or something like that. You know? It's a super it's super important to have the right people at the table to making sure that you have the the the right stakeholders there to to make sure you're choosing the right best platform for your organization.
Razzak Jallow:Absolutely. And I think that's where we we go back to the prior topic of it's really important to have everyone involved in these transformation decisions. Maybe not everyone's a decision maker, but being heard and highlighting the areas where there's the most value or the least value at ninja contributor level all the way up through CFO can be really helpful in both making the right decisions, but also driving a collaborative culture where everyone can celebrate the transformation win.
Adam Larson:Yeah. Now as we look toward the future, you know, technology's changing at an alarming pace. And, you know, techno technology companies are catching up very, very quickly. You know, what is the what is the future of the accounting and finance team? You said less people are going in, but are you gonna need more people?
Adam Larson:Are we gonna need different type of person going forward? Like, what is that gonna look like?
Razzak Jallow:Yeah. I think, I think that's a great question that a lot of people are wrestling with and even even worried about. We talked a little bit about that, but there's, there's still so many challenges in accounting going forward, both from business model complexity. And we talked about the supply constraints of number of accountants out there, and the talent shortage and the burnout within the accounting profession. Yeah.
Razzak Jallow:And I think that the way things will develop is that accountants will be more and more empowered with this technology. I think the ones, the technology that's going to drive the most value and be most, embraced by the accounting community is technology that can still be owned by the accounting team. And it does not have middlemen preventing them from getting their work done or slowing them down or relying on accountants to explain the intricacies of counting to someone who's not an accountant. And so the future is going to be a continued combination of technology and business acumen that accounts have had and always done. And instead of everything being calculators or everything being Excel or everything being a point and click workflow, there's going to be a whole lot more AI assisted workflows and accounts are going to be elevated from, from their jobs as both preparers and reviewers to reviewers and operational people that can help really drive the business forward.
Razzak Jallow:And so I think this is going to be a golden age to be an accountant going forward. There's not enough of them. Technology's coming to make their lives easier. And I think they are going to be able to do more and more of the things they love, the strategic and operational activities versus the manual turning the crank. So I think it's a really exciting time.
Adam Larson:Mhmm. It really is. Well, Razzak, I really appreciate you coming taking some time out of your busy day to talk with us on this podcast, and I really hope our audiences has enjoyed it as much as I have.
Razzak Jallow:Thank you so much, Adam. I had a great time. I really appreciate you having me here.
Announcer:This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.
