December 30, 2024 • 26 mins
Join us on this exciting episode of the Count Me In Podcast, where Adam Larson sits down with Mike Dion, an expert in FP&A and automation. Mike shares his fascinating journey from finance intern to automation advocate, revealing the transformative power of streamlining processes. Get ready to learn how simple tools like Excel can save hours in your workweek, and discover actionable insights on balancing work-life with smart automation. Whether you're a finance pro or just love a good productivity hack, Mike’s insights are a game-changer. Tune in for practical tips, engaging stories, and a fresh perspective on working smarter, not harder
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam Larson (00:20):
Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson.
And today, we're diving into theworld of FP and a and automation
with our special guest, MikeDion. Mike has an extensive
career in finance spanning fromstart ups to Fortune 100
Companies and brings a wealth ofknowledge about streamlining
finance operations. In thisepisode, Mike shares his journey
into automation sparked bymanaging teams bogged down by
(00:42):
repetitive tasks.
Mike addresses concerns like jobsecurity in the face of
automation and emphasizes thestrategic value you can bring to
your organization by embracingthese technologies. If you're
keen to transform your workdaysand enhance productivity, you
don't wanna miss this episode.Hey, Mike. We're really excited
(01:05):
to have you on the podcast aswe're gonna talk about FPMA and
automation. But I wanted tostart with just talking a little
bit about getting to know you abit more in your journey in FP
and A and what you drew you tofocus on automation.
Mike Dion (01:15):
Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm just so
excited to be here. Justabsolutely love the podcast and
re and really glad to be a partof it. For my FP and A career,
so I've worked in roleseverywhere from brand new
startups all the way to theFortune 100. I started my
career.
The first job I worked was as afinance intern and I've just
kind of steadily moved up fromthere across different
industries and companies andreally just absolutely love the,
(01:38):
especially the businesspartnering side of it. So I've
done everything, you know,consolidations, business,
support, and I just love gettingto sit down with the operators,
help a strategy, help them growtheir business. And that's
actually kind of what led me tothe focus on automation. In one
role at a major telecom companyI worked at, I took over a team
and I was told that this teamevery month end produces 30
(02:01):
individual decks with 30individual excels. So
essentially the team wasspending half of their time
across the entire month, justproducing these repetitive decks
and presentations.
They were the last ones out thedoor every day. They were
working 90 hours a week and itwas just, it was just crazy. So
with that, that was my firstforay because I said, this has
(02:21):
to stop and it was my first timeautomating an entire process end
to end, moving it into adashboard. And then my focus on
automation only doubled ortripled down once I had kids,
and, you know, my my time isstarting to get squeezed on both
ends.
Adam Larson (02:37):
I get that too, with I've got kids as well, and
it seems like you're alwaysjuggling something else. You
have to find a way to do thingsmore simply in a sense.
Mike Dion (02:45):
Yeah. Mhmm.
Adam Larson (02:47):
Yeah. So when, when you're looking at the finance,
the finance team, like you said,a lot of times, they're the
first ones in the last ones out.They're spending so much times
on things, you know, a lot oftimes simple and finance team
don't always go together. How dowe, how do, how can we mesh
those together to make sure,hey, this is super simple,
(03:07):
approachable automation. We canget that stuff done properly.
Mike Dion (03:10):
Absolutely. I I'm I'm seeing everyone get busier. I'm
seeing teams get smaller ascompanies think very creatively
about their SG and A spending.And I'm seeing the strategic
demands on teams get bigger.With that simplicity becomes
kind of an art form that needsto be built into every part of
the process.
I would say complexity doesn'tnecessarily improve things,
(03:34):
especially thinking aboutforecasting simplicity does.
What's great about automation isit sounds really scary. You hear
automation, you start thinking,oh, I need Python AI and all
these things. But automation isjust having a computer do any
task you would have had to doyourself. And there's a lot of
tools, even things built rightinto the software, like Excel
we're using every day that in 10or 15 minutes, you can learn and
(03:58):
shave hours off your Workday.
And that's really what I'mfocused on. Isn't those, you
know, those Python things or AIthat are cool, but about things
that people without a lot oftraining can sit down and do
with stuff already installed ontheir computer, and it's just so
much easier than they think itis.
Adam Larson (04:13):
So do you think it's, is it easy to decide which
tasks are best suited forautomation? Can all the tasks be
suited? Or are there certainthings is there a way to kinda,
choose those?
Mike Dion (04:24):
So I've got a framework that I use. I have 4
categories and for each one, Iassign a score of 1, 2, or 3.
Golf scores. So one is better, 3is worse. And the 4 things I
look at are first, how manypeople need to be involved?
The more people, the harder itwill be to automate a process.
If it's you sitting at your deskrunning a report, you have
(04:44):
complete control. Right? Ifit's, you know, 50 people are
involved in producing adifferent story. The second is
the processes that arerepeatable.
If you're talking aboutautomating your annual budget,
that's a lot less value than amonthly close. Right? So you're
gonna wanna automate the monthlyclose first. Frequency, so not
just, not just the well, thatone was frequency. Sorry.
For repeatable, it's how muchdoes it standardize or change.
(05:06):
Right? Mhmm. Is it fairlyconsistent every time you run
it, or is it kind of an ad hocrequest? I would do ad hoc last,
and I would do repeatable onesfirst.
And then lastly, how many toolsneed to change? You know, is
this something where you need togo ask for an investment and
you're gonna need capital andnew software? Or is it something
again, where you are in control,you can automate using Excel or,
you know, Dapp for software yourcompany already has. And once I
(05:29):
do those four things, I'llusually have a list of 10 or 15
processes I wanna automate. I'llscore all these.
I love numbers, and then I juststart with the lowest score and
work my way down.
Adam Larson (05:41):
How how long does that take? You know, if if
you're let's say let's say youyou you're you're listening to
this podcast. You're like, hey.That sounds really cool. I wanna
score with my team, but we don'thave time to do that.
It seems like how do you balanceI I don't have time to do that,
but yet I wanna make thingsfaster so that we can create
that time. Like, how do you howdo you get there?
Mike Dion (05:58):
You know, it's it's a delicate balance, but I schedule
it once a month with my team andmyself to go through this
process.
Adam Larson (06:04):
Okay.
Mike Dion (06:05):
The thing about automation is when you sell it
to people that there's gonna bea lift now, but I'm gonna save
you time in the future. You haveto make that very tangible. And
this process actually makes itso tangible. People can see the
processes they own and the timethey're spending. And you can
tell them, you know, this is theamount of time we can save you.
So when you have people gothrough that exercise, it is
(06:28):
more work short term, but I'venever seen it not lower
someone's work time in the inthe back end. Right? And it's
about just putting it on thecalendar, making it a critical
part. I have a standing that thefirst meeting we do every single
calendar month, that meeting iswhen we go through
automationless.
Adam Larson (06:45):
Yeah. Well, a lot of times people when people hear
automation, they think, I, youknow, I need to be an engineer.
I need to know coding and allthose things, and it can be very
intimidating. So are there waysto kind of make it less
intimidating?
Mike Dion (06:56):
There absolutely are. I think the the biggest thing I
look for is where can youautomate with tools that you
already have? One of my favoriteautomations for finance people,
which is the last thing peoplewould think I would say is
automating your email. Right? Alot of us are buried under 100
of emails.
We all know how to use outlookand Gmail and the email
filtering in those systems isautomation because the computer
(07:18):
is doing it for you. And you canget, you know, half of your
inbox is automated going tocertain folders. I mean, the
number of emails I get a daythat are just system updates
that I don't even need to lookat is Mhmm. Astounding. That's
automation.
Right? You could think aboutthings like if you're currently
running scenarios for yourleadership to understand the
business, you can build that ina data table in Excel in 5
(07:40):
minutes. There's so much lowhanging fruit of just using
tools you already have. Andthen, you know, if you have the
resources to go be fancy withPython, AI possibilities are
endless, but this is a great wayto just get started. And this
will save the average person.
I'd say, you know, at least 25%of their work week is on things
that you could automate withoutlook and Excel.
Adam Larson (08:03):
I yeah. It it I think some people try to look at
they when they think aboutthings like automation, they
think about the big things. AndI really like how you're
breaking it down. It's like, no.Start with all these simple
things.
And as you learn, you can say,okay, I can maybe tackle the
bigger things as I hit those.
Mike Dion (08:18):
Yeah. My my biggest time savings come from things
like pivot charts, which a lotof people don't use. Yeah. Data
tables for scenario analysis,power query, power pivot. These
are all just already buttons inExcel.
Click a button and you're going.And I put off learning these for
years because power query justsounded scary. And when I
ultimately sat down, you canlearn the fundamentals of power
(08:40):
query in maybe half an hour. AndI've successfully taught entire
teams of people in 30 minutesand gotten them up and running.
And yeah, you can spend hoursand you can learn all of the
bells and whistles, but toreally save the average finance
person's time and the work we'redoing, or even in accounting,
the average person can get allthat benefit in about 30 minutes
of learning.
Adam Larson (09:01):
That's that's crazy. So, you know, when we
were talking before, you hadmentioned you have something
called a 5 minute automationseries, and it sounds really
accessible. It sounds reallycool. Maybe you can give us an
example of what kind of an easyautomation that prevails
professionals might overlook.You've already talked about
email.
Are there other ones that wecan, have an example of?
Mike Dion (09:18):
A big one is scenario and sensitivity analysis. So
I've been planning scenarios,you know, best case, worst case,
middle case, or sensitivity ofif, you know, if our sales
targets come down a little bit,what would that do to the
business? And this is so fast tobuild. If you've already got
your financial models, whichhopefully all of us do, and you
have the drivers in there.Right?
(09:39):
All you're doing is you're justpointing the table to a driver.
You're allowing that driver torun through the model and Excel
will just reiterate all thecalculations for you. A lot of
people that I watch still todayare just typing in the changes,
then screenshotting and puttinga PowerPoint, typing in a
change, screenshotting, puttinga PowerPoint. You can automate
that entire analysis and it it'susing functionality that we all
(09:59):
use on a daily basis. Right.
It's just right there. I can'tthink of someone who hasn't used
what if analysis and it's justkind of one more step on top of
that, That is just running. Whatif analysis multiple times.
Right. And it's veryapproachable for people.
That is approachable. And
Adam Larson (10:17):
why is it, do you think that people make it so
complicated? Make it feel socomplicated.
Mike Dion (10:23):
I think part of it is, I mean, at least I'll speak
for myself. I put it off for solong just because it seemed
scary. You hear these terms likepower query, power pivot. And
the other thing is the peopleyou tend to see using them tend
to be the more systems focusedpeople. The people that I saw
using these systems were ourfinancial systems teams.
(10:45):
They were our, you know, ourproject teams that were doing a
lot of this development work forus. I didn't see just, you know,
analysts or finance managersaround me using it. And it seems
like this really unapproachabletechnology. It seems like
something where you're gonnahave to start coding. And on top
of that, we're all busy.
You know, there, you do have todedicate that time to it. And
(11:07):
you have to schedule that timeand it may make your workday
longer that day. You just haveto know that the benefit is
coming on the back end. And ifyou don't schedule it, and if
you don't understand that thisis an approachable tool with the
right kind of training, youknow, you'll put this off
forever just like I did. I mean,I this was literally years of me
putting this.
Adam Larson (11:28):
Well and I feel like sometimes we we make things
bigger than they are. And then,like you said, you have to
actually schedule it because youhave to actually make time for
things that you deem important.So unless you do that, it's
never gonna happen.
Mike Dion (11:41):
You do. And I I coach analysts on this all the time
that Mhmm. They, you know, like,I'm I'm so busy. I don't have
time to make this processbetter. And then I watch them
spend 8 hours manipulating datato generate a monthly report.
Right? As, like, you could spendthat 8 hours and I promise you
that 8 hours becomes 2. Like, II know watching what you're
doing that 8 hour becomes 2 withpower query. And Yeah. Yes.
(12:04):
You're gonna have to sit downand spend that 8 hours. But then
every month for the rest of theyear or a couple of years,
however long you're in thisrole, that time comes back to
you.
Adam Larson (12:14):
It really does. And and when you've when you've
helped teams implement this, youknow, have you seen a huge
impact on their work lifebalances and help them kind of,
like, don't know they don'tnecessarily have to be the last
ones out every night?
Mike Dion (12:25):
Huge. Yeah. When I when I rolled this out in the
telecom industry, you know, theywere working 90 hours a week
when I took it over. They werethe last ones out. Mhmm.
When I introduced the dashboardsand once we got all of the
executives going straight to thedashboard ecosystem, we were
down to 45 hours a week and wewere the first ones out. It was
absolutely transformative thatwe were literally walking out.
(12:45):
We didn't have any datamanagement. We didn't have to
even send reports because wewere having the dashboards
notify people that they werethere. And we were spending all
of that 45 hours on justsupporting our business partners
on helping them understand theirresults.
So we were adding more valuebecause we were giving them
actionable items to do for thenext month while all of our peer
(13:06):
teams were still building thereports.
Adam Larson (13:10):
Yeah. And that's, I think, the amount of stress and
the amount of burnout that we'reseeing across many industries or
many organizations, I thinklooking at it, taking a step
back and saying, how can I useautomation? It's gotta be the
way to go going forward to besuccessful.
Mike Dion (13:27):
It is because we're we're never going to staff to
make it through a month end or abudget season. Right? We're
never going to have thoseresources. And even in the off
cycle, it's starting to gettighter, both from both from
cost containment also just Imean, accounting has, you know,
shortage of 200 to 300,000professionals right now. So not
only do we not have the abilityto put those resources there, we
(13:50):
don't necessarily even have thetalent to put there.
And that's what we're doing isit's not that it's going to it's
not that it's necessarily alwaysgonna change your job. It's that
it's gonna reduce that lumpinessof what your weeks kind of look
like.
Adam Larson (14:02):
Now what would you say to somebody who says, well,
am I gonna automate myself outof a job?
Mike Dion (14:07):
That is a great point that I spend a lot of time on.
So Yeah. You know, first of all,I always like to point out that
everyone thought Excel woulddestroy the industry. Right?
When we moved from paper ledgersto Excel, everyone thought, you
know, finance and accounting ordebt.
There are 100 of thousands ofmore roles in the industry today
than there were back before wedid that elimination. And, yes,
individual people at the time,there will be impact. So, you
(14:28):
know, don't wanna shy away fromthat. But the industry in
general grows through this. Youadd, you know, compliance
functions, strategic work, allthese things that Excel allowed
us to do.
This is just the next wave ofthat, but all of our professions
are bigger. The second thing,you know, as I already said,
there's a massive talentshortage in accounting. There's
starting to be some signs oftalent shortages in finance,
(14:48):
especially on the reallystrategic work. And then the
other thing is if you don'tautomate somebody else will.
Right?
The people who will not bereplaced by automation, AI are
the ones who are addingstrategic value. So if you're
spending your entire day runningprocesses, somebody at some
point is going to developsoftware that can do some of
(15:09):
this work and companies willstart buying. Right? That's
that's where we're headed. Ifyou're already positioned that
you're the one out theredelivering the strategic value,
you're the one who's going to bea hoops, who's going to be
sticking around.
Adam Larson (15:23):
So, you know, you wanna be that one that's
sticking around. You wanna bethat one adding value. We've
talked about the automation.What are some what are some
skills and and some, things thataccounting and finance
professionals can do to kindasay, hey, I can be better,
situated to do this automationbetter to to to be that person
who's that strategic partner?
Mike Dion (15:42):
If I could tell everyone to do one thing, it
would be to learn the powerapps. I would start with power
query, Then power pivot and thenpower BI. If you know those 3
things, you know, we all, forthe most part have some type of
monthly or quarterly reporting.We all have some type of
forecast that requires datainput. If you learn those 3 and
(16:05):
even just power query, that'sgoing to transform the time you
spend on data because regardlessof your systems, right?
Some companies have goodsystems. Some companies have
systems that are realchallenges, regardless of the
company's data, you can buildyour own hierarchies and
structure to automate yourreporting regardless of what the
systems and target accounts looklike. That alone will shave off
(16:27):
time. Then you add in theability to save your steps to
have them run every single monthfor you. Then you add in the
ability to start buildingcalculations in before it comes
into Excel.
You can get rid of nestedfunctions. You can get rid of
index matches with V lookups.You can speed up your workbooks.
There's all those things you cando. And then the final step,
(16:48):
once you've got all that datatransformed, you can stick it
into Power BI.
It'll build all your charts foryou, and it will send it to them
automatically. Right? And I Itruly think you can learn, you
know, 80 20 rule. You can learn80% of the functionality and get
the value from it in an hour or2. Like, you you truly can as
you focus on the right thing.
(17:08):
And then I've gone through andset up some trainings that each
of these systems have 20minutes. Here's the basics.
Here's the fundamentals andyou're up and running. And the
best part, it's already in Excelwith the exception of more
advanced power BI subscriptions.And it is built in.
It's free. You don't even haveto go download anything. And I'm
sure the majority of companies,if you use Office 365, you do
(17:28):
have access to Power BI as well.So all of that is just right
there without asking for anycapital without having to build
a business case entirely in yourcontrol. And that's really what
I'm about is is taking controlof this and not waiting for your
company to give you theresources.
Adam Larson (17:43):
Well yeah. Because if you sometimes as you wait for
the company, you know, you'vegotta go through quotes. You
have to go through these allthese hoops and red tape and
corporate structures and howeverything's set up. And then
you never actually get to usethe tool as opposed to, like,
maybe the 30 day trial that youyou maybe got access to.
Mike Dion (18:00):
Yeah. And, oh, by the way, it'll probably be changed
so many times. It won't evennecessarily meet your original
requirements.
Adam Larson (18:05):
Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I love this
thought of, like, hey. Just findthe tool that out there that
works, you know, and you've youknow, obviously, the power query
stuff that's available becausemost organizations, unless
they're, like, a a Googleorganization, you know, they
have access to those to thosetools. So let's say, hey.
Somebody's using the the theGoogle suite of products, and I
don't have access to Excel,which is kinda crazy. You know,
(18:27):
what would you say to thatperson?
Mike Dion (18:28):
So at that point, it gets more complicated, but there
are still great options. Sothere's a macro similar of
ability in Google Sheets whereyou can build some coding.
Google also has, the ability tocreate apps. And if you're on a
workspace plan, you have theability to create apps with a
kind of, talking interface. Evenbetter if your company has
Gemini, you can actually justtell Gemini how to build the
(18:50):
app.
But those apps can actuallyreplicate a lot of the data
manipulation you're doing inExcel. So the training is
longer. Right? We're not talkingan hour or 2. We're talking, you
know, a couple of days, but allthat functionality is there.
And if you're really motivatedto do this, you can do it just
as easily in Google sheets.Still a big Excel fan. I have
worked in a Google sheetscompany before and it is
challenging. But I never foundsomething I could not replicate.
(19:14):
It may have taken a little extralearning or research, but I can
replicate everything Excel cando in Google Sheets.
Adam Larson (19:19):
So, you know, automation is an amazing thing.
And I feel like, we've you know,you've given a wonderful some
wonderful examples of how peoplecan get started, you know,
especially if it feelsoverwhelming to them. Obviously,
it's gonna keep evolving. Youyou mentioned Gemini. You know,
you've we have all thesedifferent, large language model
tools out there.
(19:39):
How do you think theincorporation of those different
tools, like, you know,obviously, in Microsoft, you
have the copilot that you canintegrate in there. How do you
think the introduction of thesethese AI tools that you can say,
hey, I wanna you know, like, youcan go to, excelgbt., dotco.uk
and say, Hey, I wanna do, like,I wanna do this in Excel and
type out this whole paragraphand it gives you a, you know, it
(20:00):
gives you a nice little formulathere. You know, how do you
think those things will changethe evolution of this automation
that we've been talking about?
Mike Dion (20:07):
Yeah, I think, you know, this is I say this is the
new Excel. This is somethingthat everybody needs to know and
be learning these tools. I'mfocused on the basics. I do
highly recommend everyone pick anew technology like a Python or
some of the tools and learnabout. But this is where it
becomes really important abouthow you're spending your time
and what you're focused on.
Right. What we're going to seeis that reporting is going to
(20:29):
become very automated, right?Because the actual process of
reporting does not in itself addvalue. We're gonna see the data
collection and I think even thefirst pass of a forecast become
automated. We're alreadystarting to see that with some
predictive modeling in Pythonand other tools.
What's really important is thatyou're focused on where you can
add value because we are a costcenter, right? Even if it's a
(20:52):
necessary cost like compliance,we're a cost center. So where
can we add value? If you're ina, you know, compliance role,
how can you make things morecompliant and also make
compliance easier? If you're ina role like FP and a, how can
you add strategic value, whichis it's not the report.
It's how do we pivot based onthe report, right? It's not the
forecast. It's how do we deliverthis forecast? And we start to
(21:16):
fall short of it at actuals.It's looking at the outside
market, taking the time that younow have that you're not
reporting to look outside thewalls of your company and say
what's happening and how shouldthat impact our strategy and
coming to your operators who arealso very busy with these
opportunities.
And you need to look at and whenI first started on finance
(21:36):
reporting was like the thing youdid. Entire people's jobs were
just building reports orupdating data for forecasts. But
it's critical that you startlooking at that as just a
necessary tool to get to thebigger picture, which is the
strategy.
Adam Larson (21:50):
Yeah. Well, I like how you're saying that, like,
these are the tools that we needto use. It's not it's how you
use the tool and how you applythe tool because and you can put
a hammer in a in a baby's hand.He's not gonna be able to nail
something. You gotta be able touse the tool properly.
Mike Dion (22:04):
And, yeah, I mean, I I easily see a future 5 years
from now where we just have, youknow, a copilot or Gemini built
in, and we can ask a reportingquestion because a lot of that
reporting part has beenautomated. But what AI is never
gonna know is that, oh, youknow, Bob from accounting keeps
entering invoices wrong. Right?They're not gonna know that
there's this market factorhappening out in the industry
that's gonna change things andyou need to build that into the
(22:25):
models. And that's where youneed to be spending your time on
things that AI can't see intothe future or the nuances and
context within the businesswhere it's not functioning in
this perfect mold.
Right? Where something ishappening that is not a
computerized variable.
Adam Larson (22:43):
Do you think so you mentioned, like, if Bob is
entering the invoicesincorrectly. So before somebody
gets to, like, automating largerand larger things, is it a good
practice to kinda go through andmake sure that all your
processes are well and your datais in a good spot too?
Mike Dion (22:58):
Yes and no. In a perfect world, you should always
be chasing better processes andbetter upstream data.
Adam Larson (23:04):
Of course.
Mike Dion (23:05):
In a realistic world, I don't want the person sitting
at their computer working an 80hour month end to wait for the
data to be better. I want you touse these tools to fix those
problems as you go. And thenalso go back into effect that
the process should run-inparallel. And so many people get
stuck trying to get the datainputs perfect. That will never
(23:26):
happen.
If you're working in, you know,retail, someone's going to enter
something with, you know,capital letters or an extra a.
And the point of sale is notgoing to match them. Power Query
can probably match them. Right?So don't don't wait.
Yes. Try to go back and fix yourpoint of sales, fix your
invoices, fix your, you know,payment systems. But that is
just never I I don't thinkthere's a world where that is
(23:47):
ever perfect even with AI.
Adam Larson (23:49):
Do you think the automation helps us, our our
ability to see those errors in ain a quicker manner?
Mike Dion (23:55):
Absolutely. Because when we're not spending time
aggregating, collecting, andMhmm. Putting the data in place,
you would you have the time tosee this. And that's also where
AI is really good at spottingoutliers. Like, it's it's still
not doing a lot of great stuffwith numbers today, but it spots
outliers really well.
And I found that's very that isa very valuable use is to just
(24:16):
have, you know, chat GPT, scanthis dataset, look for outliers.
And if there's an error in thedata, it's actually quite gonna
catch it. Can't fix them, butyou can catch them.
Adam Larson (24:24):
Okay. Well, that's great because then I like that
idea of doing in parallelbecause in real in a real world,
you can't say, we're gonna takea policy here and look at all of
our data. Like, that that wouldjust never happen.
Mike Dion (24:33):
New issues will be continuously introduced. Right?
You in any in any organizationwith people, which is all of
them, you're gonna havecontinuous data issues
introduced, and that shouldn'tbe the focus because you can get
to the value, which is againmaking the strategic decisions
and helping people change thetrajectory of the business.
Perfect reporting is not thegoal. The goal is to know what's
happening in the business and tobe able to direct the business
(24:55):
in a better direction.
Adam Larson (24:56):
Yeah. The the reporting just might be a nail
or a board that you're puttingdown, but it's not the whole
picture. Exactly. Yeah. I likethat.
I like how you explain things,Mike, because it it's makes it
so simple that I'm like, weshould all give this a try and I
hope everybody who's listeningto this feels that because the
way you explain things, itreally puts it in a manner that
I really have no argument. Let'sjust do it.
Mike Dion (25:18):
Yeah. And and, you know, I've spent a lot of time
selling people because there'salways the initial resistance.
So this this has been built overtime, but the great thing is I
can I can prove it out? I'veseen enough people be resistant,
but then learn it fast and thenstart applying in the different
ways. And I've, I've watchedpeople's work weights shrink.
So I, I now have the confidenceto say definitively that this is
(25:41):
what will happen if you apply itbecause I've watched it happen
now so many times.
Adam Larson (25:45):
Yeah. You have. Well, Mike, this has been a
wonderful conversation. I reallyappreciate you sharing, about
automation and everything you'velearned because I and and I love
your passion about it, and Ijust I really wanna thank you
for coming on the podcast.
Mike Dion (25:59):
Well, I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure
speaking with you. Thanks forhaving me.
Announcer (26:03):
This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing
you with the latest perspectivesof thought leaders from the
accounting and financeprofession. If you like what you
heard and you'd like to becounted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.ima net.org.
Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson.
And today, we're diving into theworld of FP and a and automation
with our special guest, MikeDion. Mike has an extensive
career in finance spanning fromstart ups to Fortune 100
Companies and brings a wealth ofknowledge about streamlining
finance operations. In thisepisode, Mike shares his journey
into automation sparked bymanaging teams bogged down by
(00:42):
repetitive tasks.
Mike addresses concerns like jobsecurity in the face of
automation and emphasizes thestrategic value you can bring to
your organization by embracingthese technologies. If you're
keen to transform your workdaysand enhance productivity, you
don't wanna miss this episode.Hey, Mike. We're really excited
(01:05):
to have you on the podcast aswe're gonna talk about FPMA and
automation. But I wanted tostart with just talking a little
bit about getting to know you abit more in your journey in FP
and A and what you drew you tofocus on automation.
Mike Dion (01:15):
Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm just so
excited to be here. Justabsolutely love the podcast and
re and really glad to be a partof it. For my FP and A career,
so I've worked in roleseverywhere from brand new
startups all the way to theFortune 100. I started my
career.
The first job I worked was as afinance intern and I've just
kind of steadily moved up fromthere across different
industries and companies andreally just absolutely love the,
(01:38):
especially the businesspartnering side of it. So I've
done everything, you know,consolidations, business,
support, and I just love gettingto sit down with the operators,
help a strategy, help them growtheir business. And that's
actually kind of what led me tothe focus on automation. In one
role at a major telecom companyI worked at, I took over a team
and I was told that this teamevery month end produces 30
(02:01):
individual decks with 30individual excels. So
essentially the team wasspending half of their time
across the entire month, justproducing these repetitive decks
and presentations.
They were the last ones out thedoor every day. They were
working 90 hours a week and itwas just, it was just crazy. So
with that, that was my firstforay because I said, this has
(02:21):
to stop and it was my first timeautomating an entire process end
to end, moving it into adashboard. And then my focus on
automation only doubled ortripled down once I had kids,
and, you know, my my time isstarting to get squeezed on both
ends.
Adam Larson (02:37):
I get that too, with I've got kids as well, and
it seems like you're alwaysjuggling something else. You
have to find a way to do thingsmore simply in a sense.
Mike Dion (02:45):
Yeah. Mhmm.
Adam Larson (02:47):
Yeah. So when, when you're looking at the finance,
the finance team, like you said,a lot of times, they're the
first ones in the last ones out.They're spending so much times
on things, you know, a lot oftimes simple and finance team
don't always go together. How dowe, how do, how can we mesh
those together to make sure,hey, this is super simple,
(03:07):
approachable automation. We canget that stuff done properly.
Mike Dion (03:10):
Absolutely. I I'm I'm seeing everyone get busier. I'm
seeing teams get smaller ascompanies think very creatively
about their SG and A spending.And I'm seeing the strategic
demands on teams get bigger.With that simplicity becomes
kind of an art form that needsto be built into every part of
the process.
I would say complexity doesn'tnecessarily improve things,
(03:34):
especially thinking aboutforecasting simplicity does.
What's great about automation isit sounds really scary. You hear
automation, you start thinking,oh, I need Python AI and all
these things. But automation isjust having a computer do any
task you would have had to doyourself. And there's a lot of
tools, even things built rightinto the software, like Excel
we're using every day that in 10or 15 minutes, you can learn and
(03:58):
shave hours off your Workday.
And that's really what I'mfocused on. Isn't those, you
know, those Python things or AIthat are cool, but about things
that people without a lot oftraining can sit down and do
with stuff already installed ontheir computer, and it's just so
much easier than they think itis.
Adam Larson (04:13):
So do you think it's, is it easy to decide which
tasks are best suited forautomation? Can all the tasks be
suited? Or are there certainthings is there a way to kinda,
choose those?
Mike Dion (04:24):
So I've got a framework that I use. I have 4
categories and for each one, Iassign a score of 1, 2, or 3.
Golf scores. So one is better, 3is worse. And the 4 things I
look at are first, how manypeople need to be involved?
The more people, the harder itwill be to automate a process.
If it's you sitting at your deskrunning a report, you have
(04:44):
complete control. Right? Ifit's, you know, 50 people are
involved in producing adifferent story. The second is
the processes that arerepeatable.
If you're talking aboutautomating your annual budget,
that's a lot less value than amonthly close. Right? So you're
gonna wanna automate the monthlyclose first. Frequency, so not
just, not just the well, thatone was frequency. Sorry.
For repeatable, it's how muchdoes it standardize or change.
(05:06):
Right? Mhmm. Is it fairlyconsistent every time you run
it, or is it kind of an ad hocrequest? I would do ad hoc last,
and I would do repeatable onesfirst.
And then lastly, how many toolsneed to change? You know, is
this something where you need togo ask for an investment and
you're gonna need capital andnew software? Or is it something
again, where you are in control,you can automate using Excel or,
you know, Dapp for software yourcompany already has. And once I
(05:29):
do those four things, I'llusually have a list of 10 or 15
processes I wanna automate. I'llscore all these.
I love numbers, and then I juststart with the lowest score and
work my way down.
Adam Larson (05:41):
How how long does that take? You know, if if
you're let's say let's say youyou you're you're listening to
this podcast. You're like, hey.That sounds really cool. I wanna
score with my team, but we don'thave time to do that.
It seems like how do you balanceI I don't have time to do that,
but yet I wanna make thingsfaster so that we can create
that time. Like, how do you howdo you get there?
Mike Dion (05:58):
You know, it's it's a delicate balance, but I schedule
it once a month with my team andmyself to go through this
process.
Adam Larson (06:04):
Okay.
Mike Dion (06:05):
The thing about automation is when you sell it
to people that there's gonna bea lift now, but I'm gonna save
you time in the future. You haveto make that very tangible. And
this process actually makes itso tangible. People can see the
processes they own and the timethey're spending. And you can
tell them, you know, this is theamount of time we can save you.
So when you have people gothrough that exercise, it is
(06:28):
more work short term, but I'venever seen it not lower
someone's work time in the inthe back end. Right? And it's
about just putting it on thecalendar, making it a critical
part. I have a standing that thefirst meeting we do every single
calendar month, that meeting iswhen we go through
automationless.
Adam Larson (06:45):
Yeah. Well, a lot of times people when people hear
automation, they think, I, youknow, I need to be an engineer.
I need to know coding and allthose things, and it can be very
intimidating. So are there waysto kind of make it less
intimidating?
Mike Dion (06:56):
There absolutely are. I think the the biggest thing I
look for is where can youautomate with tools that you
already have? One of my favoriteautomations for finance people,
which is the last thing peoplewould think I would say is
automating your email. Right? Alot of us are buried under 100
of emails.
We all know how to use outlookand Gmail and the email
filtering in those systems isautomation because the computer
(07:18):
is doing it for you. And you canget, you know, half of your
inbox is automated going tocertain folders. I mean, the
number of emails I get a daythat are just system updates
that I don't even need to lookat is Mhmm. Astounding. That's
automation.
Right? You could think aboutthings like if you're currently
running scenarios for yourleadership to understand the
business, you can build that ina data table in Excel in 5
(07:40):
minutes. There's so much lowhanging fruit of just using
tools you already have. Andthen, you know, if you have the
resources to go be fancy withPython, AI possibilities are
endless, but this is a great wayto just get started. And this
will save the average person.
I'd say, you know, at least 25%of their work week is on things
that you could automate withoutlook and Excel.
Adam Larson (08:03):
I yeah. It it I think some people try to look at
they when they think aboutthings like automation, they
think about the big things. AndI really like how you're
breaking it down. It's like, no.Start with all these simple
things.
And as you learn, you can say,okay, I can maybe tackle the
bigger things as I hit those.
Mike Dion (08:18):
Yeah. My my biggest time savings come from things
like pivot charts, which a lotof people don't use. Yeah. Data
tables for scenario analysis,power query, power pivot. These
are all just already buttons inExcel.
Click a button and you're going.And I put off learning these for
years because power query justsounded scary. And when I
ultimately sat down, you canlearn the fundamentals of power
(08:40):
query in maybe half an hour. AndI've successfully taught entire
teams of people in 30 minutesand gotten them up and running.
And yeah, you can spend hoursand you can learn all of the
bells and whistles, but toreally save the average finance
person's time and the work we'redoing, or even in accounting,
the average person can get allthat benefit in about 30 minutes
of learning.
Adam Larson (09:01):
That's that's crazy. So, you know, when we
were talking before, you hadmentioned you have something
called a 5 minute automationseries, and it sounds really
accessible. It sounds reallycool. Maybe you can give us an
example of what kind of an easyautomation that prevails
professionals might overlook.You've already talked about
email.
Are there other ones that wecan, have an example of?
Mike Dion (09:18):
A big one is scenario and sensitivity analysis. So
I've been planning scenarios,you know, best case, worst case,
middle case, or sensitivity ofif, you know, if our sales
targets come down a little bit,what would that do to the
business? And this is so fast tobuild. If you've already got
your financial models, whichhopefully all of us do, and you
have the drivers in there.Right?
(09:39):
All you're doing is you're justpointing the table to a driver.
You're allowing that driver torun through the model and Excel
will just reiterate all thecalculations for you. A lot of
people that I watch still todayare just typing in the changes,
then screenshotting and puttinga PowerPoint, typing in a
change, screenshotting, puttinga PowerPoint. You can automate
that entire analysis and it it'susing functionality that we all
(09:59):
use on a daily basis. Right.
It's just right there. I can'tthink of someone who hasn't used
what if analysis and it's justkind of one more step on top of
that, That is just running. Whatif analysis multiple times.
Right. And it's veryapproachable for people.
That is approachable. And
Adam Larson (10:17):
why is it, do you think that people make it so
complicated? Make it feel socomplicated.
Mike Dion (10:23):
I think part of it is, I mean, at least I'll speak
for myself. I put it off for solong just because it seemed
scary. You hear these terms likepower query, power pivot. And
the other thing is the peopleyou tend to see using them tend
to be the more systems focusedpeople. The people that I saw
using these systems were ourfinancial systems teams.
(10:45):
They were our, you know, ourproject teams that were doing a
lot of this development work forus. I didn't see just, you know,
analysts or finance managersaround me using it. And it seems
like this really unapproachabletechnology. It seems like
something where you're gonnahave to start coding. And on top
of that, we're all busy.
You know, there, you do have todedicate that time to it. And
(11:07):
you have to schedule that timeand it may make your workday
longer that day. You just haveto know that the benefit is
coming on the back end. And ifyou don't schedule it, and if
you don't understand that thisis an approachable tool with the
right kind of training, youknow, you'll put this off
forever just like I did. I mean,I this was literally years of me
putting this.
Adam Larson (11:28):
Well and I feel like sometimes we we make things
bigger than they are. And then,like you said, you have to
actually schedule it because youhave to actually make time for
things that you deem important.So unless you do that, it's
never gonna happen.
Mike Dion (11:41):
You do. And I I coach analysts on this all the time
that Mhmm. They, you know, like,I'm I'm so busy. I don't have
time to make this processbetter. And then I watch them
spend 8 hours manipulating datato generate a monthly report.
Right? As, like, you could spendthat 8 hours and I promise you
that 8 hours becomes 2. Like, II know watching what you're
doing that 8 hour becomes 2 withpower query. And Yeah. Yes.
(12:04):
You're gonna have to sit downand spend that 8 hours. But then
every month for the rest of theyear or a couple of years,
however long you're in thisrole, that time comes back to
you.
Adam Larson (12:14):
It really does. And and when you've when you've
helped teams implement this, youknow, have you seen a huge
impact on their work lifebalances and help them kind of,
like, don't know they don'tnecessarily have to be the last
ones out every night?
Mike Dion (12:25):
Huge. Yeah. When I when I rolled this out in the
telecom industry, you know, theywere working 90 hours a week
when I took it over. They werethe last ones out. Mhmm.
When I introduced the dashboardsand once we got all of the
executives going straight to thedashboard ecosystem, we were
down to 45 hours a week and wewere the first ones out. It was
absolutely transformative thatwe were literally walking out.
(12:45):
We didn't have any datamanagement. We didn't have to
even send reports because wewere having the dashboards
notify people that they werethere. And we were spending all
of that 45 hours on justsupporting our business partners
on helping them understand theirresults.
So we were adding more valuebecause we were giving them
actionable items to do for thenext month while all of our peer
(13:06):
teams were still building thereports.
Adam Larson (13:10):
Yeah. And that's, I think, the amount of stress and
the amount of burnout that we'reseeing across many industries or
many organizations, I thinklooking at it, taking a step
back and saying, how can I useautomation? It's gotta be the
way to go going forward to besuccessful.
Mike Dion (13:27):
It is because we're we're never going to staff to
make it through a month end or abudget season. Right? We're
never going to have thoseresources. And even in the off
cycle, it's starting to gettighter, both from both from
cost containment also just Imean, accounting has, you know,
shortage of 200 to 300,000professionals right now. So not
only do we not have the abilityto put those resources there, we
(13:50):
don't necessarily even have thetalent to put there.
And that's what we're doing isit's not that it's going to it's
not that it's necessarily alwaysgonna change your job. It's that
it's gonna reduce that lumpinessof what your weeks kind of look
like.
Adam Larson (14:02):
Now what would you say to somebody who says, well,
am I gonna automate myself outof a job?
Mike Dion (14:07):
That is a great point that I spend a lot of time on.
So Yeah. You know, first of all,I always like to point out that
everyone thought Excel woulddestroy the industry. Right?
When we moved from paper ledgersto Excel, everyone thought, you
know, finance and accounting ordebt.
There are 100 of thousands ofmore roles in the industry today
than there were back before wedid that elimination. And, yes,
individual people at the time,there will be impact. So, you
(14:28):
know, don't wanna shy away fromthat. But the industry in
general grows through this. Youadd, you know, compliance
functions, strategic work, allthese things that Excel allowed
us to do.
This is just the next wave ofthat, but all of our professions
are bigger. The second thing,you know, as I already said,
there's a massive talentshortage in accounting. There's
starting to be some signs oftalent shortages in finance,
(14:48):
especially on the reallystrategic work. And then the
other thing is if you don'tautomate somebody else will.
Right?
The people who will not bereplaced by automation, AI are
the ones who are addingstrategic value. So if you're
spending your entire day runningprocesses, somebody at some
point is going to developsoftware that can do some of
(15:09):
this work and companies willstart buying. Right? That's
that's where we're headed. Ifyou're already positioned that
you're the one out theredelivering the strategic value,
you're the one who's going to bea hoops, who's going to be
sticking around.
Adam Larson (15:23):
So, you know, you wanna be that one that's
sticking around. You wanna bethat one adding value. We've
talked about the automation.What are some what are some
skills and and some, things thataccounting and finance
professionals can do to kindasay, hey, I can be better,
situated to do this automationbetter to to to be that person
who's that strategic partner?
Mike Dion (15:42):
If I could tell everyone to do one thing, it
would be to learn the powerapps. I would start with power
query, Then power pivot and thenpower BI. If you know those 3
things, you know, we all, forthe most part have some type of
monthly or quarterly reporting.We all have some type of
forecast that requires datainput. If you learn those 3 and
(16:05):
even just power query, that'sgoing to transform the time you
spend on data because regardlessof your systems, right?
Some companies have goodsystems. Some companies have
systems that are realchallenges, regardless of the
company's data, you can buildyour own hierarchies and
structure to automate yourreporting regardless of what the
systems and target accounts looklike. That alone will shave off
(16:27):
time. Then you add in theability to save your steps to
have them run every single monthfor you. Then you add in the
ability to start buildingcalculations in before it comes
into Excel.
You can get rid of nestedfunctions. You can get rid of
index matches with V lookups.You can speed up your workbooks.
There's all those things you cando. And then the final step,
(16:48):
once you've got all that datatransformed, you can stick it
into Power BI.
It'll build all your charts foryou, and it will send it to them
automatically. Right? And I Itruly think you can learn, you
know, 80 20 rule. You can learn80% of the functionality and get
the value from it in an hour or2. Like, you you truly can as
you focus on the right thing.
(17:08):
And then I've gone through andset up some trainings that each
of these systems have 20minutes. Here's the basics.
Here's the fundamentals andyou're up and running. And the
best part, it's already in Excelwith the exception of more
advanced power BI subscriptions.And it is built in.
It's free. You don't even haveto go download anything. And I'm
sure the majority of companies,if you use Office 365, you do
(17:28):
have access to Power BI as well.So all of that is just right
there without asking for anycapital without having to build
a business case entirely in yourcontrol. And that's really what
I'm about is is taking controlof this and not waiting for your
company to give you theresources.
Adam Larson (17:43):
Well yeah. Because if you sometimes as you wait for
the company, you know, you'vegotta go through quotes. You
have to go through these allthese hoops and red tape and
corporate structures and howeverything's set up. And then
you never actually get to usethe tool as opposed to, like,
maybe the 30 day trial that youyou maybe got access to.
Mike Dion (18:00):
Yeah. And, oh, by the way, it'll probably be changed
so many times. It won't evennecessarily meet your original
requirements.
Adam Larson (18:05):
Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I love this
thought of, like, hey. Just findthe tool that out there that
works, you know, and you've youknow, obviously, the power query
stuff that's available becausemost organizations, unless
they're, like, a a Googleorganization, you know, they
have access to those to thosetools. So let's say, hey.
Somebody's using the the theGoogle suite of products, and I
don't have access to Excel,which is kinda crazy. You know,
(18:27):
what would you say to thatperson?
Mike Dion (18:28):
So at that point, it gets more complicated, but there
are still great options. Sothere's a macro similar of
ability in Google Sheets whereyou can build some coding.
Google also has, the ability tocreate apps. And if you're on a
workspace plan, you have theability to create apps with a
kind of, talking interface. Evenbetter if your company has
Gemini, you can actually justtell Gemini how to build the
(18:50):
app.
But those apps can actuallyreplicate a lot of the data
manipulation you're doing inExcel. So the training is
longer. Right? We're not talkingan hour or 2. We're talking, you
know, a couple of days, but allthat functionality is there.
And if you're really motivatedto do this, you can do it just
as easily in Google sheets.Still a big Excel fan. I have
worked in a Google sheetscompany before and it is
challenging. But I never foundsomething I could not replicate.
(19:14):
It may have taken a little extralearning or research, but I can
replicate everything Excel cando in Google Sheets.
Adam Larson (19:19):
So, you know, automation is an amazing thing.
And I feel like, we've you know,you've given a wonderful some
wonderful examples of how peoplecan get started, you know,
especially if it feelsoverwhelming to them. Obviously,
it's gonna keep evolving. Youyou mentioned Gemini. You know,
you've we have all thesedifferent, large language model
tools out there.
(19:39):
How do you think theincorporation of those different
tools, like, you know,obviously, in Microsoft, you
have the copilot that you canintegrate in there. How do you
think the introduction of thesethese AI tools that you can say,
hey, I wanna you know, like, youcan go to, excelgbt., dotco.uk
and say, Hey, I wanna do, like,I wanna do this in Excel and
type out this whole paragraphand it gives you a, you know, it
(20:00):
gives you a nice little formulathere. You know, how do you
think those things will changethe evolution of this automation
that we've been talking about?
Mike Dion (20:07):
Yeah, I think, you know, this is I say this is the
new Excel. This is somethingthat everybody needs to know and
be learning these tools. I'mfocused on the basics. I do
highly recommend everyone pick anew technology like a Python or
some of the tools and learnabout. But this is where it
becomes really important abouthow you're spending your time
and what you're focused on.
Right. What we're going to seeis that reporting is going to
(20:29):
become very automated, right?Because the actual process of
reporting does not in itself addvalue. We're gonna see the data
collection and I think even thefirst pass of a forecast become
automated. We're alreadystarting to see that with some
predictive modeling in Pythonand other tools.
What's really important is thatyou're focused on where you can
add value because we are a costcenter, right? Even if it's a
(20:52):
necessary cost like compliance,we're a cost center. So where
can we add value? If you're ina, you know, compliance role,
how can you make things morecompliant and also make
compliance easier? If you're ina role like FP and a, how can
you add strategic value, whichis it's not the report.
It's how do we pivot based onthe report, right? It's not the
forecast. It's how do we deliverthis forecast? And we start to
(21:16):
fall short of it at actuals.It's looking at the outside
market, taking the time that younow have that you're not
reporting to look outside thewalls of your company and say
what's happening and how shouldthat impact our strategy and
coming to your operators who arealso very busy with these
opportunities.
And you need to look at and whenI first started on finance
(21:36):
reporting was like the thing youdid. Entire people's jobs were
just building reports orupdating data for forecasts. But
it's critical that you startlooking at that as just a
necessary tool to get to thebigger picture, which is the
strategy.
Adam Larson (21:50):
Yeah. Well, I like how you're saying that, like,
these are the tools that we needto use. It's not it's how you
use the tool and how you applythe tool because and you can put
a hammer in a in a baby's hand.He's not gonna be able to nail
something. You gotta be able touse the tool properly.
Mike Dion (22:04):
And, yeah, I mean, I I easily see a future 5 years
from now where we just have, youknow, a copilot or Gemini built
in, and we can ask a reportingquestion because a lot of that
reporting part has beenautomated. But what AI is never
gonna know is that, oh, youknow, Bob from accounting keeps
entering invoices wrong. Right?They're not gonna know that
there's this market factorhappening out in the industry
that's gonna change things andyou need to build that into the
(22:25):
models. And that's where youneed to be spending your time on
things that AI can't see intothe future or the nuances and
context within the businesswhere it's not functioning in
this perfect mold.
Right? Where something ishappening that is not a
computerized variable.
Adam Larson (22:43):
Do you think so you mentioned, like, if Bob is
entering the invoicesincorrectly. So before somebody
gets to, like, automating largerand larger things, is it a good
practice to kinda go through andmake sure that all your
processes are well and your datais in a good spot too?
Mike Dion (22:58):
Yes and no. In a perfect world, you should always
be chasing better processes andbetter upstream data.
Adam Larson (23:04):
Of course.
Mike Dion (23:05):
In a realistic world, I don't want the person sitting
at their computer working an 80hour month end to wait for the
data to be better. I want you touse these tools to fix those
problems as you go. And thenalso go back into effect that
the process should run-inparallel. And so many people get
stuck trying to get the datainputs perfect. That will never
(23:26):
happen.
If you're working in, you know,retail, someone's going to enter
something with, you know,capital letters or an extra a.
And the point of sale is notgoing to match them. Power Query
can probably match them. Right?So don't don't wait.
Yes. Try to go back and fix yourpoint of sales, fix your
invoices, fix your, you know,payment systems. But that is
just never I I don't thinkthere's a world where that is
(23:47):
ever perfect even with AI.
Adam Larson (23:49):
Do you think the automation helps us, our our
ability to see those errors in ain a quicker manner?
Mike Dion (23:55):
Absolutely. Because when we're not spending time
aggregating, collecting, andMhmm. Putting the data in place,
you would you have the time tosee this. And that's also where
AI is really good at spottingoutliers. Like, it's it's still
not doing a lot of great stuffwith numbers today, but it spots
outliers really well.
And I found that's very that isa very valuable use is to just
(24:16):
have, you know, chat GPT, scanthis dataset, look for outliers.
And if there's an error in thedata, it's actually quite gonna
catch it. Can't fix them, butyou can catch them.
Adam Larson (24:24):
Okay. Well, that's great because then I like that
idea of doing in parallelbecause in real in a real world,
you can't say, we're gonna takea policy here and look at all of
our data. Like, that that wouldjust never happen.
Mike Dion (24:33):
New issues will be continuously introduced. Right?
You in any in any organizationwith people, which is all of
them, you're gonna havecontinuous data issues
introduced, and that shouldn'tbe the focus because you can get
to the value, which is againmaking the strategic decisions
and helping people change thetrajectory of the business.
Perfect reporting is not thegoal. The goal is to know what's
happening in the business and tobe able to direct the business
(24:55):
in a better direction.
Adam Larson (24:56):
Yeah. The the reporting just might be a nail
or a board that you're puttingdown, but it's not the whole
picture. Exactly. Yeah. I likethat.
I like how you explain things,Mike, because it it's makes it
so simple that I'm like, weshould all give this a try and I
hope everybody who's listeningto this feels that because the
way you explain things, itreally puts it in a manner that
I really have no argument. Let'sjust do it.
Mike Dion (25:18):
Yeah. And and, you know, I've spent a lot of time
selling people because there'salways the initial resistance.
So this this has been built overtime, but the great thing is I
can I can prove it out? I'veseen enough people be resistant,
but then learn it fast and thenstart applying in the different
ways. And I've, I've watchedpeople's work weights shrink.
So I, I now have the confidenceto say definitively that this is
(25:41):
what will happen if you apply itbecause I've watched it happen
now so many times.
Adam Larson (25:45):
Yeah. You have. Well, Mike, this has been a
wonderful conversation. I reallyappreciate you sharing, about
automation and everything you'velearned because I and and I love
your passion about it, and Ijust I really wanna thank you
for coming on the podcast.
Mike Dion (25:59):
Well, I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure
speaking with you. Thanks forhaving me.
Announcer (26:03):
This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing
you with the latest perspectivesof thought leaders from the
accounting and financeprofession. If you like what you
heard and you'd like to becounted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.ima net.org.
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