The era of AI and “Big Data” offers immense opportunity for finance teams to automate routine tasks, allowing professionals to focus on higher-value activities. In a recent discussion with Laurie Krebs, CFO of software company Red Hat, I asked about the ways in which her team has been able to work more efficiently and productively by leveraging technology. We also discussed how she enables her team to acquire skills that are not traditionally part of a finance professional’s job description. Our conversation is instructive for any finance leader who sees the potential of technology and seeks to overcome the barriers to implementation and upskilling. She also shared valuable lessons about how to find a support system to enable upward movement within an organization as well as the value of empathetic leadership.
Jeff Thomson: Covid-19 accelerated organizations’ interest and uptake of automation and AI. Your company specializes in the open-source software (OSS) that facilitates implementation of these technologies enterprise-wide. How are you using automation and AI within your finance team? What have been some of the benefits and challenges?
Laurie Krebs: Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Red Hat’s finance team was already working to automate many of the routine tasks that make up our daily work. In particular, we have been using robotic process automation (RPA) to help us manage many
of the functions that used to be done by hand. RPA provides a bit more nuance and business logic to the automation process because of the machine learning capabilities of the bots. It’s also quick and easy to set up whenever we have a new project or need.
Another example where we have made some great improvements is [with] our travel and expense tools. We’ve better integrated our systems to make the submission process more simple, even auto-populating information where possible. We’ve also been implementing automation for monitoring third party risk reviews and for our requisition review and approval processes.
The biggest benefit for the team is that we’re able to cut down on the time needed to complete these necessary but often tedious tasks. This frees up time for associates to focus on more high-value and important projects that they’re passionate about. We’re also able to move more quickly, save money and reduce errors when we use automation, which benefits both Red Hat and our customers.
As we have started to make these enhancements on our team, I have seen that associates are able to move past the mundane actions that offer little in the way of career fulfilment, and explore new skills and areas for development. This is something that I’m deeply passionate about and will continue to champion, as career development is so crucial to our future success.
Thomson: Many products in the Red Hat portfolio can be integrated with analytics, enabling faster insights and decision making, as well as enhancing security and compliance. How important is knowledge of data analytics and statistics to today’s finance professional? As you have watched technology evolve, do you believe finance professionals are upskilling as quickly? What does the future finance professional need to fully leverage the benefits of technology?
Krebs: Analytics are crucial to finance and help us figure out where we are succeeding and where we can improve. In addition to having a close relationship with our Enterprise Data + Analytics team, which sits in IT, we have associates embedded within Finance that help us understand data.
