This episode features an interview with Dan Gardner, CFO at DT One. DT One is a network of non cash micropayments and digital pre-pay partners.

Dan is a strategic CFO. And over his 12 years as a fintech executive, he’s created programs for treasury & risk management. At DT One, he’s responsible for the global oversight of all finance, treasury, risk and compliance functions.

On this episode, Dan describes how to build a great financial team, and how to use technology and finance together to drive your business. He describes the unique role of CFOs today, which includes empowering corporate teams, making the most of data, and managing risk.

Quotes

*“The numbers tell the story. It's deciphering that story that sometimes requires a tremendous amount of effort and work and testing.”

*“Create that optimal team that can drive an agile, dynamic financial team. And a set of members that are not just keepers of the numbers, but real business partners.”

*“The CFO is uniquely positioned to be able to span the environment and scan for opportunities. What might be perceived as potential threats can turn out to be opportunities. What could be strengths today could be weaknesses tomorrow. So it's that constant evaluation of what's going on on the landscape.”

*“There's always the financial component of all these assessments of risk. That job just doesn't end. That is a 24/7 mandate that the CFO very much drives.”

Time Stamps

[2:45] Dan’s path to CFO

[8:12] Cash Crossroads: Dan’s technology vision at DT One

[14:47] The Playbook: Finance Strategy at DT One

[17:44] Dan on keys to navigating the shifting financial landscape

[22:23] Report from the Future: Dan on the next generation of finance leaders

[24:51] Quick Hits: Rapid fire questions with Dan Gardner

Sponsor

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

Links

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Ravi Narula, Chief Financial Officer of FinancialForce, a cloud-based applications platform that accelerates business growth with customer-centric ERP, Professional Services Automation (PSA), and Customer Success solutions.

Ravi has over 20 years of CFO experience, and he’s helped turn several technology startups into large, mature, public companies.

On this episode, Ravi describes the growing role of the CFO, company risk management, and the future of AI technology.

Quotes

*”These are tough, challenging economic environments right now. How do we plan for it? Having a clear line of sight to what our long-term goals are and then connecting our short term actions to long-term goals becomes very critical.”

*”There's lots of things that CFOs have to focus on from a risk management perspective. And then governance plays a role. How do you empower the teams and the people while governing it from the corporate side? So there's a lot of balls up in the air, but more communication, more training, more standardization of policies helps a lot.”

*”How do we justify technology adoption and get some real hard ROI and benefits out of it? It's important that we connect some of these actions and data we get. And not only at the time of decision making, but after implementation. [We should] do an annual assessment [to look at] what can we do differently to adopt this thing even more? And not only looking at technology that is live. How many users are using it? How well accepted within the organization?”

Time Stamps

[1:45] Ravi’s path to CFO

[9:21] Cash Crossroads: Ravi’s technology vision at FinancialForce

[15:51] The Playbook: Finance Strategy at FinancialForce

[16:35] Risk management at FinancialForce

[25:08] Report from the Future: Ravi on the next generation of finance leaders

[28:39] Quick Hits: Rapid fire questions with Ravi Narula

Sponsor

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

Links

Connect with Ravi on LinkedIn

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Follow Daniel on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Manish Sarin, CFO at Sprinklr, a cloud-based customer experience management company.

Manish brings to the table more than 20 years working with high-growth technology and cybersecurity companies. Previously, he was CFO at Exabeam, EVP of Finance at ProofPoint, and led Software Strategy and Corporate Development at Hewlett-Packard.

On this episode, Manish talks about collecting unstructured data from Twitter, Facebook and Reddit to grasp the public narrative around Sprinklr, using AI to predict what will happen in the quarter, and achieving the holy grail of finance, of real time data, sustainable growth, and a solid bottom line.

Quotes

*”We take all of this information, which is unstructured, could be Twitter feeds, could be posts, and we pull it together using a variety of AI models to get at what is the insight in terms of what groups of users are saying about our business. And so that gives me a sense for, at least in terms of my public narrative, what do I need to change or tweak or at least be aware of as we go and have our earnings calls?”

*”I mentored under a public company CFO, and one of the things he would always tell me is, 'Don't be afraid to break glass.' And I've always taken that to heart, which is, rarely is there any other function in today's enterprise that has the level of insight on what's going on with the business, and therefore has a very defined point of view on what needs to happen going forward.”

*”I would encourage people who are evaluating being a CFO that it is a very empowering role. And at no point should they feel like their voice is not gonna be heard because they have probably more insights on the business than even the people running sales or marketing or product. And to me, that is something that should be embraced [by] any new CFO. Very empowering role. Do not be worried about breaking glass. Go make sure your voice and opinion is heard.”

*”We're growing much faster than a lot of the competitors in our space. That tells me there is enough total addressable market for us to go after. And you never wanna build your business to the vagaries of the market right now. So in other words, you should keep growing no matter what is happening on Wall Street. Of course, you don't want to overspend in an environment where spend is under increasing scrutiny. But I would also argue this wouldn't be the time to pull back on spend as long as you fundamentally believe you're in a high growth segment. So for us, it's been trying to find that balance between the two… we're now showing investors that we can actually achieve sustainably high levels of growth while being prudent on the bottom line.”

Time Stamps

[3:03] Manish’s path to CFO

[6:54] How the CFO is a strategic partner to the business

[11:23] Cash Crossroads: Manish's technology vision at Sprinklr

[14:16] How Manish manages a data lake to structure Sprinklr's data

[19:07] All about Sprinklr

[22:42] The Playbook: Finance Strategy at Sprinklr

[25:35] Risk management at Sprinklr

[28:59] How Sprinklr uses AI

[29:52] Report from the Future: Manish on the next generation of finance leaders

[34:02] Quick Hits: Rapid fire questions with Manish Sarin

Sponsor

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

Links

Connect with Manish on LinkedIn

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Follow Daniel on Twitter