In 2018, Marie Myers left HP after a decade and a half to become CFO of RPA software company UiPath. Although her stay was only one year, the detour was pivotal to her career journey.
Myers began working with several programmers on the “frontier” of AI and RPA. “It gave me a better context and awareness of technology and the role that AI and digital transformation play within the enterprise,” said Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), now a spin-off server, storage, cloud and networking company. Myers, CFO of ). It exited HP's PC and printer business nearly a decade ago.
After UiPath, Myers returned to HP in 2020 as Chief Digital Transformation Officer.
Myers will deliver the morning keynote address at the CFO Leadership Conference in Dallas on Wednesday. To get a glimpse of that, we spoke with her earlier this month to learn more about how her first year at HPE went, the innovative acquisitions underway, and the application of GenAI in corporate finance. We discussed the prospects she sees.
What led you to HPE? What opportunities did you see?
I was excited about the inflection point in AI. HPE felt uniquely positioned to win in the ensuing wave of the industrial revolution. The company is based in Houston, so it makes sense geographically. Finally, we acquire Juniper Networks. This is a very transformative deal that I wanted to be a part of.
More than half of our operating income comes from networking, which is a very high margin business. Secondly, we are a clear number two in the market. I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Moore, who wrote Crossing the Chasm. He said you have to be number 1 or number 2 in business to be successful.
What was your first experience with AI?
About eight years ago, I started building software bots, or RPA (robotic process automation). I was one of UiPath's first enterprise customers in the US. I became interested in what AI could do in the financial field. I built probably the largest set in finance and corporate at the time. We used it as a base to create even more exciting models useful for accounting and forecasting. That's what got me interested in AI. I thought there was an opportunity in finance.
When I joined HP Enterprise Business, I was a product manager. I used to create spreadsheets and pivot tables. Back then, all data had to be constantly downloaded. Now you can write bot scripts and use AI to update data. I was doing regression analysis. I was a real progress geek. Today, AI can build many of the algorithms that help make predictions.
There are different views on the use cases for GenAI in finance and accounting. What have you seen? Bringing GenAI to HPE?
We are considering some initial use cases. Interestingly, these use cases have many similarities to some of the use cases we've seen for RPA. Areas such as forecasting are quickly emerging as one of the more critical pain points in finance. How can GenAI enhance the prediction process?
Some of GenAI's early wins are in expected places, like credits and collections. Overall, we can say that we are in the early stages from a financial perspective. We just separated the organization to focus on AI innovation. I have a gentleman on my staff who, in addition to his day job, leads financial innovation around AI. Similar to RPA, you need to be deliberate and intentional about your AI use cases and then practical about driving outcomes.
Where will the ROI come from for these early AI use cases?
Productivity gains are relatively easy to identify because cosmetic areas such as forecasting tend to be very manual and labor intensive. In addition, there are economic benefits from more accurate and precise forecasting.
One of my areas of interest is IR. [investor relations]. At my previous job, we were early adopters of GenAI in the IR space. Gen AI was used to assist with sentiment analysis. [earnings] script. Before you hit the streets, run a sentiment analysis to see your overall tone.
Another use of GenAI in IR is to quickly assess the health of an earnings period. Each earnings season has its nuances. In my previous job, I collected all the records and all the analyst questions to predict possible questions. [asked] On the phone to report financial results.
You mentioned the deal with Juniper Networks. You were involved in the deal that split Hewlett-Packard into HP and HPE. What about such large acquisitions and deals? Does the Juniper deal appeal to you?
In fact, I was on the split team and I was also on the finance team that launched HP. It was a quick and action-packed period. We had to split the company within 12 months and I had the opportunity to lead the entire financial setup. What I liked is that you have to make quick decisions. Sometimes it feels like all the collaboration we do extends decision-making time. In this transaction, we had to get used to making difficult decisions when we only had 60% or 70% of the data. The deal will not go through unless you check the box. It also tested our cross-collaboration skills. For example, we had to consider everything from how we would operate our business in Turkey to what tax system would be used.
How do you think your leadership philosophy translates into your more normal day-to-day work?
I'm Australian, so I'm collaborative by nature, but I'm also straightforward. I love helping people get things done – setting the strategy and vision and getting people to work on it. Everyone here agrees that we get better results when we work as a team. Results are better when there is a diversity of opinions and ideas and when disagreement is encouraged. The last thing I want to do is walk into a room and get everyone to agree. But once you make a decision, move on.
