According to the latest Crist Kolder Volatility Report, roughly 15% of current CFOs have worked in investment banking and 8% have engineering degrees. What percentage hold multiple engineering patents?
Anand Govind is a rare breed among CFOs because he ticks all three boxes: “I think I'm one of the few CFOs who has multiple patents and published papers as an engineer,” he told StrategicCFO360. “But the analytical skills and rigorous training I gained as an engineer translate very well to the world of finance.”
A technology background also comes in handy when building a finance team's tech stack from scratch: Govind is CFO of o9 Solutions, a Texas-based venture funding firm that developed an integrated planning platform used by well-known companies to manage their supply chains.
Govind and his team are making early progress in leveraging large-scale language models to analyze the company's data and provide insights to executives. Govind will discuss this project and other aspects of driving unicorn growth strategies from a CFO perspective during his keynote address at the Fall CFO Leadership Conference, taking place in Dallas from October 7-9.
I recently caught up with Govind to learn more about o9’s GenAI project and other ongoing efforts.
What model did you follow when building your finance team from the ground up?
I had flexibility in shaping the organization. I went with a model where we had two broad functions, operational finance and planning and analysis, but we've built a lot of innovations within that theme. We separated out the FP&A part that thinks about how to align the company's metrics to long-term goals. Then we have an FP&A organization that focuses on budgets, short-term planning. This group keeps the various businesses on a public company rhythm. The two groups have different rhythms. The monthly and quarterly focus is different than a three-year period. We also put someone in charge of automating the entire financials, and we did a lot of other things.
What finance-related tech projects are you working on?
I was fortunate enough to join the team when it was in its infancy and had the opportunity to build automation and efficiencies from the ground up. There are a few areas where we've seen notable innovation. One is finding ways to use the platforms we develop for clients for internal planning purposes – leveraging our own technology.
The second area is that we are very forward-thinking when it comes to emerging technologies. Most recently, we've set up a small team within our finance department that is adopting GPT and GPU-based technologies to develop an engine that provides executives with insights into what drives their business.
One of our long-term continuous improvement projects is the consolidation of our core ERP. As we grow, we continue to have tighter integration and automation efforts with all of our systems added or upgraded around the ERP, including procurement, stock management, and HR.
Is there a budget for the GenAI portion, or is it just something you do on the sidelines?
Allocating exploratory budgets has unlocked innovation and led to increased productivity, for example in sales and marketing, where automation has been implemented. [tasks] They needed people who could synthesize specific analytics to generate insights. [AI] Query engine. Executives [the engines] Through natural language [interface]We can't create a report for every question an executive asks. We can say, “We have experts. Ask us anything,” and the engine should be able to create the reports the executive wants. Our early experiments looked promising, and we want to build on this.
Finally, of course there are competitors. But why are there so many digital planning platforms on the market?
Supply chains continue to grow in complexity and volatility. COVID-19 is a great example, putting supply chain planning on the boardroom agenda. But external events don't end there. A few years ago we had the freezing storm in Texas. In March 2021, a ship blocked the Suez Canal. And now we have the chaos in the Red Sea. teeth Ship traffic is disrupted, with huge implications for globally connected supply chains. As supply chains become more complex, the need for digital planning and the ability for companies to respond to disruptions with agility and agility becomes even more critical.
There are also “competitive events.” Competitors change their pricing and how they go to market. Digital competitors to traditional companies are emerging, like Amazon and Tesla. They change the paradigm of how business is done, becoming significantly more agile and able to take advantage of opportunities.
