00:26:57 · Praveer Melwani, Seema Amble
[00:26:57] S0: My my team owns the outputs there. Maybe I'm maybe I'm a little... We're we're a little bit later than some of those early... Earlier businesses. We have, you know, more controls in how and how we wanna talk about it. It's always been really important to me to have consistency in how we talk about our business. You know, it's one of the things that I felt has always been empowering to like how I can show up with our board, with our leadership team, with other folks broadly is that they know that what I'm putting out there is the same thing that I would have put out there a month ago, and the historicals never change, and I'm not trying to hide anything. And I, you know, I would just wanna make sure that, you know, as we grow and as we give ourselves the ability to iterate, and, you know, we constantly have this conversation on different sets of disclosure as we go through earnings, we wanna be consistent, and we wanna have the decisions that we make be things that we can look back on and feel good about, and have longevity further beyond. And so I think it's great if people finding different ways to think about their business, if it's empowering them to go and build their business better. But I do think that there's some value and consistency as well. [00:28:02] S1: Who is it on your team that's automated the most? What role?
00:28:02 · Seema Amble, Praveer Melwani
[00:28:02] S1: Who is it on your team that's automated the most? What role? [00:28:09] S0: You know, I I could say someone, but I'm I'm assuming that that someone else is probably coming up with something different really quickly. But, you know, very, very honestly, it's like all... Like, individuals who are owning certain parts of our forecast model all the way through to, you know, individuals on our biz ops team that are automating their day to day sort of like, you know, they're actually going and running, you know, competitive benchmarking and pricing studies. So it's like, I actually think that, you know, it's the it's the one upping of each other that actually enables you to create an organization that wants to better one another. So, you know, I I would feel uncomfortable saying there's one individual because I truly do think that this is like a team that's trying to do this together. [00:28:52] S1: You think it tends to be people who are more expert... Like, who have more expertise or experience in an area, or is it really across the board? And and how much is it coming from you and the role that you've automated yourself?
00:29:05 · Praveer Melwani, Seema Amble
[00:29:05] S0: Yeah. I I mean, I think, like, early days it was helpful for me to go and show folks like, if I... If I'm coming and trying to do things in a different way, like, hey, that should be your signal to you that, you know, my expectation is that you are as well. But I think, you know, in large part, I think the things that are important is have a solid understanding of the datasets that you're trying to pull from. And the folks have been able to move more quickly, have, like, an understanding of, like, how these things are stitched together. And when you understand things that... And and how they're architected, you can better think as, like, an architect of, like, okay. How do I actually bridge these things in a way that's logical? Where do I know where the model is actually making a deterministic decision versus inferring? And what tasks... Like, is it okay for that to happen? What tasks is it not okay? And I think then, you know, others kinda pick up and learn from that. But, you know, I do think that like the rhythm that we've created, the show and tell rhythm, the, you know, the internal hackathons, this ability to bring in other experts, we do a lot of like, I do a lot of conversations with other finance leaders, and I try to bring in some of that intel internally so that it can get disseminated. I think my leaders are also doing that too, which is really cool to see. I think everyone right now is trying to learn from one another, which is which is really cool to see. [00:30:18] S1: Nice.
00:30:18 · Seema Amble, Ivan Makarov
[00:30:18] S1: Nice. [00:30:19] S2: Yeah. I feel like one of the common themes that are coming up in my conversations with CFOs or directors of finance, or even just individual contributors, is that they're finding it's really fun to be working again. Because before, it was like you're reconciling something for two weeks or three weeks, and you're closing the books for two or three weeks Yeah. Or continuously. And and now it just feels like people are really turning their eyes towards the business and are able to surface insights business and all of that. There's just a lot of excitement around what's possible with AI, what's possible with vertical solutions. One of the things I'm I'm I'm curious to go back on the buy scenario, I was talking to one of our hyper growth companies the other day, and they said, we just have to buy everything off the shelf. We're moving so fast. Do you ever feel that way? Like, maybe billing is a longer path than just buying one of the solutions out there?
00:31:08 · Praveer Melwani
[00:31:08] S0: I think for, like, the core systems of record solutions and, like, the things that, like, we just can't mess up, like, yes, we're going and buying solutions for that. The areas where I think our team is having a lot of fun, it's the... You know, it's kinda where you're going. It's like the workflow automation. Like, what are the areas where if I think about my day, like, I'm almost, like, not thinking. And how can I go and augment my day to day so I can, go and reorchestrate how I wanna spend my time? I also fully, fully agree with the sentiment that you're sharing that the work has gotten... The work is always gonna be interesting, but the work has gotten more fun because you can explore things more quickly. I've had folks on my team come up to me being like, holy shit. I actually am having a ton of fun, and I actually think that the policies that we created and the freedom we've given folks to explore are the reasons why some folks are like, I wanna stay here. I really, really like what I'm doing. And I think, you know, I I don't know if folks are actually treating access tech technology as, like, a recruiting vehicle as much as they could or should. You know, I've at least started to do that in the recruiting conversations since I started to hear that from the team, Especially when you're trying to pull from folks who are not necessarily in technology, they're like, oh my gosh. This is like my my front end... Or my front entrance into, like, an entirely new world. And if I'm empowered to learn, like, this is really cool. Yeah. You know, I actually would be... I mean, I I know other people maybe are gonna steal this now, but, like, for me, that was actually one of the really fun things to do.
00:32:30 · Ivan Makarov, Praveer Melwani, Seema Amble
[00:32:30] S2: I agree. I actually... I have this idea too that I think we need to start talking about this. Like, we talk about perks and benefits. You get x, y, and z if you come to work here. They might... Your former employee [00:32:40] S0: Yeah. [00:32:40] S2: Employer doesn't let you available, and now you also get access to all these models or other tools. [00:32:44] S0: Yeah. Yeah. And I I think it's not just that, but then it's also, like, if you if you have folks understand what are other people building around them, and so much of what you're gonna learn is through osmosis of what others have built to. And so if you get this feeling that, like, you're joining an organization that's not just saying that they're... That they give access to these things, but they're actually building and that you can see it and you can feel it through the interview process, those are the places I'd gravitate to. So [00:33:06] S1: in 2020, my partner Angela and I wrote this piece on how CFOs needed modern tools. We had this pyramid diagram in there, which was essentially saying that the finance team was spending all their time on this, like, data reconciliation layer. And at the top, which was the smallest amount of time, was being spent on strategic finance or, like, strategy questions. I'm curious if your time... You've, you know, actually seen your time and your team's time unlock, not just on doing things they enjoy more, but, like, being more strategic or being able to weigh in on more decisions or, like, how has that changed your your role?