What’s In Your Tech Stack?
ERP: Microsoft Dynamics
Planning and Close: OneStream
Analytics and BI: Power BI
HCM/Payroll: Workday
Other applications used: Valify, SpendMend and RCM applications. Under consideration currently: FloQast, Malbek, Navan
I am currently looking at various P2P solutions.
What’s your joy and what’s your headache?
Joy: My favorite measure of success is silence. The phones stop ringing. The escalation emails stop coming. The team needing a war room every close now runs the cycle on a Tuesday. Somewhere in there I made people’s lives easier. I made what looked impossible look routine. I pulled people into roles bigger than the ones they saw for themselves. Then I disappeared from the day-to-day. The system, the process and the people work without me. The best version of this job is the version where you are not in it anymore.
Headache: The system goes live and the spreadsheets do not die. You build the platform, retire the old process, train the team. Three weeks in, the senior analyst keeps the real forecast on his desktop. The controller has a side notebook. The plant manager runs inventory in a sheet nobody else sees. By month-end leadership is reconciling versions instead of making decisions. The shadow file is rarely about distrust of the system. It is about distrust of being held accountable to a single number. As long as two versions of the truth exist, nobody owns the wrong one. The technology is never the hard part. The habits are.
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you make software companies do for you?
True total cost of ownership upfront, including the consulting hours customers will need three years in.
Hold implementation partners accountable for outcomes, not hours billed.
Stop selling capabilities the product does not yet deliver.
Simplify licensing so a CFO does not need a translator to read the contract.
Build for the finance user, not the IT buyer.
What’s your best piece of tech advice for others in your job?
Start with the decision, not the tool. Companies spend millions on dashboards nobody uses because nobody asked what question the dashboard was supposed to answer. Before you sign anything, write down what you need to know, how often, how fast and who acts on it. Then buy the software.
