In this episode of Controllers Classified, Ron Cook, VP/Controller at Lightcast, shares insights on managing change and leading teams throughout an illustrious 30-year career, as well as where he sees remote work and the advancement of AI having the most impact in accounting and finance.
In this episode of Controllers Classified, Brex’s CAO Erik Zhou dives deep into the evolution of accounting and finance with guest Ron Cook, the VP/Controller at Lightcast. Ron shares invaluable insights from his illustrious 30-year career on the past, present, and future states of accounting, on-the-job anecdotes (ever migrated ERPs in the middle of a pandemic?), and lessons learned along the way (“Leadership is an art. It’s not a science.”).
Erik and Ron also explore the transformative impact of remote work culture on the accounting profession, delving into its challenges, benefits, and opportunities. The conversation pivots to AI and automation as Ron sheds light on where he thinks AI can have the most accounting impact — and what he thinks AI cannot do. He also shares his top skill for managing people and the one line on a job candidate’s resume that still stands out today.
Key Quotes:
“A long time ago someone told me that you're born with two ears and one mouth, [so] you should listen twice as much as you should talk. So I always listen to people, try to get to what they're seeing, read their body language, understand what they're doing, and just be compassionate. And I think that goes a long way in leadership.”
“I think what people don't like is if you tell them this is what you have to do. When you're working on a big-scale ERP or a big project and you have months or years to go, giving people the option to be involved or how to be involved, I think people respect that. You've taken the time to talk to them, to say, ‘Hey, what is your opinion here?’”
“Does [AI] do 80 or 90% of the work for you and help you be efficient? Yes. But does it require you to sit down and look and make sure that [the outputs are] all 100% accurate? I also say yes. So I think [AI success happens] in combination with a person with a brain that can look at it and say, this makes sense or not.”
“I think integrity is something that will follow you the rest of your life. I think that not only in the accounting profession, but in life in general. Integrity and being honest and being open upfront will open a lot of doors and will make you successful.”
“In any company, people [are] your best resource, and you need to learn to take care of people as the world adapts.”
Time stamps:
[01:35] Intro/Journey to Success
[4:39] How Ron went from analog accounting to the digital world of accounting today
[17:10] When to use AI and understanding its limitations for accounting
[23:45 ] Advice and tips during large scale ERP implementations
[31:03] Ron's craziest accounting debacle
Links:
0:00:02.2 Ron Cook: I think what people don't like when you're working on a big scale ERP or a big project and you have months or years to go, giving people the option to be involved or how they'd be involved. I think people respect that you've taken the time to talk to them to say, "Hey, what is your opinion here?"
[music]
0:00:17.4 Speaker 2: Welcome to Controllers Classified, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the dynamic world of controllers, accountants and finance leaders. And hear how their ever evolving roles are redefining accounting and the future of business. And now here's your host, Erik Zhou.
0:00:38.4 Erik Zhou: Hello and welcome to Controllers Classified, I'm your host Erik Zhou, I'm the Chief Accounting Officer of Brex, and I'm really proud to have our very first guest on the show today, Ron Cook. Now, Ron is the vice president and controller of Lightcast, and he spent the last 30 years leading teams working through all kinds of financial and accounting processes and issues at his companies. He maintains a fiery passion for special projects, especially in large scale ERP and system implementations. And Ron, I'd like to first thank you for being here.
0:01:10.9 Ron Cook: Thank you Erik. It's great to be here.
0:01:12.6 Erik Zhou: Maybe to kickoff, why don't you tell us a little bit about Lightcast and your role at the company?
0:01:16.6 Ron Cook: Lightcast is a global pioneer in the collection and data analysis of information on the labor markets. Our data provides the world's most detailed information about occupations, skills that are in demand and career pathways. We have job posting and career profiles for more than 50,000 website sources every day, and we have a database of more than a billion technical and historical job postings. Our clients include businesses, educators, government and big Fortune 500 companies. We have more than 700 employees today in more than seven countries.
0:01:50.7 Erik Zhou: Great. Thank you. And I know you've been working in the finance side of the house for a lot of different companies over the last 25 to 30 years. Can you tell me what's been the most rewarding parts of your different roles and jobs at different companies?
0:02:05.4 Ron Cook: Yeah, I think the most rewarding thing that I've experienced in my time is seeing people exceed, I think hard work and dedication trumps a good resume. So I've had a lot of people working on my team who started, maybe they didn't have experience, but their hard work and dedication and my mentoring which allowed them to advance and to grow. I've have several people, the accounting manager, one person in the controller ranks that I've helped out. One of them didn't have the accounting degree, my boss, the CFO, said, "Oh we shouldn't hire this person." They're now a controller of a major company. So I take great pride in mentoring people and helping them to grow and expand, and as long as someone has good work ethic and is happy to work hard, I think they're gonna have good success.
0:02:45.6 Erik Zhou: And do you... Does that come from your own personal experience in the area growing up in the industry so to speak?
0:02:54.2 Ron Cook: My dad was a teacher, my mom was a nurse and so no one in my immediate family was in business. I went to a school, Pacific Lutheran University up in the Seattle area and I took a class my first year in college from a lady who had just come back from two years in Italy and she was on the International Accounting Standards Board for Italy. And she had such a passion about what she was doing, I had never thought about going into accounting, I was gonna go into maybe business or marketing. But she was so passionate about what she did and the help that she did and the clients that she had served in Italy, she was Italian, was multilingual. And so that passion kind of rubbed off on me and she became my mentor and a couple years later I became a CPA and here I am many years later as a controller.
0:03:36.9 Erik Zhou: Best job you could've ever asked for.
0:03:39.7 Ron Cook: Best job ever. That's right.
[laughter]
0:03:41.8 Ron Cook: Sometimes I feel like I'm the air traffic controller saying, "Yes, stop, go, no, you can't do that." Some people view me as a policeman, yeah, but it's a great job.
0:03:49.7 Erik Zhou: Were there any critical moments in your career where you said... Where it really clicked for you what you wanted to do and the method and way in which you wanted to go about your work? Just out of curiosity.
0:04:03.1 Ron Cook: I started my career up in the Seattle area working for a big tech company and my boss was Japanese from Tokyo and did not speak a lot of English, and so he had a translator. And so I was kind of stuck, every time I went into his office the translator would speak and do that, and I had a big team of about 30 people, I started there as an accountant and over 10 years there I got promoted up through the ranks to a controller. And so I left after being a controller there for about four years, and what I learned was people look for leadership and people like to be led and people also like to be listened to. I've always heard... Long time ago someone told me that you're born with two ears and one mouth, means you should listen twice as much as you should talk. So I always listen to people, try to get to what they're seeing, read their body language, understand what they're doing, and just be compassionate. And I think that that goes a long way in leadership, leadership is an art, it's not a science, it's something that's learned over time. But I think listening to people being compassionate goes a long way.
0:05:00.8 Erik Zhou: Over your career, what are some of the biggest trends or changes that you've seen in the field that have really changed the way people in our industry work?
0:05:09.3 Ron Cook: Yeah. Well, when I started, I'm saying my age here, but when I started there were no cell phones and there was not Excel. And so it's hard for people today, if you didn't have a phone and you didn't have Excel, how would you do accounting, right? So technology has certainly changed a lot, Zoom has been a valuable resource, I personally have been working from home for about four years, and without Zoom it would not be possible. But now with Zoom I'm able to talk to people around the world, I have staff and we have team members at Lightcast in all the different countries, I'm able to talk to them.
0:05:40.6 Ron Cook: And so technology, cell phone, Excel, ERP integration, all of that has come light years since when I first started and it's allowed people... When I first started we had people that were just data punch errors, the data punch people, all they did was keying, whether it's accounts payable, payroll time sheets, they were just sitting there keying non-stop. Now we don't have so many of those and so the accounting professional I think has really advanced in that people are doing data analysis, not data entry. We don't need that, a computer can see how many hours or how many sales or how many widgets you sold, but the people in accounting now are analyzing what's been happening and adding back to, we wanna be of benefit to the company.
0:06:19.0 Erik Zhou: Let's go back to something you mentioned about using Zoom and how it has really impacted your work, right? And it's obviously impacted all the businesses and industries, certainly in the US, people are working remote, people are doing work from home. I still read articles in the Wall Street Journal and many other publications that debate, is work from home okay? Should everyone be in office? Downtowns across big cities in America are crumbling because people aren't coming to the office, people complain that they're not getting enough collaboration done with just Zoom, etcetera. And I'd like to bring it to accounting 'cause I do think there are some departments in companies where being remote even the whole team being remote it probably works and even makes them more effective 'cause they're all individual contributors. Right? And then there are other kinds of functions that are more collaborative that require a lot of groupthink, etcetera. Or not groupthink but a lot of people working in a conference room on a whiteboard. Where do you think accounting falls there and what is the right balance for your team?
0:07:21.1 Ron Cook: I think accounting has had to adapt. At my prior employer we were a big technology company and in February, notice the date, in February of 2020 we signed a 15 year lease for a couple floors in a downtown high rise in Los Angeles. And in February 2020 we moved in with these high hopes. Yay, we're in a perfect space. We've been working at it for three years. You know what happened in March of 2020, the whole world shut down. So we were in the middle of a big ERP implementation to Oracle and we got sent home and everyone literally freaked out. They're like, we have six months left to go. We previously every day spent two or three hours together in a conference room on a big whiteboard mapping out what we're gonna do. And now we had people, I mean, I'm not exaggerating, I had three or four people on my team who had never used a laptop, they only had a desktop. So when we give a laptop to go home they didn't know how to use the mouse, they didn't know how to set it up, they didn't know what Zoom was. So was it easy? No. Did people have to adapt? Yes. Did I spend a lot of hours and people crying on the phone saying I don't like a computer, I don't know how to get this to work. But I think that, that people are resilient and because we didn't have a choice because especially California was locked down, you couldn't basically go out of your house for a long time.
0:08:36.3 Ron Cook: We had no choice but to make the decision to figure out how to make it work. And we did it and the implementation was successful. We were a month behind our normal schedule. But that's understandable knowing that the whole world was on lockdown. So I think when people get used to it, if they're mentored and monitored, I think it's a great resource. I've been four years, coming up in a couple months, I'll be four years that I've been working remotely from home. It has great flexibility. I'm able to hire people remotely. Like my last job we hired a good treasury executive in New York City even though our offices was in LA, that would not have been possible if I were saying the person has to be in the office. So I think that working from home enables you to find the right talent and makes you much more marketable as a company.
0:09:22.7 Erik Zhou: Now that you guys are fully remote and you guys have... I believe it's a global workforce, you have people that are outside of the US working for Lightcast as well, right?
0:09:32.5 Ron Cook: Yes. Lightcast, I wouldn't say, my prior job we were fully remote because of the pandemic. Now at Lightcast I still have a core, there's a core group of people in our corporate office in Idaho but a lot of the people, myself, my boss, CEO, several people I've hired are all remote. And so sort of the mandate of the rule is you'll hire the best person possible. If you find someone in Idaho, that's great. If you find someone remote that's great too. We have offices in seven foreign countries and we have people working there. We have some offices specifically in London and UK, some of the others smaller places, people working remotely from home. But I think that it works. And for a small company or a startup company who's looking to branch out, one of our big initiatives is to work in a global workforce and to increase our size and scale and presence outside the US working remotely and not having to start with the financial burden of a on site brick-and-mortar office is really helpful.
0:10:28.2 Erik Zhou: I agree with that. I agree with kind of what you're saying related to finding the best talent anywhere now, whereas previously you would've probably been very pretty narrow in your search. You have to find people around Idaho, right?
0:10:41.9 Ron Cook: Right.
0:10:42.2 Erik Zhou: And for better or for worse now the pool for all the workers that could be in your department or other departments at Lightcast is around the whole country. And because you have a bigger pool you have a bigger better talent hopefully...
0:10:55.2 Ron Cook: Right.
0:10:55.1 Erik Zhou: At the company. So that's great.
0:10:55.2 Ron Cook: If you're looking for a treasury person the majority of big treasury people are probably in New York and Manhattan, if I was going... Even as big as LA is, if I said I have to find a treasury person who specializes in securities in LA, much harder than opening the market to New York. So that's a big plus.
0:11:10.7 Erik Zhou: Yeah, 100% agree with that. On the point about global, you have employees everywhere in the US, you also have employees in other countries and jurisdictions outside of the US. How has that impacted operations at Lightcast specifically and what are some of the things you have to do maybe to manage spend across all these different subsidiaries and jurisdictions?
0:11:34.0 Ron Cook: Yeah, you have to spend time. I think Brex has certainly helped but I think you have to spend time understanding what the rules are and what the expectations are in different countries, in Europe and Western Europe for example a lot of people travel by train much more than airplane and train wasn't even on our radar. And so the first time we got Brex cars and they went to some people in Italy they said, well, where's the category for trains? And somewhat because in the US, I mean, Amtrak I think is still around but not a lot of people take train as a mode of operation. And so someone said, well, where's the train operation? Someone on my team actually laughs. And I said, this is not a joke. In Europe they primarily do that. So I think that it's important to meet people where they are, talk to them, understand that. So when we were rolling out Brex for example in Europe I had several meetings with them to understand what they needed, what was important to them. They get reimbursed for mileage. Some of the rules in some of the foreign countries require if you're driving more than five miles you get a reimbursement, they take train.
0:12:29.8 Ron Cook: And so we had to adapt to those. The other thing I think is that people, I'm not speaking for anyone of them myself, but I think that in the past people have assumed that the way that US is doing things is always the best and it's not necessarily always the best. And so Lightcast I think is good at expanding our global footprint figuring out what is the best way to get something done. It doesn't matter if it came from someone in Italy or Germany or Canada or India, whatever is the best way to get it done is what we would look at. And so we're open to that. So seeing that we're really one family working on that and finding the best idea regardless of where it came from, we're always open to innovation and looking for the next best thing.
0:13:10.0 Erik Zhou: That's great. So much has changed even just since the pandemic, right? Like you've been talking about. What do you think are some of the biggest changes that are gonna come in the next three to five years from now?
0:13:23.4 Ron Cook: As the workforce is getting older and the labor market is getting tighter, things are changing with AI, which I know we're gonna talk about in a bit, I think that people have to really understand is what is your core? The hardest question that I have to answer now when I interview someone is what is the culture of Lightcast? And you could take out the word Lightcast and say, whatever, what is a culture of Facebook or Google or Amazon or Costco or whatever, because when we were all back in the office, it was pretty easy to say, oh, the dress code is X, lunch hour is Y, I have an open door policy. We offer free snacks, whatever. When you're all working at home, it's hard to say I have an open door policy. Do you say I have an open screen policy?
0:14:05.3 Ron Cook: When I first started, one of the big hurdles was when I was on Zoom and I was working from home, people didn't know whether to see if I was in a meeting or not. And so I was constantly, I'm in the middle of a meeting, I'm presenting to some board or talking to my boss or having a group meeting, and people are always trying to DM me and turn on their camera, right? Then I said, I'm in a meeting. Just because I'm working from home doesn't mean I'm available 24/7. So I think technology is great, but you have to learn kind of when to set boundaries. Now we all have integrated calendars, so if someone wants to speak to me, they can look at my calendar and know when I'm busy, when I'm available, and book a meeting and I have probably five or six meetings put on my calendar every day by people. Sometimes it's banks or audit firms or that kind of thing. Sometimes it's people that work on my team. So I think that it's good, it's a learning curve and, you know, you can't look and see if Ron's in his office or that, but you can look electronically and see a calendar and schedule that out. Also, converse time difference. So if I'm looking to talk to someone in India or Italy, tells me at X time and mine in Los Angeles, what time is it there? So I'm not picking something that's two o'clock in the morning for a foreign operation.
0:15:12.3 Erik Zhou: So you're saying like, and even now, right, coming out of pandemic, people are working hybrid, remote, et cetera, we're still finding our way on how to manage these schedules, boundaries. How do we build better behaviors, frankly?
0:15:27.9 Ron Cook: Right.
0:15:28.0 Erik Zhou: In respecting other people's work and time and like setting aside time also for collaboration while we're remote.
0:15:33.7 Ron Cook: Right. I think so. And I think that companies, I think it's gonna be, a lot of the big tech companies have decided we want, they went from you don't have to work at home at all to now you have to work at home, to now you have to go back in the office to they kind of get in and now you only have two days in the office. I think each company is different. Certainly, you know, I think back to when I had a big ERP implementation, would it have been easier if we were all in the same conference and working on it? A 100% yes. But in the pandemic, especially in California when everything was closed down, that wasn't an option. So you had to adapt and learn to that. Now that people have had, especially the younger generation, you know, in my career even five years ago, it would've been unthinkable that I was not physically driving to an office.
0:16:14.1 Ron Cook: I always had an office. I always had to be there Monday through Friday. Even if I had a dentist appointment, it was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be gone for two hours. How do I block out two hours out of my life because I won't be in the office? And I think work from home, I've interviewed multiple people and I've... Still shocks me, but I've gotten over it, two people and I kept the resumes, the top line in bold says, only considering remote offers. Like, don't even talk to me unless you're willing to say, and these were young people, like a year or two, they're not like they've had years of experience. They're a year or two out of college, but they've just decided with their quality of life or whatever, don't talk to me... It blinks to me in red, don't talk to me unless you want me to be remote. And so I think that, I'm not saying that we need to accept all of that, but I'm saying that a company that is not flexible in hiring the best person wherever they are, I think is gonna miss out.
0:17:07.9 Erik Zhou: And maybe for that company, right, like you just pick and choose. They're self-selecting in or out for different hiring pools. If you immediately say that you're only considering remote, then as a employer, that's just an easy kind of like resume to put in the out pile. Like not to be considered file. So, makes sense. Let's go back to AI actually. 'Cause we did wanna talk about some of this stuff and how it may impact our work over the next three to five years. Where do you think you'll see the most impact from the implementation of AI in finance processes or accounting processes?
0:17:45.2 Ron Cook: I think AI is great. I've used ChatGPT in business and in my personal life, to helping out some friends. I think, in the accounting profession, the rules are generally accepted accounting rules, technical pronouncements change all the time. Every month, every quarter new rules come out, no matter how long you've been working, no matter how experienced you are, even people at Deloitte and EY and the big guys have a hard time keeping up with all the rules. So if a new pronouncement comes into effect or you're working on an acquisition or you have something and you know that there's gonna be accounting rules and you're not sure how to do that, it's very easy to go to ChatGPT and type up, you know, tell me what the latest rules for leases are. Instantly you hit enter it comes back with all of those.
0:18:25.0 Ron Cook: I think, probably my experience has been about 90% of the data that comes back is accurate and it gives you a great headstart or a leg up on doing that. I think where I've found people that fall down is they assume that because it came from a computer or because it came from AI, it's infallible, especially there are some state differences. California specifically has a lot of different rules than other states, and if you click that and you go on Google search and it's a national summary, it may not apply to what you're doing in California or your state. So I think that it is here to stay. I think that people that are not on that train are gonna lose out, because I think it's already left the station as it were. It's already going. And I think people that need to adopt it are going to be the most successful. I think though that AI, without personal involvement, I mean, I know that's like policy. We wanna have AI centered kind of in a combination with a real person, and myself, if someone were to ask me, like if the board came to me or my boss came to me and said, hey, I need the top five topics of some pronouncement or we're looking to buy a company and they're gonna specialize in leases. I need to know the details. I would never simply go to AI.
0:19:30.9 Ron Cook: Ask for the details, don't look at it, cut and paste and send it out, because probably of 10 bullet points, one or two of them probably are not accurate. So it's a combination. Does it do 80% or 90% of the work for you and help you be efficient? Yes. But does it require you to sit down and look and make sure that they're all 100% accurate? I also say yes. So I think it's in combination with a person with a brain that can look at it and say, this makes sense or not. It's gonna be a great resource and it will make people more efficient. That's my thought.
0:20:00.9 Erik Zhou: So you're telling me is that we're still going to have jobs?
0:20:03.3 Ron Cook: I'm planning on having a job.
[laughter]
0:20:06.7 Ron Cook: I think that as of today, I'm not talking about Star Trek or the Jeffersons of the future, but I think that technology is not gonna replace people and their thinking. The other thing someone asked me the other day is, well, what do you think AI can't do? I haven't met an AI computer or Mr. ChatGPT whatever who can manage a team. And so I think managing a team, managing through employee problems, personal problems, taking days off, promotions, people who are happy, unhappy, hiring, firing, all the things you have to do as a management person as you grow, AI can't really assist in that. Now, having said that, at a prior company, I had someone who was an accountant and worked there for three years, and they were going to be promoted. We were considering promoting him to a manager. So I went to ChatGPT and I said, give me the top 10 things that a new manager needs to focus on. Hit enter, it comes back. And I cut those and paste in a document, and I use that as a starting point for a conversation for this person to say, here are things you have to focus on because you've never managed before and you're just, been an employee. Now that you have people reporting to you, here are things you'll have to focus on. So I think it is a good guide, but to answer your question, no, I don't think it's going... You're not gonna have a room with 10 computer screens and not 10 people. I think you need to have 10 people working with the computer.
0:21:26.2 Erik Zhou: And you know what? On your example about a new accounting pronouncement, having an AI read through it, summarize it for you, maybe give you some additional, like the first level of analysis. That's really useful, and it gives you a lot of efficiency, right, from using that tool. There's already examples of people, though, going overboard, right? I saw an article, I forgot exactly where in the country it was, but a lawyer decided to use ChatGPT to write up the case law. They come up with a case law that already exists that supports their argument. Put in the parameters, ChatGPT wrote up a beautiful memo explaining XV, state of Alabama or this versus that, et cetera. And they were all false. They were made up cases. This guy had a 30-year career as a lawyer and got disbarred because of that. So to your point, like we do pretty serious work sometimes. Like this stuff gets reported in public filings. Like if you work in a public company we have a lot of stakeholders that rely on our financial reporting and how we present numbers, et cetera.
0:22:33.7 Erik Zhou: You know, purely relying on a computer without applying human judgment today, at least with how AI is set up today, I agree with you. Like you gotta have, like even when they automated the assembly line, right, and cars began to be put together by robots in the assembly line, you still have the foreman, you still have people monitoring the machines, machines also break down, so you have to, you know, retrain them and like update them, et cetera. So 100% agree with you on that.
0:23:02.8 Ron Cook: Right, and I think the other thing is you have to learn how... I mean, ChatGPT is great, but you have to spend some time and learn about what exactly, in what order you put things in. If you were just to, for example, say I need the accounting pronouncements for leases, chatGPT is worldwide. It could give you the rules for Europe and I'm in the US. And so the rules in Europe, IFRS are different. So you have to be very specific, I want the US Gaap rules for at least where I need this, that applies to the country, or I need something that is applicable to California. So you have to be specific enough, but I'm shocked that the guy was disbarred, but like I said, I would never... I always use this as a starting point. I would never look at it blindly and assume it's 100% accurate. Like some people think, oh, plus on social media, it's accurate. Obviously that's not true. You look at it to determine what applies, what is accurate, what is not. And then adjust it as you need before you send it in or use it.
0:23:58.0 Erik Zhou: Let's move on to a passion of yours, ERP implementations, large scale ERP implementations, I think. Can you share with me lessons learned from one of the most successful implementations that you've had? And perhaps also example of the most challenging one.
0:24:19.3 Ron Cook: Yeah, I think the most successful one was at a prior job, a big technology company that I alluded to before. We were a year and a half into a two year implementation of Oracle and we're a large public company. We're an accelerated filer, so we had to file Qs and Ks 45 days after the end of the quarter. Right in the middle, a pandemic happened, we were all sent home. So I was one of the main stakeholders, but I wasn't the overall leader. The overall leader was frequently traveling and was gone. And we would have weekly update calls. And that person was not always on the call. And you could see the morale, the combination of we're on, we're working at home. We can't be in the office. We don't have a whiteboard, full disclosure, we don't have bagels every more. Yes, we used to bring in bagels to the office. Now they're at home and they don't have a free kitchen. And then the ultimate sponsor traveling and being gone a lot, people really looked for a leader., And so I always tried to read the room and even though I wasn't ultimately in charge, I was viewed as a manager. And so I always tried to you know, I ordered some Uber gift cards and I sent them gift cards for lunch and I said, you may not have free bagels, but let's do something Friday. Let's spend an hour and not talk about the ERP system.
0:25:25.8 Ron Cook: Let's just get together and talk about what you get for the weekend. And in California, like sometimes the highlight of my week was I got to go to Costco or I got to go to a supermarket because it was the only thing that was open and it was kind of a dark time. But I think that whether it be in person or that's not allowed on the Zoom, you need to have compassion, talk to people, find ways to do that. We can't be together, we can't do that. We can screen share, we can do that. I spent a lot of hours at night working on documents and sending it out late at night. So when they came in the morning, they would have that. I said, here's a screen share. Spent way too much time focusing on what people had done and purposely doing after hours emails so that when someone woke up, the first thing in the morning they would see is, "Hey, I got an email from Ron. Ron appreciates me." Or I would call out, "Hey, you did this project or worked on this line item and we're ahead of schedule. Thanks so much." Here's an Amazon gift card or Friday we're getting together.
0:26:17.6 Ron Cook: So I think that people in any company, Lightcast is no exception, people is your best resource and you need to learn to take care of people. And the world adapts, was no one's fault that COVID happened, but everyone had to adapt to that. And so I think that companies and managers that understand that and figure out a way to work, we were all in the pandemic. Some companies survived, some companies closed, some companies are still hanging on. But I think that managers that exceeded understand that change is part of the universe and of the world. Change always happens. Hopefully we're not gonna have another pandemic soon. But things that don't happen you can't bury your head in the sand. You just need to say, I'm gonna adapt and figure out how to go forward.
0:27:00.2 Erik Zhou: You talk about people being the biggest resource. I agree with you, right? It's a knowledge industry that we're in. We need those people to have the knowledge, have the right skills to do the work. When it comes down to an implementation, some of the challenges that I found is, well, it's the same team that has, we call it BAU here, business as usual. They still have to do the daily entries, the day-to-day processing, the month end close. Oh, and by the way, that same workload, let's just add on a whole implementation on top. So how... Like in that scenario where you were implementing such a large system and then the pandemic happened, what was your strategy on the people side there?
0:27:36.8 Ron Cook: We had a budget for a consulting firm and the managers could decide if they were going to have the consulting firm assist with the implementation or if they were gonna do what, in your case, BAU, business as usual. So, for example, if we had someone processing accounts payable, accounts receivable, we could decide would the consultants be doing the AP and the AR so our employee could focus on the ERP or would the consultants focus... And we had about 1/2, 50/50 and we weren't dictatorial. We didn't say you have to do this or you have to do that. We said, the manager, you can decide. And I think that the managers really liked having the option to do that.
0:28:14.5 Ron Cook: And some of the managers, and I was one of them, I went to my team and I said, "okay, I'm making this up. I have two consultants. We have one AP one AR," and I went to the AP and AR team. Some of them had never been on ERP, full disclosure, two of them got so freaked out. They said, "I don't know what ERP is, I wanna stay and do my day job." But one of them was like, "I would love... I'll throw my hand in the air." And so I went to my team and said, we have one consultant, one person on my AP team was excited about getting involved in the ERP. So we took the consultant, had them work with my existing AP team to process. And the one person on my team who raised their hand and said, I'll take a risk, was on the ERP implementation and she did a great job.
0:28:53.4 Ron Cook: So I think that people like being... What people don't like is if you tell them this is what you have to do. Now, I'm not saying there are not cases, like if we're coming up to an audit or you're working on processing payroll and there's a payroll deadline, if you don't get the time cards done by Wednesday at noon, you won't be paid. That there's not an option. But when you're working on a big scale ERP or a big project and you have months or years to go, giving people the option to be involved or how to be involved, I think people respect that you've taken the time to talk to them to say, "Hey, what is your opinion here? I'm asking you to be involved. What level of involvement do you want?"
0:29:30.4 Erik Zhou: I really like that strategy. I'm gonna take that away. This idea that for the consulting firm to come in. 'Cause I already know, like, it's not just at this company that I'm at right now, but also my past experiences and I was an auditor for a long time at Price Waterhouse Coopers. But I've met a lot of different accountants across a lot of different companies and you can kind of tell for some people if they just wanna do the AP processing or the AR processing or whatever their BAU is day to day. And then also some people who are, have a sense of curiosity, they wanna explore more, they wanna dive deeper into, in fact they may be better or likely are better than the consultant in thinking about how best to implement this new system with the existing process. So yeah, I guess, yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be... It shouldn't be of all or one, all or nothing. That's right.
0:30:18.9 Ron Cook: It shouldn't be all of one. And I think I 100% agree with you. The two things I would say is that if you force someone who really doesn't wanna do it, it's not gonna end well. So if one of those people on my AP team had said, "I don't wanna do it, I don't know what ERP is," It's like, dragging, kicking and screaming and says you're gonna do this, it wouldn't have ended well. I also don't think that if you take consultants and put them in another role and they have no history about what your company does, you're not getting as good an effect as you are with a mix. I think we were successful because we had consultants and people from our company who were working together in the room and then virtually on Zoom to get it done. And we need the people with experience the consultants had. We've done many, many ERP implementations and the people in our business knew our business, knew our customers, knew the processes, knew our software, and it was both sides working together that enabled us to be successful.
0:31:10.3 Erik Zhou: All right, it's time for the last segment of the podcast where we talk about how controllers are fun too. And Ron, just curious, what is the funniest accounting debacle that you've ever seen?
0:31:26.0 Ron Cook: About 5 years into my career, after I graduated, I was accounting manager. Long time ago we were implementing an ERP system, back then, the standard was you would do a parallel testing, meaning you had your current existing system or your new system for probably two month end closes. The people in data entry or accounting were being in invoices of both systems to make sure there were no differences. So I had one lady on my AP team and we had had multiple, like a month... Okay, this is starting in a month, it's starting in two weeks, starting a week, beginning July 1st, you're gonna have two months key everything, and this was back in the day when everything came in by paper. So every day the mail would come and we delivered. She'd sit and open our invoices.
0:32:08.1 Ron Cook: And she was processing that and my office was a long ways away from where her cubicle was. And so I didn't see her. And so after we've been doing this about 3 weeks I was walking around, I was in the county air and I was talking and we're getting ready to go to lunch. And I looked down and I noticed that in her desk drawer there were all of these papers sticking out of her desk drawer. And I just, I thought that was on. And I so just out of habit I looked at it, I said, Gee, what's in this drawer? And I opened it and it was completely crammed full of invoices. I mean, we're not talking about one or two, like I mean, literally it was probably hundreds. And I looked at her and I said, "What are these?" And she got red and she said, "Well, you know, you told us we had to do parallel but that's twice the work and I didn't have time to do it." And so I said, "So what was your strategy?"
0:32:55.7 Ron Cook: And she said, "Well, I thought the best thing to do is I would just process every other one". And so I said "What?" And she said, "I wish I would get the mail. And I would put them in alphabetical order and I would take the first invoice and I would process it. And I didn't have time for the second so I just put it in a desk drawer." So for three weeks she was literally processing 50% of the accounts payable invoices and 50% inside a desk drawer. So I said this is not acceptable. So I said, "We need to go in the conference room and we need to go through these 'cause I need to figure out how bad is this?"
0:33:28.1 Ron Cook: "How much money are we behind?" And so there were so many she had, for some reason I think she was a shoe person, she had two shoe boxes under her desk. And so she literally crammed and stuffed all these invoices, took two shoe boxes, made it into the conference room and we sent them out and they were over 150 invoices that had not been paid that we had to figure out how to process the pay and do that. So as a result I often thought that I should start a startup company on the side called Shoebox Accounting because I just thought I've had friends that do taxes for example and they said their worst nightmares on April 14th the day before the deadline, someone will come in with a shoebox of receipts and put it on the desk and say do my taxes. This was a similar situation. So it was a mess. We got through it. She didn't last long at the company for a number of reasons but I just, I couldn't believe that she didn't come to me or the supervisor, she said, "Well, I was trying to solve the problem on my own." And I said, "You think that not processing half of the invoices is a good solution?" So that's definitely a fail and that's something that did not go well.
0:34:33.1 Erik Zhou: Do you do you think about that time and how you've come up with this strategy for the consultants and maybe that's something that led you to... Like maybe we should use consultants and like do both the...
[laughter]
0:34:42.9 Ron Cook: Yeah, I think so. I think you need to get people involved. I think that a lot of things, you know, today for example, like company a lot of, we have aliases so we are not getting a lot of paper mail, almost everything is email. And it doesn't go to Barbara, Joe or Sue. It goes to AP at your company. AP at our Lightcast for example. And so we can monitor it electronically. There's also ways we use a software system that works with our Google Mail and it sorts that and allows that to see. And so the manager can see what invoices have been processed and what haven't. So there's an example that technology has really helped, but I think it's important when you're doing an ERP especially, the first question I always ask when we're going to ERP is I look around the room and I say, honest answer, who has never been through an ERP implementation?
0:35:25.7 Ron Cook: And my experience has been probably half the team, it's totally new to them. They don't know what to expect. They're used to coming in sitting down at established workstation at a computer and a software. They're trained on that software and then they've been doing it for years and that's what they know. Moving from software A to software B is the big deal. You have to learn all the new keystrokes and menus and options of what you can and cannot do and the functionality. And if you've never been through it, it is really... You know, change is hard for a lot of people. And so I always start off by saying who hasn't been through our system? Find out who that is and then maybe have a separate session with them just to tell them what they can expect. My door or my Zoom screen, the team knows is always open. So if they have a question they call or text me or Slack me and we go through that. But I keep in close touch because I do not wanna repeat having someone feel like the only option is to process 50% of their work because otherwise they'll get behind, that's not a way to win.
0:36:22.0 Erik Zhou: Well, Ron, I really appreciate your story about shoe boxes. Shoe boxes, plural, full of invoices.
0:36:27.2 Ron Cook: Shoe boxes. It took two. Yeah, more than one.
0:36:30.6 Erik Zhou: Yeah. To wrap up, one thing that I'd be curious on from you is what's some of your advice for up and coming controllers or people looking to become accounting and finance executives in the world today?
0:36:45.1 Ron Cook: I think integrity is something that will follow you the rest of your life. I think that not only in the accounting profession but in life in general. Integrity and being honest and being open upfront will open a lot of doors, will make you successful. Nothing to stop you in the accounting world. You have to be a CPA. You certainly have to have a level of technical experience but dealing with people and dealing with them integrity, also get back to what I said that someone a long time ago told me we have 2 ears and one mouth. You should listen more than you should talk. A lot of people get in a room especially if they're managerial they think their job is just to talk and they talk and talk and talk. You're doing this wrong, you're doing this right. You know, do this, you're late or whatever. I oftentimes start discussions by saying, tell me how you think this experience went and then just pause and let them tell me. And oftentimes I find, like especially in reviews, if I'm getting a review of an employee and I think it's gonna be a difficult review, I start by asking them how do you think the last 6 months went? And if they're honest, probably 80% of the time they will come back with what exactly I was gonna say but it's a lot easier because they've said it first. So two way communication is important, integrity is very important and just listening to people.
0:38:00.6 Ron Cook: So a lot of people when they ask me this are shocked that I'm not talking about, oh, you have to learn debits equals credits or learn to do a pivot table or write a formula in Excel. Obviously those are standard and people that are CPAs do all that stuff and that's obvious. But I think it's the people side that is missing in some people that don't advance. So people have been doing accounting a long time and maybe who've never gotten above the accounting manager rule. Why is that? People and people management which is an art as much as a science, something you need to learn. And that's very important as you advance in your career.
0:38:32.8 Erik Zhou: 100%. You know, there's all these technologies that we talked about today with those Zoom and other softwares that are supporting us working remotely. There's AI that's coming up. It's gonna have a huge impact on our industry. The art of communication, the art of working with people, the art of collaboration, they're timeless. You know, those aren't going away. So 100% agree with you. Thank you Ron for joining us today on our very first episode of Controllers Classified. I really appreciate you joining us, and for the audience, thank you for listening in and hope to see you next time. Thanks.
0:39:08.9 Ron Cook: Thanks Erik.
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0:39:09.9 Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in to Controllers Classified, presented by Brex. Brex is an AI driven spend platform with global corporate cards, expense management, reimbursements and travel. Visit brex.com and follow Brex on social to see how they can take your accounting game and your company to new heights.