Where Systems, Teams and Finance Come Together

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:39

So I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed recording it.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So I worked started off in a small local practice, which was a real close-knit team. There was probably about nine of us there. And I worked there for three years. And because it was a small local practice, I could get involved in every area of finance that they dealt with. So I ran payroll and had payroll clients. I ran VAT, had VAT clients, even went out and attended audits. And I did everything from collecting a bag of receipts up into tax returns for sole traders, partnerships, and limited companies.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

How did you get into finance, Daniel? Because obviously that was your first job, but how did you did you always want to be in finance, or was it kind of by design or by fluke?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

By pure accident, is how I ended up in finance. I applied for anything and everything. I remember actually being quite keen on a horticultural job at the time that came up at the same time as a finance one. And I went for the interview and ended up working in practice. So it really was a good move for me because my skill set kind of suits that. So I started doing my HCCA while I was there, but kind of always had this desire to really be able to shape the business I was in and certainly move up to being an FD. So as I left the practice, I had a variety of roles moving around and collecting specific skills that would help me as I moved on through my career. That coupled with doing the exams kind of would give me the both the practical as well as the examination qualifications. So I had a predominantly sales ledger role for a couple of years, moved to a business did predominantly purchase ledger for a couple of years, went to another business as financial accountant, so working on reconciliations, balance sheet rex, PLEX. Then I went to a business as a company accountant, which was quite dealing with the audit and dealing with the financial statements and a bit more your stereotypical accountancy role. And then from there I decided that I needed to put my own stamp on things. So I went to a small business that had just been acquired by a larger one, and it was my job to go in there as the finance manager and really put a stamp on their finance department.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

It was only a very small business, turned over to three to four million pounds. But I was able to shape that finance department, put the processes, procedures in place, implement the software of the lady that worked for me, and really make that what it was at that point in time. I then continued qualifying and then moved into another role where I became a company accountant again, and that one was where I qualified, so I did around about three years there, qualified and decided that I needed to go to a bigger company, which is where I had my first experience of private equity. So I went to a business that had come out of a pre-PAC administration, and I came in there really on the basis that I had had experience shaping finance teams before early in my career, and they needed someone to take over that and really transform it as it had gone into liquidation prior to them acquiring it. That was a really interesting role, really challenging. I was there for a few years, and unfortunately, that business didn't succeed, despite you know quite quite a lot of good effort there going into it. It was just in a challenging market. And then I moved from there to my current role, again a PE backed role, where I've come in with the remit to consolidate the business into one group and drive financial transformation with a planned exit at some point in the future.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Wow, so quite a varied career there, you know, quite a lot going on. How important do you think those early years in that kind of transactional base, setting those, you know, setting the foundation, how important do you think that has been in in kind of driving your career and giving you that first go, if you will?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, I think those years I couldn't be who I am today without doing those early years, unless you have done roles where you have sat there and processed thousands and thousands of sales invoices and thousands and thousands of purchase invoices, and you and you've hit those roadblocks, whether it's suppliers that are invoices different to purchase orders, if it's customers that are struggling to pay, and they're giving you a variety of excuses to why. It's very difficult then for you to run a team with those roles in it if you don't truly understand what goes into making those roles up. Having a variety of backgrounds and working for a variety of businesses also gave me a lot of experience of what processes do work, what processes don't work, which directors I did enjoy working for, those that I didn't, why didn't I? And uh you can implement those. So they really, you know, experience, good or bad, shapes you for the better, I think, in in most situations. So having that background, that variety of experience really gives me a very good foothold and a very good understanding of what the team's doing here and allows me to change things for the better for them because I know the challenges first hand.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Okay, great. You obviously went from some smaller business then into a big, larger company. What was the big challenges that you faced into that? Because it sounds like that was going through quite a tumultuous time in its own right.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yes, everything just gets a little bit bigger, but the basics of most of the experience I had was there, both going into my prior role and into this role. Systems get bigger and more transactions exist, but if you've got a bigger team, you can still manage that. So challenges are different, reporting requirements are much larger. Some of the smaller businesses I worked at didn't require audits, so having to step change into a business that does require an audit certainly is a is a change. Having to consider different tax implications, VAT thresholds, maybe you're trading abroad, and so there's different tax rates that you need to be using and registering for VAT in Europe. So everything just gets a little bit more complex, but in theory, your team should get a little bit better as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Okay. What was it like going into that business? Because you mentioned that it kind of came out of kind of a pre-pack, and unfortunately, after a you know, a couple of years, it you know, it couldn't it couldn't survive, unfortunately. What was that time like and what were some of the things and challenges you know that you were doing during that time there?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

It was a it was a good part of my career, uh despite what happened, because it was a learning exercise, and there was a lot of things to learn. It it was definitely under pressure. It was my first time working with private equity and and their requirements and expectations. But the biggest challenge, particularly in the pre-PAC one, and definitely being in a challenging market, was cash flow and having to manage that, particularly when it came to a month end, for example, and you are looking at paying the suppliers or paying the staff, you know, that does add a lot of pressure to it. So in those situations, your communication skills really come out, and having to sit down and work with the suppliers and agree reasonable payment plans with them and keep them up to date and keep them on the side really buys you a lot of good grace so that you can work through that challenge. But yeah, that was definitely the most difficult. So my cash flow management skills are certainly enhanced working in that that company.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Yeah, and I guess to a certain extent, stakeholder management as well. Because when you move into these roles, you don't necessarily come with those tough skills. You know, you've been really technical and and it's all been kind of theory at that point. Suddenly it's, you know, as you say, managing some fairly kind of robust conversations at that point.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Exactly that. And I think that's where it it goes back to our earlier point there on how those roles, having predominantly purchase ledger or predominantly sales ledger roles, age you as you get further on in your career because you do speak to external stakeholders there. You are dealing with customer queries, you are dealing with supplier queries, and so you're picking up these soft skills as you move through and how to deal with different people. And so, yes, there's a lot more value in the soft skills when it comes to points like that, and you need to have a rapport with people, people that may just want you to pay and are not interested in the backstory, but you've got to get them on board and you've got to explain to them when you can do it, and then meet those deadlines and build that trust with them, and then explaining that through to the board of directors and the shareholders on how we're moving forward with this plan, whether it's communicating with suppliers or HMRC or the shareholders or staff, then those skills are very, very valuable.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yeah, and it's it's a really tough place to be when when cash is tight and you're managing all that, and and you mentioned it yourself around the amount of pressure that actually you can be under at that point. How do you kind of deal with that and and what kind of advice can you give people about and that how to manage those situations?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

I've always been very level-headed, so I've always had a really good ability to deal with stress personally, so that's why I've sort of thrown myself into these kind of high pressure environments because I can I can deal with it. But ultimately, everybody is equal, everyone's there to do the job, to have a nice time at work and to go home. So I don't let any of my frustrations boil over in the workplace, you know, and then outside of work, yeah, you know, going to the gym, spending time with your family. But I've never been one who gets too worked up with it. I'm very pragmatic, I'll think through the process. I'm looking for a solution rather than focusing on the problem and what caused that to arise. I'll be looking at how do we get out of this, what do we need to do, how do we move forwards, what can we learn from this situation? Do we just need a bit of refresher training, something like that? Depending on what it is, rather than focusing on the problem. So something that's always come naturally to me.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Okay. Okay. Has there ever been an instance when you've you've you've really had to kind of dig deep? Is there an example that you could give us maybe that just gives that a little bit of context?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

I don't know. I suggest we'll have to dig deep to not explode.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah, yeah, I mean, the factory is always really great, right? And it can be really, really tough. And some of it's obviously details, you are better at dealing with those situations. But has there been anywhere think that's really challenged you that's made you really kind of go, oh, that was you know, that's really pushed me to my limit? Are you just too chill? Is it I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Generally, if something happens that causes me a bit of stress, I I sort of take it a little bit personally, and it's on me that I've not done, or I maybe not have explained something, or maybe I should have spotted something ahead of time. So to generally I take that, take that on myself and just perhaps be a little frustrated with myself and learn from it and move forwards. But no, nothing's really pushed me straight to that at this moment.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

That's really interesting because if we come back to what you were talking about before, this first kind of role that had the pre-park and everything going on was also in PE ownership. And you know, PE is notoriously difficult to get into. As a CFO who's tried to get into that myself in the past, it is a tough place to be if you've not done it before. So, how did how did that role come about? And actually, what did you find were the biggest differences in being in that PE environment to any of the businesses you'd been in before?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So I think the first step into PE came about because I'd had experience early on in my career in the small subsidiary where I was able to make a finance team. So, although it was only a small acquisition by a parent company, it was the ability to go in, implement a SIS, albeit fairly basic because of the size of turnover, and shape the finance team there. So I think that gave me a bit of experience and a bit of comfort to the PE to take me in at that point in time. Because I know that the PE firms typically want someone who has previously been in PE. So having that really helped me get in there. Once I was in, the dynamics are totally different to an owner-managed business. So I'd previously been at an owner-managed business and then moved into the private equity. And the owner-managed business, we would sit down and talk about things, and there'd be a sort of a plan to implement some change, but there's really no deadlines on it because we fully understand what's happening, and systems have been in place for years this way. So, you know, there's a reluctance to really make any step change. When you enter a PE business, they're typically either the purchase of a distressed asset, and so it does need some fundamental change, or it's an investment cycle where a PE firm is going to invest in a business for three to five years, they're going to exit and they're expecting to make a return on that investment. So again, there needs to be some fairly substantial change in the business. So as a result of that, the pressure does increase because your deadlines that you would typically be working to are now significantly shorter, the changes required are significantly bigger.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

What skills do you think you need to work, you know, to be a CFO in a PE back business? What is it that you need to have that sets you apart?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

So the skills that set you apart when you work for a PE business, these multiple skills, it isn't just one set of skills. It's a variety of things that it depends on what that particular company is going through. But you always need an ability to deliver on a project or multiple projects all at the same time to short timescales. So you cannot keep going back to the board at every board meeting saying that the deadline's been pushed back, we've pushed it back again. We put at some point in time, you do need to deliver on those deadlines. Always in the back of your mind, you need to be almost as a business partner, and you need to be looking to generate shareholder value as well, and then demonstrate how you've delivered shareholder value. When you first work with PE as well, it's a whole host of new reporting requirements. So you would be used to presenting your board pack, but there'll also be certain reports that the private equity house need, and they need to be submitted in their format. And perhaps there's some debt finance on board, and that also requires its own set of reports to be submitted. You need an ability to deal with different stakeholders and deal with them well and communicate with them clearly. Private equity do not like surprises, so you always need to be on the front foot if anything's cropping up and notify them. And there's also a bigger appetite for MA activity in PE. So if you've got an ability and some experience in terms of being able to identify acquisitions, integrate them into the system seamlessly, integrate them into your financials, then that is a real key skill that they'd be looking for. As I said, that PE is typically on a three to five year investment cycle. So all of these things that we're mentioning here need to be implemented quickly, robustly, and always preparing stuff with a view that at some point in time there'll be some DD work coming down and someone will be inspecting everything and you need to have all your books and your records in the correct order. And I suppose I'd add to that as well, an ability to build a finance team, because typically you would be going through growth, you need to be able to recruit the right people, get roles filled, get the systems working, and get reliable data out quickly.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Yeah, so quite a lot altogether in that. There's quite a lot to do in what feels like a very short space of time, too. What can if someone is you know in finance leadership and they're looking to get at you know, get into PE for whatever reason, you know, what kind of advice would you give them to kind of demonstrate some of that if they've not already been in that that kind of environment?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

I would I mean I've always been looking to get involved in as much as possible. So in the current business, get involved in as much as possible and even go above and beyond and produce things that may not be required, but would be useful if you were in another firm, for example. So have you been able to forecast and then do some sensitivity testing on your forecasts and really rigorously test them is key. And that was something that was going to come up when you work in PE: is that you're gonna have to have detailed forecasts backed up by KPIs and all data driven. So that's something that wasn't ever particularly required in some of the private businesses that I worked in, but is required when you work for PE. Well, actually, I've had a head start on that earlier in my career and was familiar with producing them and providing them. That would be a key skill to get. I mean, get getting hold of MA experience is difficult unless the business is actually on that trajectory. Although that wouldn't stop somebody from going ahead and having a look at what other businesses are out there in the same industry and even presenting them to the director of where you work. Doing that exercise can be that you know, you can Google and find businesses that are for sale and have a look at them and request information without wasting any time. Um and basically just pushing, pushing everything you can in that current role to the to the absolute limits that you can do it so that you can go somewhere else and say, I've done X, Y, and Z without that being a stretch. It may not have been required, but you have still been able to produce it.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Just thinking about you know something else that you said earlier around kind of building out finance teams. You know, you've you've done that a couple of times now, actually. You know, and what's the process you go through? You know, what you know, what do you look for in a finance team and how how do you structure your teams?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

For me, one of the things I've always found useful throughout the years is having accountability.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

So having a really clearly identified role, and this is what it covers, and these are the metrics for it. So if it's on purchase ledger, it's that all the invoices are posted within a certain time frame, queries are dealt with, if we get early settlement discount, that those who adhere to, the payment runs are done, for an example, and making sure that the the employee understands that they're there, that's their ownership, that they know that if it goes wrong, it's on their shoulders, but if it goes right, it's also on their shoulders, and it's them who have delivered it. So I always find that giving people accountability in the office has worked really, really well. On top of that, when when I'm interviewing for people, I think quite a bit of it comes down to having a bit of a connection and being able to interview someone and going, you know, I get on quite well with this person, we could really work well together. Um so actually there isn't really much of a replacement for sitting down and doing face-to-face interviews, yeah, because that does actually account for quite a lot. And a lot of the teams that that I've built and the current one where I am now, they're all long-standing people, you know, they haven't come in and then left and I've had to replace them. So having that seems to work, have quite a relaxed environment. If I if we've taken somebody on who's competent at the role with their experience and they know their role, you know, I'm quite happy to leave them to it so that they've got their own workload that can manage where they're up to and have some accountability over that. And like I say, when it goes good, then you know they've they can enjoy that.

unknown 21:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

How important do you think the team is then in delivering some of what, you know, going back to linking the two PE and team, how important is that team culture and that team accountability in that PE setting, which it feels very much about pace and speed and and process?

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Having the right team in place is key because there is going to be a lot of pressure on your shoulders to deliver forecasts and accounts by month end. And if there's particular people in your team that don't pull the weight or are not on board with it, then you're going to have issues. And when I first started in the business, we had some issues with you know there perhaps not being enough qualifications in the team in order for us to get the accounts out quick enough and free up my time so I can deliver on some of the projects. So when you do step into the role for the first time, that's why often there can be a little bit of restructuring in the team. To make sure that there is the correct skills and experience in there, which then frees your FD or your CFO up in order to be working on these, because some of our projects in the earlier days were delayed primarily because of that, because I was working, you know, 60 hours a week in the evenings doing management accounts because we didn't quite have the fundamentals in place at that point in time. So having a strong team is vitally important, and then empowering that team and motivating that team so that there is no staff turnover or very little turnover. Because every time the staff turnover, that clearly it sets you back.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. You talked then about projects. So what kind of you know, what exciting projects have you been able to get involved in in your career, you know, in the in the last few years? That you know kind of is different from maybe what some of the other finance leaders listening to this might have might have been able to get involved in.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Well, I got involved in this business pre-investment. So we knew the investment was coming up. They put me in place ahead of that so that I could see it through all the way through. So when I joined the business, we were a group of nine trading entities, a variety of sizes.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

You using three or four different accountancy packages across three different teams with four different banks and three different merchants and two different websites. So it was a a real headache at that point in time. We then, over the course of 12 to 18 months, acquired two other businesses also using different systems. Yeah, and so it became 12 entities at one point, which was an absolute nightmare to try and do 12 sets of counts and then layer them on top of each other to get yourself a management pack.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

So we did or I did an exercise where we basically hived up some of the subsidiaries into the main companies and did members' voluntary liquidations of the residual entities, and we've got that down now into three trading entities in a group of six with the parent companies. So a much slicker, more efficient operation. That was challenging but a fun exercise to do.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

You know, get getting the systems onto the same portals and the same softwares, and then merging them into one another. And what we did, we didn't have to grow our finance team at all because the systems became slicker and we could keep the same core key staff, but we're now dealing with more transactions, and we did that through some automations. The second bit that that I get quite excited about is the software and the automations and bringing enhancements to it. So, as I said, there we've grown the business without having to grow the finance team, and that's through a lot of projects that we've done on the software. So we use we use Sage, and we've been able to buy enhancement packs for that software. So they're off-the-shelf packs that give you extra reporting requirements and extra imports and some extra functionality for group trading.

unknown 25:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

We've then even gone down the route of doing some bespoke work and some automations, and basically just we've shaved a load of time out of the processes and gave people more uh responsibility because they can deal with a greater array of work.

unknown 25:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Give them a bit more fulfillment from their roles.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Okay. Do you want to give us an example then of a couple of the kind of automation things that you've been able to put in place that you know maybe some of the people listening haven't thought about, haven't looked at any hints and tips for it?

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yes, yeah. It some of these automations will be more relevant if you've got a higher turnover business than some of the others, but but I've implemented so much that actually we've got stuff that can touch on any business, really. So some of the biggest gains actually come from the simplest automations. So we like most businesses in the morning, we look at the sales that went yesterday, and we would raise the sales invoices in Sage, save them as PDF, go in the customer's account, find his email address, attach it to the email, send it to the customer, and we do that every single day. And it may take a minute per one to print, post, save, email it off. And we actually deal in with around about 14,000 sales invoices a year. So that's something that just happened every single day, and we didn't think anything of it until one day we we did challenge it and we looked and we could actually write an automation for that that would do that task for us automatically every evening, and it'd send them off. And that saved us around about five to six weeks worth of work per year.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

And as as we get busier, we estimate that's going to get up to about nine weeks worth of work. So that particular member of staff now has a huge amount of excess capacity that they can dedicate towards other tasks that were perhaps getting overlooked or perhaps not getting time for. That was a fantastic one we did. All of our websites feed into our software as well. We import sales orders from five different websites automatically every 15 minutes. Now that saves the finance team time, but it also saves the sales team time. For every customer that we can direct towards the website who places the order on the website, imports automatically. It saves, it can save five to ten minutes, depending on the complexity of the order, because most of them come with many components. So that is saving us a huge amount of time. We reckon that's saving us around about seven weeks for one person in our sales team. So that's outside of the finance team. Now these all start to add up because we have a variety of them running.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

On one of the businesses, we'd have to actually have two people on Sales Ledger, where we currently have one if we had none of the automations. So it's all that sort of stuff that I really enjoy because I'm able to keep people and for give them more remit rather than have to grow the team. Because working for PE, one of the things, uh and it goes for any business, really, to be honest, is you you always have to do more with less. Yeah. And certainly always been thinking of the bottom line. But some of the simplest stuff we've done, and something that anybody can probably do listening to this podcast, it is native in most softwares, is we put pay now on our stationary. So it's something that's sat in the software, it's always been there. But you put a little pay now button on your start stationary, and that goes with any pro forma, with any invoice, with any statement, all of our emails direct our customers to please click the pay now button. That takes them through to a card payment, automatically takes the correct value from them. And then our bank feed brings the value in the following morning. So it's in SAGE and it's posted. That's a fantastic feature. We found when we did some testing on that that 35% of our customers who paid by card regularly now clicked the pay now button, which means that our credit controller did 35% less phone calls out to chase money in. That customer's account was more up to date, he could place more orders. That was a really big win for such a simple change in process that we did. We've also implemented bank feeds, which you would typically think only relate to the bank, but actually we've got bank feeds for our merchants. So when people pay online, and we've got bank feeds for our credit cards as well. So our credit cards, our merchants, our current accounts, savings accounts, we click buttons every morning, they come in, we've got rules set up. So if it sees this certain direct debit, it knows where to post it, certain customer receipt knows where to post that. So they save us a huge amount of time and make the system more accurate. And then one that we did fairly recently, it's a very old school, but it's a CSV import. And we just happen to be trawling through the imports, and we realized that there's a CSV import for this particular task, and it was it was doing some journals, and it saves us a load of time, and it's nothing fancy, it's not some big shiny product, it's been there since day one, but actually, there's a lot of stuff in the system that you can unlock just by going through the system and seeing what's in there.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Yeah, it sounds like it's you know really important that we're constantly questioning what we're doing and actually taking time out to look at you know the systems that we've got in place currently and how we're using them. It'd be interesting to you know, obviously a lot of people now are talking about AI. I don't know. It seems to be the point where everyone's looking at how you put that in. What's your thoughts on it and how do you, you know, are you using AI at all at the minute?

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Yeah, so just going back to the first point there, you said about constantly testing the system and and looking at it. So we hold weekly finance meetings where we do constantly look at our system, and certainly every month I try and have a project in the pipeline, something that we're looking at, something that we're trying to develop. So on our sales ledger, we have around about 18,000 sales invoices, they're all one-off, you know, single purchase customers, so they all go into one sales ledger account. That's 18,000 invoices, 18,000 payments. We spoke to our software partners, and we're developing a button that will automatically allocate payments if the reference and the values match. So it's going to save a huge host of time for that particular person. Once that's done, we'll be looking at the next thing. So in our weekly meetings, we do ask that and we have a pipeline built of these projects. A lot of what we're doing here is bespoke, whether it's these API calls, whether it's you know, some some automations, this this button, or bespoke work in the software. When we do something bespoke like that, that isn't an off-the-shelf product that we own because it's on our servers, then what we're building there is an intangible asset that we're capitalizing on our balance sheet. And so these projects not only save time and resource for the staff, which therefore kind of boost our PL through them having extra capabilities, but we're also taking that cost and we're putting on the balance sheet as well, so we're not incurring costs on the PL and we're building up an asset, which is actually a really good way of looking at them, the investment of those and getting approval for those projects. Moving on to your question around us whether we're looking at AI. We do use AI, but in the form where we would have access to Copilot, or we have out Fifth of Claude or ChatGPT, and we're using it that way. We haven't yet found an AI-based software solution that we want. Of course, there are quite a lot of AI-based software out there, but rather than us trying to find software and then finding some sort of use for it, we want to have a problem that that is a solution for, rather than vice versa. And what we've actually found that for a lot of finance-related tasks, automation is the way to go, certainly for us, because it's rules-based. If this happens, do this, do that, do the other, rather than it being a judgment-based. AI is definitely going to be a part of the finance team in the future. I think at the minute, the accuracy of some of those models is a bit of an issue. Um, typically, they're around that 85 to 95% accurate. If you were to go into the board meeting, they see the auditors and say the accounts are sort of 85 to 95% accurate. Perhaps would it go down too well? And again, it's not not having any sort of accountability over it. But there's definitely applications for AI. Um, certainly in sales ledger and purchase ledger, having there are AI-based sales ledger tools for credit control.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

They actually look really good. There's also some AI-based software for purchase ledger in terms of digitally scanning. We've got a piece of software that does do that, digitally scans it, pulls out the information, presents it, and you click some buttons to approve it into the software. So it's coming. I think as you get further on in your career, it's actually a really good sort of companion, or or I suppose someone to test ideas with, and if you think of an idea to you can you can put it into the AI and say, you know, critique this as an idea, give me some solutions for this. Equally, we use it for research. So we're looking at doing if I need to approach something that we've not dealt with before, we can ask the AI to go ahead and research this particular topic, provide some links to certain areas, and help it really guide what we're looking at. Also, you know, applications for it would be in Excel, you're struggling with a formula, you need to do something particular, you can just ask it for that formula, and it's really good at that sort of thing. So I don't think there's any immediate threat, but it's something everybody needs to embrace. We do need to use AI, even if it's just on a basic level of just having it and asking it questions over the weekend or in the evening for your personal use. It's going to be a tool that everyone's going to use. So you've got to get on board with it and look for solutions in your personal life, uh trying to research things, and then you can apply it to business. But you've just got to be careful in having the correct settings and what information you're putting in there. So I regularly sit down with a team. Are we using it? If we are using it, make sure you're not putting in anything sensitive, no financial information, don't be putting people's names in there. Make sure you've got the settings switched so that it doesn't share that information with the database.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

It's really interesting. Do you think there's a risk with AI that as these tools come in, that some of that will get lost actually to the leader to the future, for instance?

SPEAKER_00 36:31

I think that there is an ability that people will lose some of those more basic jobs to AI, which will then mean in the future, if the AI tools or wrong and there's some fundamental issues in that data, that it will be difficult for people to spot that and recognize it if they've not done that role themselves. And so if you were to skip ahead and perhaps not cover a purchase ledger or a sales ledger role, but have some tools that did that for you, and then then tools have issues, you may find that more of a challenge to identify and then rectify, you know, and will perhaps have lost out on some of those soft skills in terms of the communication with customers and suppliers. So there's a little bit of a risk that that will happen, but I don't see AI entirely replacing those roles. I think it is going to enhance individual skill sets within them. And rather than being somebody who can deal process three, four hundred invoices a month, you're going to be someone who can now process eight hundred invoices a month, but you're not going to be working there.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

So, what do you think the future holds then for finance and and ultimately for you as well, Daniel? You know, what you've done quite a lot in your career so far. You know, what does the future hold?

SPEAKER_00 37:46

What does the future hold? That's a very good question. Um I love working on systems and improving finance teams and improving finance departments. So I would just I would love to keep embracing whatever new technology comes out and keep developing and enhancing. I really enjoy mentoring staff, and there's a couple of people in our team that are doing exams and studying and qualifying. And I certainly get a lot of value from sitting with all those individuals and and chatting to them outside of hours and seeing how the studies are going. So I really, really enjoy that aspect of the role. So continuing to kind of mentor people and continuing to develop solutions with software and enhancing skills. I actually do really enjoy working with PE. Funnily enough, interesting. I love the pressure of it. So yeah, continuing down that line is is probably what's in store for me.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Okay, okay. So not hankering back for horticultural jobs, then no regrets.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

No, no regrets. No regrets. I really do uh enjoy what I do, thankfully.