Ep. 15: Kaiser Mock - Cross-functional Relationships with Non-Finance Individuals

Contact Kaiser Mock:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaiser-mock/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Music: (00:00)

Adam Larson: (00:05) Welcome back to "Count Me In". Thanks for joining us at IMA as we bring you the latest perspectives and learnings on all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is Adam Larson and with me as always is my co-host Mitch Roshong. Today's episode we will get into an area of accounting, not often discussed - the importance of relationships with non-financial individuals. Our guest for today's conversation came to us from the MillerCoors Brewery in Golden, Colorado. And with that I'd like to ask our listeners to send us a note letting us know where you're listening from. We'd be happy to share some of the unique locations and let everyone know what kind of global reach "Count Me In" and IMA has. But now back to today's episode. Mitch, how was it speaking with Kaiser Mock?

Mitch Roshong: (00:50) Our conversation was great. Kaiser is a Financial Analyst for Brewery Operations at MillerCoors. He monitors the brewing process and provides assistance with costing, variances and overall manufacturing processes. He is also a former IMA Young Professional Leadership Experience winner and remains very active with IMA as he strives to share his experiences and talks about the opportunities within accounting. The underlying theme for today's episode is the importance of relationship building for accountants. Automation has happened before and will continue to change their roles as new technologies emerge. But accountants of the future must be able to communicate effectively and work with individuals across all functions to add value to their organizations. Kaiser shared how he's worked alongside and built relationships with non-finance individuals to help drive efficiencies. And I think our listeners will be able to learn a lot from this episode. So let's listen in.

Music: (01:43)

Mitch Roshong: (01:48) So, tell me. What are the trends you've seen with accounting and automation? I know we tend to think about trends being these big dramatic changes but are we seeing changes right now that maybe are impacting business and accounting you know, slowly and steadily and a big future implication?

Kaiser Mock: (02:09) Yeah, you know, Mitch. I think it's such an interesting topic with this because there's a lot of concern and a lot of hype out there right now about where accounting is going and what role accounting is going to play in the future. But I think if you look at what the profession has done over the past 10, 15, you know, you go back 50 years, accounting today is dramatically different than it was then. And you look at the horizon in technology and what, you know, even computers and automated reports have done for us. Automation is not something that's new to the field. It has been happening for a very long time now. And I think that what you see today is there might be an increase in the speed of the change, but the change is all the same. And I think what the biggest topic that I think when people are concerned about where accounting is going I think what people really should be asking themselves is, you know, what, what am I doing today to add value and are the changes that are coming and whether it be automation or you know, other changes to the accounting field. Are they replacing the role that I do or, or, or are they going to emphasize the impact that I'm having on my business? Because if it's simply replacing the role and replacing the responsibilities, that one has an accompany. I think that begs a better question about whether or not one is utilizing their skills and utilizing the abilities that they have for the business. And if it's more of how is it going to change my role within the company, I think that's a better question for us to say. How can we eliminate non value added tasks? How can we eliminate inefficiencies within our own jobs to increase what we are doing and the information we are providing overall to, to our companies, to the business world, to whoever our ultimate state quarter's stake holders are that we, that we support.

Mitch Roshong: (04:12) And how about the overall scope of the profession? How are these impacts, you know, not just changing the role of the accountant and the way the finance function operates, but what kind of changes do you see the finance professionals realizing with the relationships with non-finance functions across the organization?

Kaiser Mock: (04:36) Yeah. You know, I think it's funny because a lot of times, at least for myself, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners can relate to this, when you tell people that you work in finance, or you work in accounting or whatever it may be, you'll typically get a response for individuals outside of the profession that say, Oh, I couldn't, I couldn't ever do that. I'm not good with numbers. I'm not good with math. And to me that completely misses the point of what we do or what we should be doing. Because, you know, we get the stereotype of number crunchers, whatever that may be. But really what we're doing is we are storytellers and we are individuals that analyze information and convey that to our stakeholders, whether it's within the finance industry or outside of it, at our businesses that help them better understand what is going on and help them make better strategic decisions. So what I look at, the changes in the industry are ones that if we are truly, truly doing what our roles are and truly you know, as I said earlier, maximizing what our potential is. And what our skill set is, all that that does is it creates a better relationship with individuals that might not be accounting or finance per se, because it allows us to spend more time on the analytical, allows us to understand better about what is going on within, within our, our roles so that that information can be more useful to, to the outside world. You know, as an example, even here at my business, I work at MillerCoors here in Golden, Colorado. When I'm able to eliminate the need to run reports manually or to manipulate reports, what that does is it allows me to convey information to individuals here at the brewery about what exactly is going on in their field and whether it is helping them understand labor variance reports. So instead of spending hours computing it myself, I can simply have a report produced for me that I can then analyze and give them information or maintenance spend. It's something that allows me to spend more time giving them useful information instead of just giving them data.

Mitch Roshong: (06:52) Let's talk a little bit more about that because I'm kind of interested as you're putting together these variants reports and you have a lot of financial data but as you said, you're trying to communicate it to people who may not fully understand. How do you go about really telling the true story behind the numbers and making sure everyone in the organization understands exactly what it is that you're trying to add value to or improve?

Kaiser Mock: (07:15) Yeah, I think one of the most important things for that process, and at least for myself, what I've found is it's kind of the idea of instead of taking a top down approach, taking a more of a bottom up approach. And what I mean by that is I find myself very frequently caught in the idea that okay, I have reports or I have information and I need to, I need to get this information out to other individuals. And then they are going to follow up with ...