Ep. 88: Karin Baggstrom - How Has COVID-19 Accelerated Business?

Contact Karin Baggstrom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-baggstr%C3%B6m-9233a72/

STARZPLAY: https://arabia.starzplay.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Count Me In, I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm excited to bring you episode 88 of our series. Our expert guest for today's conversation is Karen Baggstrom. Karen is a Founder and CFO of Starz Play, the leading subscription video on demand service that streams to over 20 countries across Asia, middle East and North Africa. In this episode, my cohost Rouba talks with Karen about how the COVID-19 pandemic has actually accelerated her business. During their conversation. Karen uncovers, how stars play as harnessing the power of technology to optimize the finance function and leveraging data analytics to enhance future growth. Even despite the current challenges. Keep listening, how amid digital disruption, recessions, and pandemics finance and accounting professionals remain ahead of the curve.

Rouba: (00:58)
So good morning, Karen, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Karen: (01:03)
Good morning, Rouba. Thank you for having me.

Rouba: (01:05)
I'm actually looking forward to hearing from you as Starz Play has been a really beautiful example of organic growth out of the middle East region. So kudos to you guys.

Karen: (01:15)
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we're excited as well, even though the whole of COVID epidemic is of course, nothing that we would like to have, or see of course.

Rouba: (01:28)
So I want to dive right into it. has, I mean, as somebody who works in finance and accounting and you're the CFO of Starz Play, has the digital transformation of finance impacted the roles and responsibilities of today's CFO and what are the skills needed to maneuver during such trialing time, like you just mentioned now, in your opinion.

Karen: (01:51)
Sure. I mean, I think in general, moving to digital environment has changed and impacted many roles in, in businesses around the world, not just finance also, of course, however, I do think that in finance, the CFO and the finance department has a little bit stepped out of just being the accounting and reporting team from, you know, looking at the actuals, just comparing things to budget. Moving into this digital environment has allowed this team to become more part of the business integral part of the business, I would say, because back in the old days, the finance department was only always the one that was just looking at, you know, this is what happened, we'll book it in the balance sheet and the P/L, and then we compare it to the budget and then you send off a report. But now I think there's so much more involvement between the finance team and all the other teams and going digital of course, is a big part of this, because when you move into the digital world, you all of a sudden needs two different systems. And I also think that the finance team has become more analytical in their way that they work. They, you need to be able to analyze what comes in and not just take, you know, the cost as they are, and just look at them and say, okay, that's it that you're challenging the rest of the business, that your, you know, questioning the other departments in the business and saying, yeah, but is that really so, or can we change anything or why is that so? So I think that the finance team has become much more analytical in the way that we work and going digital is a big part of that. I was gonna say, I mean, for us, at Starz Play, we are a hundred percent digital. I mean, we work in the digital space. Our product is in the digital space. Everything is digital. So for us, it's natural and we have a lot of data around us all the time, you know, all this subscriber data or anything that touches our service, we have data on it. So, you know, I think from our point of view, we haven't gone digital as such. We are always work that's in our DNA. It's how we started this business. But no, I for sure, I see that my team, if I compare, you know, when I started in, in finance way, way, way back when now it's way more analytic, and the finance team is challenging the rest of the business much more, and that is a big difference.

Rouba: (04:47)
And you mentioned the breaking down of silos and the interconnectedness of it all with finance teams becoming more involved in other departments, and I'm sure that includes the likes of marketing and product development, what have you, and do you find that the lines between CFO and CIO for example, are also blurred and then what role does digital transformation play at Starz Play? I mean, it'd be curious to know how that's working since you mentioned it's a digital product by default and in your current business model, especially, you know, within the finance team spectrum.

Karen: (05:19)
Yeah. I mean, for a lot of companies, I do think that you will see a blurred line between the CFO and the CIO, especially in companies where you cannot afford to have a big C-suite where it does not make sense. You might have a CEO and a CFO and that's it. So you cannot have, you know, add on more C level people. So I definitely think that, and it makes sense from a certain perspective to do that. For us at Starz Play, we haven't really that structure because we're such an, you know, digitalized company. We have, we have the CFO and the finance team and we manage everything that has to do with finance and analytics and so on, and then we have a very big tech team and development team. And under that tech and development team, we have, data analysts. We have a big data analyst team, that is also working on, AI. So that kind of sits for us in our company. It sits under the tech team, but I'm definitely sure that in other companies, the blending of the CFO and the CIO does make sense for sure. And then your second question on how, you know, the digital transformation, what, how has this impacted us at Starz Play and add the business model that we have? as I said earlier on we, because we're a company within the digital space, we haven't really transformed as such, you know, from something being brick and mortar to transform, but what is happening is that we are evolving all the time. So we are, you know, we, we see that we need new tools to analyze certain type of data. We see that we want to go more granular into things, into information that we have, be it, you know, just simple, we get a supplier invoice and we want to be able to challenge what is that, you know, that data that is on that invoice and we can go more and more granular. So I think we didn't go from brick and mortar to become digitalized, but we are digitalized, but we're becoming more and more sophisticated.

Rouba: (07:41)
But I think it's such a model is yours was actually born as a result of the digital, disruption. You're a disruptor! So successful leaders around the world, pride themselves on being lifetime learners and the, and they say that this is the secret for ongoing success, you know, especially in this era where there's new ways of doing things every day, what is your view on the need for continuous upskilling and reskilling, and obviously wellbeing a lifetime learner, you know, and not just for you for also your team and how do you apply that as well?

Karen: (08:24)
I mean, I can only agree with that statement that, you know, you need to continue to learn as long as you live. You can't just say one day, ...