8. Becoming a Transformational CFO with Shawn Fitzgerald, IDC

Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people, and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

He's been featured in the economist, the economist, gosh can't even get my words out today, Forbes and Tech Republic. He has led enterprise change management initiatives at a number of large companies including those in the Dow 30 and Fortune 1000 and he's worked across a number of different industries and across the globe as well.

He is also a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt so I'm sure that has helped him in his transition and talking about transformation as well. So thank you Sean for joining us, it's wonderful to have you on the show.

So from there, I went off to a regular college and got an undergraduate degree in accounting and finance and was fortunate enough to have been an editor of my yearbook and my graduate school actually needed somebody with desktop editing skills for their student publication, so I was able to parlay that into my MBA and then.

started my career actually as a mergers and acquisitions associate with the company that's now PricewaterhouseCoopers. And that was an amazing experience. Did that for a couple of years. And in the M&A world, you learn industries and you learn business so quickly. So you're immersed in all of these transactions that you're working on behalf of your clients.

And you have various types of companies that engage in M&A activity. You have financial buyers who are looking to typically buy a company and improve its profitability and then sell it.

And then you have this other class of what we call strategic buyers, who are companies that are looking to either vertically integrate or acquire a company or a set of assets for strategic intent and long-term purposes.

And after I did my public stint, I actually went on to be a and financial analyst for a number of companies in both life sciences and then conglomerate manufacturing, where I was first exposed to Lean Six Sigma and got my green belt at Allied Signal, which is now Honeywell, and was able to lead their global order to cash. process back in the mid-90s.

And so that was interesting because it was the first time I really appreciated the fact that finance is kind of a derivative outcome of business activity. And at Ally, what was interesting is we always saw that if a business unit wasn't performing, that the finance head or business unit CFO was the one that got sacked and not the operating president.

And it was always interesting to me because, you know, finance is you're recording and accounting things at the end of the period based on what the business activities and operations are doing.

So I was always interested in learning and moving from finance as kind of a scorekeeper on the sideline to getting on the pitch and being able to move the ball up the field.

So it's really proved very useful then going on to get my Lean Sigma black belt because now I've done a bunch of change management projects where we are moving the ball and improving the financial outcomes that are associated with it. So it's been quite an interesting journey to say the least.

This session will not only talk about the why, but also identify how you can automate your financial operations and get meaningful data to drive your business forwards.

why do you think that is?

But I really think the best companies engage finance as a key part of the leadership team in terms of not only budgeting, planning and forecasting, but actually doing good work.

thoughtful and thorough decision option analysis before a business makes a decision to invest in, whether it's equipment, capital operations, or look at various you know, things that they could do to improve the business. And I will say I was fortunate because at Allied Signal, Larry Bossidy was the CEO at the time.

And finance played a very active role in those business decisions. Again, publicly traded company, a lot of financial pressure from Wall Street. So there's probably reasons for why finance had this kind of prominent role.

operating-related role versus other industries where I've been in, like you say, that the accounting and finance function is necessary, but it's administrative and it's not core to making the business better, if you will.

It's almost the topic that we're talking about today is how do the finance leaders working in companies today actually transition from that bean counter and the person that's just doing the numbers and handing them over to actually offering that strategic advice and insight and rather than being an afterthought, actually becoming part of the decision, the driving force behind

the business as well.

But as I think about the types of CFOs and finance professionals that I've worked with over the course of my career, and then I count on both as, you know, former colleagues and personal friends, you know, three really kind of.

interesting personas emerge if you will you know i think about the first one is kind of the opco cfo right these are these are the folks that are really good that understand the operating uh mechanics of the business and the related financial performance uh which is probably more of the type of persona that i am i think the second type that that emerge are these

mergers and acquisitions right they tend to be much more transactional they're They're more of, I don't want to use financial engineering as a bad term, but they're interested in, you know, the monetization of the business for purposes of, you know, Wall Street or investors or other types of financial constituents, you know, emphasized there.

And then I think the third type is where, you know, I spend a lot of my time talking to folks, and that's really the transformational CFO. And I think some of the hallmarks or tenets or attributes attributes of a transformational CFO is they tend to have a systems mindset.

So where an opco CFO, you know, again, all three types are very much into the detail, they're very numerically oriented, and you know, great financial acumen.

But I think transformational CFOs tend to be much more about not only thinking about the activity sets that make up whether it's management reporting, closing the books, doing adjusting journal entries, and getting your financials consolidated and published, and then doing the related management discussion and analysis, I think the transformational CFO takes a step back and says,

you know, let me look at the processes and the activity sets that make up those processes and think about ways that I could perhaps leverage technology to automate the transactional aspects of the accounting and finance functions while then being able to shift time resources to higher level, higher value things where more management judgment is involved, whether that's decision

support, or some type of, when you get into the accounting rules and regulations, you have this need for accruals and other management estimates for purposes of doing your closing and consolidations.

And I think transformational CFOs can, move beyond just the work, which is very intense, very long hours and covers a lot of ground between cash, tax, treasury, debits, credits, et cetera, and really look at, okay, well, what are the mechanisms that we employ to get that work done across those various financial domains within the function and look to technology and just

smarter ways of doing the work? And I think that becomes increasingly important, especially as the Demands of business have gone up. I mean, when I started my career, we didn't have Sarbanes-Oxley. You had some really remarkable stories in the news of companies doing really bad things financially and defrauding investors and others.

And so the Regulations of Sarbanes-Oxley and globalization requires a lot more complexity and sophistication in doing the finance function effectively. So you absolutely need to think about how do I scale my capabilities as these demands become ever increasing and ever more challenging as companies grow and enter new markets, et cetera.

So how much do you think this is actually affecting the creation of this transformational CFO?

We had forecast we're growing 17.5% to about $8.2 trillion from 2019 through 2023, and then the pandemic hit. And we still forecast a healthy 15.5% compound annual growth rate over that same time horizon, but the number is now about $8 trillion. And so in 2020 alone, we saw a reduction in those hard dollar technology investments of almost 6%.

And so what that tells me is while people are still investing a lot of resources, financial resources in these technologies, there's also this realization that technology alone doesn't get you the transformation or the desired new way of working, if you will.

So, you know, when I think about traditional change management, we used to just talk about the dimensions of people, process and technology and the role they played in change.

And now I think with digital transformation, you add in data and governance as the fourth and fifth dimensions of change management, because again, you know, we are an information age type of economy. The digital economy is about informing product services and experiences with that data and information. And you're doing it at scale and what's in real time.

And so that's a ton of complexity. Those things cause to happen more than we already had. So you really need an effective governance model to manage it as opposed to getting bull whipped by it.

And I think In the reduction in investment that we're seeing in 2020, people are now emphasizing more around, okay, it's not just enough to have a strategy and to buy this technology, but I really got to work these other dimensions of change management.

And what was fascinating in my research this year, and I'm laughing about it because we're five to 10 years into digital transformation, and a full 73% of companies haven't yet written the roadmap that says, how do I take strategy as kind of the idea on a PowerPoint and create an operating plans with investment priorities and the change management criteria I need to

be that reimagined post transformational business? And, you know, the CFO is critical to that because they really probably from a numerical standpoint understand, you know, kind of the value streams of the business. Where do we spend time? Where do we spend resources? You know, where do we have costs without an economic benefit?

And obviously looking for ways to create what I call value, which is utility over cost that should always be greater than one. And I'll give you a really quick example. I have a good friend who I've known well over 20 years. He was a bit of a mentor to me back in my Allied Signal days, and he's now the a CFO of a publicly traded company.

And he was telling me he's gonna digitally transform his tax function. And first I'm like, okay, this will be interesting discussion. And he was describing what was going on in his tax function. So here's a publicly traded company that compiles and files approximately 6,000 tax returns a year in various countries, states and municipalities around the world.

And he said, you know, 98% of my tax staff's time is really just filling out these forms. And he goes, you know, I'm going to look for a robotic process automation and artificial intelligence where I get the forms completed by the technology.

And now instead of firing or getting rid of or reallocating that staff, I'm now going to take 98 percent of that tax department's time and turn them into tax strategists for tax planning purposes. So here here you basically have a. cost center for compliance that's required for various regulatory purposes.

And he's turned it into not only a way to expand margins in the business by being able to legally reduce his tax liabilities through effective planning strategies, but he's now turned this cost center into a source of cash for the business as well. My initial impression was, okay, what do you really do with a tax department in a transformed manner?

But actually, it was a really brilliant approach to how do I fundamentally rethink the function and the value I can derive from that function.

And one of the pushbacks we often get when we're speaking to people tends to be more junior people in teams that are going through a software selection process is that they're genuinely concerned that they're going to implement themselves out of a role.

But actually, the conversation that we're having to have with them is, well, no, because your value is not in typing numbers into a spreadsheet. You know, you didn't spend years going to university and getting all these qualifications so that you can effectively prove that you can enter a number correctly into a form in this example.

But actually your value is in analysing the data that's coming out and using that data to give your business a strategic advantage and be able to line that up. So I think that's the realisation that people need to come through. And it does take some creative thinking Right.

But I think the real transformation comes from reimagining the function at a fundamental level. In the case of tax, you have to do your tax filings. There's this whole bunch of regulatory reasons why you can't just do away with your tax departments. It's probably not a good idea.

But the transformational aspect was to take this idea of, okay, I'm going to do this digitization, which is the automation component, but now let's really rethink fundamentally that I can create value from what has historically been a cost center.

And what's interesting is I have another CFO friend of mine who's actually moved on into COO roles for private equity-owned companies. And he said it really best when I was talking to him about digital transformation.

He goes, you know, the problem most companies have is they haven't reimagined what they're going to look like, how they're going to operate, and how the various functions even work post-transformation. And that gets into that really reimagining and recreating yourself at a fundamental functional and business unit level.

And I think that's the bigger opportunity that a lot of companies haven't gotten to yet. And our own research shows that less than 5% of companies have really reimagined themselves as digital enterprises. And not surprisingly, it's typically more tech oriented type of companies or startups, if you will.

So you've got your Googles, your Facebooks, your other types of e-commerce companies, et cetera, who are what we would describe as a digital native. But I think there's a much bigger opportunity for traditional industrial age type companies to really transform themselves and rethink how work gets done. There's areas where you can do that. There's areas you can't.

I look at the oil industry, for example. At the end of the day, if you're refining crude to make gasoline and other fuel stocks, you physically need to do that. But you can actually transform... how you monitor and gauge asset performance and think about predictive maintenance.

And just a real quick example on that from an old industrial company rethinking themselves to a digital type of player is Schindler. They do elevators and escalators all over the world. And they originally started putting some IOT sensors on their various assets. And the goal was to capture data and look when an elevator was starting to... breakdown.

So before you got to an out of service scenario where the elevator is broken, the building or property manager calls the manufacturer and they send a tech out, which typically results in multi-day outages for that particular lift.

And so by putting these IoT sensors on, they could see where they started to get performance degradation or some type of alert on a motor or a cable or a pulley. And so they could go out and intervene in a predictive maintenance type of model. And so it took outages from typically multiple days to less than a day.

So there was benefit there, but as they started accumulating all this data, they realized something else that they could improve the assets performance and extend the maintenance interval. So if you go into a really old building, most of the elevators sit in the lobby when they're not in service.

Well, Schindler has now developed algorithms that say, you know, I need to position elevators at different floors in different positions at different parts of the day. So for example, in the morning, all those lifts are at the lobby because everybody's coming into work.

But throughout the day, you have different traffic patterns from the data they're capturing in terms of where the elevator is coming from and going to. So what they found is they could stage elevators closer to where they predictably will get the call button for a floor or what have you.

And that reduces the amount of wear on the pulley, motor, cables, and other elements. maintenance items because the elevator is moving less and actually getting people to and from where they need to go much more efficiently and effectively and safely. And so that improved the asset performance and the maintenance intervals.

And then the third thing they realized is, you know what? We move a billion people a day between our elevators and escalators. So now they've bundled all of that data and they sell it to building architects and city planners as a digital information service.

So that as people are designing buildings and, you know, various projects, you know, types of communities, if you will, that require elevators and escalators, these designers have a more informed perspective on people movement.

So just a couple examples of how, you know, we think about transformation for potentially what is a historical, you know, company that just really just lifted things up and put them down.

You know, like you say, traditional, maintenance and engineering firm has actually used it to gain a strategic advantage and that for me is one of the big wins I guess with you know having done a series is actually seeing the impact of the usage of data but I guess that also comes down to how people use the data because you can put all of these processes in

place and you can have all this amazing technology but it doesn't necessarily like you said earlier drive the transformation that the business needs so what do you think of the skills and attributes of that transformation leader? And what do they need to be able to do to actually impact the business and drive that transformation process?

And, and the importance there is, and I'll give you a great example. One of the last companies I worked for was a, it was a private company. It was family owned. And then private equity came, came into it and private equity. And, and most investors are really interested in the detail of the business.

Well, what was fascinating was, is this company had put in multiple versions of an ERP system, but they didn't even have a common chart of accounts for the different operating units.

So while they had the same ERP, but multiple instances, you effectively had separate and distinct companies operating from an accounting chart of account Point of view, so the ability to consolidate and really get insight from that data in real time was hindered by the fact that there was no either data harmonization where I could easily go across these different ERP

versions to look at the business.

And what it often resulted in is a lot of dump out of the system, put these big data dumps into Excel, and then have a business analyst and quant jockey type of persona working this stuff in Excel and hoping they didn't make an error in their calculations or how they were using that particular application to get some analysis and insight for the business.

And oh, by the way, that's very time consuming. And this goes back to what we were talking about with this whole notion of you didn't go to college just to put numbers into a particular cell or worksheet, but rather to do the higher value analysis and put some management recommendations.

So by virtue of the fact that you don't have data harmonization in this kind of holistic semantic model to aggregate it and shift it around and, you know, make it improve its usability, if you will, you're going to fundamentally be hindered by the fact that you need to dump out of the system that you're spending a lot of money and you're beholden to Excel and

the work of one individual. And that takes time. And I think you lose competitive advantage when you when you have to waste time like that.

And it's the flexibility as well of that approach, because the challenge is, is that say you want to analyze a particular element of that that data that you've produced that wonderfully complex spreadsheet because you're not working and playing with the raw data you then get that challenge because you can't drill into what's driving that change and that requires another

spreadsheet and you know god knows how long to do so for me there's a couple of things around that data transformation piece is 100% the amount of I agree with you in terms of harmonization the amount of times I go in to speak with businesses and they they haven't actually thought about what they want out of this system they're they're so focused on this is what

i need the system to do they haven't actually understood what they're trying to achieve and how they want to work with their data but i also think it's about the agility of that system and that reporting capability as well so how quickly can it move and shift because if you think about covid you know businesses are popping up all over the place in different

streams of revenue and businesses are having to adapt so you know bringing in that agile function i think is going to be so very important to you know businesses particularly those that that are in perhaps more challenging industries to be able to adapt into that remit.

So we've mentioned obviously the ability to sort of step away and look over, you know, the data, be able to have that data analytics capability. And what about transformation in itself? You know, how important do you think like the leadership of that transformation is to the success of a transformation project?

You know, I just published a piece where I looked at, you know, as companies are going into COVID and trying to figure themselves out and get back to some normalcy, we see a very strong correlation in the data and the research that says companies that have a more holistic, strategic approach to their transformation, meaning it's enterprise-wide, it mirrors the business

strategy, or in some cases, digital transformation is the business strategy going forward versus others that may have a strategy but behave tactically versus as those are doing some transformation either at a line of business or functional level with no overarching corporate strategy.

And then at the most basic level, companies just trying digital or more of the digitization efforts, yeah, they get some incremental benefit, but it's not truly transformational. And what we found is companies that had the more integrated or digital strategy is the business strategy have already, the majority are returning to a new sense of normalcy, if you will.

The ones that have a strategy and that are behaving very tactical, they're still trying to figure it out. They don't quite know where they stand relative to getting through COVID and what the new normalcy is.

looks like and then those that have that either functional only or we're just trying some digitization efforts um they're still very much in the trough of of the recessionary impacts of of COVID.

And I know that varies by industry because not all industries have been affected by COVID uniformly, but generally looking across some of this global data that we have, there is a clear corollary to a more integrated strategy with a plan and a set of technology investments on what we describe as a digital platform.

Those companies are faring much better through the uncertainty, which is COVID, versus those that either have a fragmented strategy, haven't thought through that roadmap and prioritized, you know, what do I want to do to become transformed and aren't looking at technology as an enabling platform are really still struggling, you know, with recessionary impact and adverse, you

know, results as a function of all of that. But it is interesting because as I look at transformation, what I also I think these CFOs and other leaders need to think about, what's core to your business? What's your core business mission? And in digital transformation, I describe it both as a long game because it's five to 10 years to get there.

And Apple is a great example of that, going from a product company to a platform company. And it's a team sport. So there's things that you want to own as the CFO and as the business leadership. And there's other things where you want to partner for. So for example, most old line companies, They're not. their core capability is not cybersecurity.

So you definitely want to partner there because, one, cybersecurity is a big risk area. We know what these data hacks and breaches do, both from a reputational risk as well as to the financial impact of the business, to the privacy and other types of rules and regulations that you don't want to breach.

And in fact, there was an interesting study done by Oxford Economics, which is the business arm of Oxford University, a couple of years ago, actually, in the UK, where they looked at publicly traded companies in Britain that had a hack or a breach or an incursion.

And what they found is those companies lost 1.8% of their market capitalization on a permanent basis as a result of that hack.

So, you know, cybersecurity is a great area where, you know what, you don't want to necessarily own that, but you want to have a vendor partner relationship with experts in next generation security so you can mitigate and prevent that experience for your business. It's a because it's very unfavorable.

So it's very much this team where you need to, and going back to our data harmonization, well, you know, there's companies that provide those services, especially in a world where there's a lot of mergers, acquisitions, spinoffs, et cetera. You know, the data harmonization is an event. It's not how you live in the business every day.

Ideally, you have harmonized data in a system that you're working with and that you can scale, but the process of taking unharmonized data across multiple ERP platforms, for example, in a consolidation, you know what? You should probably contract a service provider to perform that activity set for you because it's a one-time event.

It's not core to your capabilities, but you want to have that harmonised data

And there's an, you know, there is always an interesting conversation about should I be outsourcing elements such as my payroll or should I be outsourcing my AP or my credit control?

So, and that's something, to be fair, I've heard more and more about people structuring finance teams into more of a lean structure and working a bit more like the old manufacturing shift, working with preferred partners to actually deliver that finance function so that they can actually be more focused on driving the value to the business.

So I think that's an interesting area in terms of what could happen. It doesn't mean it will, but it'd be interesting to see what the plans are going to be for the next few years. And what do you think the future holds for both the role of the CFO and the finance team. Do you think it's going to be a much smaller team with more experts?

Do you think there's going to be a change in how they operate and the role that they play within the business?

I think you can have a very different complexion to the finance role and what information gets shared with a service partner or some other type of relationship you may have versus if it's more of a, I don't want to use the term commodity function or commodity activity set, but things like The HR administration, when it comes to your personal data, your payroll data,

making sure you're paid the correct amount, the proper withholdings occur for taxes and other deductions. You know, that's certainly a scenario that lends itself to, you know, companies do that for a living and they're really good at it.

So let them do that because, again, you're financial people, resources and capabilities are better served, focused on those unique aspects of your business that differentiate you both in terms of your products, your services and your experiences. So I think that the general reply I would have to your question is the finance function will get smarter.

It will have to be more agile and adaptive in real time. And not everything, you know, everybody talks about how we want real time finance. Well, you want that in certain areas of your business. Not everything needs to be in a real time scenario.

And, you know, quite frankly, a lot of the traditional accounting conventions around accruals and other things were developed at a time before we kind of had this access to information in the blink of an eye.

So, you know, while the accounting rules are what they are and they do evolve and change, they change at a much slower pace than a lot of this technology enablement. So I will say the finance needs to transform.

The CFO needs to fundamentally rethink the various functions and things that it delivers, both in terms of financial reporting, consolidation, planning, forecasting, et cetera. But don't over invest in areas where you fundamentally cannot improve the business outcome.

That's the other thing I see with all of this digital transformation investment is we see a lot of money being thrown at it, but Change management aspects of the people, the process, the data, most importantly, and the governance to manage all the complexity that the technology enables in real time must be addressed.

So it's not like education in the US where we think we can solve it by just throwing dollars at it. You actually need it to operate in a way that's optimized for what you're trying to do. And I think that's very true for finance and any other part of the business.

and the decisions made around that technology and and i guess are your processes that sit around technology because i see this a huge amount you know um If your processes around your technology aren't fit for purpose, then it doesn't matter how good that piece of kit that you're putting in is if it's not going to change the things outside of its control.

So if you're still importing data from spreadsheets into a finance system, you're never going to get away from that until you actually think about how you're driving that data through. I guess that's a really interesting piece in terms of the change in the role of the finance team. But what do you think that means for the role of the CFO?

What kind of skills and attributes does that person need to be able to lead that change?

And I gave the example of my former colleague and friend who has transformed the tax department. And that's a great example of somebody who's really a visionary and fundamentally rethinking not only how I get the work done, but what additional value can I unlock by really transforming what is the tax function? So I think being a visionary is really important.

I think not being afraid to educate and explore and partner on different technologies. I think a lot of times, again, I work in technology, so everybody's gung ho about trying new tech and implementing things that perhaps aren't proven.

But you've got this tension to manage because CFOs that report the wrong numbers because they relied on an unproven, unvetted technology aren't CFOs for very long. So I think there's this tension to be managed of the numbers have to be right. I've got to have accuracy and quality and accountability in my results and how I report them.

But at the same time, I need to look at technologies and vet them and ensure that they will meet those criteria in this new new way of working. And I think there's this inherent risk aversion because I think back to my corporate days. It wasn't the thousand things you did really well. It was that one thing that went horribly wrong that derails a career.

So, you know, you got to take it in kind of a risk adjusted approach, if you will. But I think being a visionary, understanding technology, knowing what you should own versus what you should outsource and partner around are really critical, especially when it comes to digital transformation.

And again, the data and being able to have data in very usable formats is really important for both transformational and opco cfo types but in the m a realm uh again another cfo that i've worked with who who's done a lot of m a work you know he's always had the attitude and approach that he's like the better the data i get into the deal cycle the better

the deal i have or or can construct you know and so you know, I hate to go day to day to data, but it is about the data. But is it usable? Is it digitally consumable? Do I have it in this semantic model that allows me to draw insight and inference and just effectively provide better decision support for the leadership?

So this is obviously a huge piece and there are so many elements to digital transformation. Out of interest, where's your research going next? What are you working on at the moment?

And quite frankly, that's where we see a lot of this change management and transformation kind of fall short. And again, it's a huge area of opportunity. And I think inherently, CFOs and finance types maybe aren't the touchy-feely or as touchy-feely. I don't want to make too much of a presumption there, but you really need to engage the the people in all of this.

And there's a great book. It's called Humans Are Underrated by a guy by the name of Jeff Colvin. And he talks about the relationship worker for the digital economy. You know, we we went from farms to factories during the Industrial Revolution, and then we went from factories to offices and the PC revolution and information revolution.

And now in this digital age, it's really about those deep interpersonal connections of the relationship worker for digital. And I think that's really important.

If you're going to be successful engaging your people to really rethink the work and the technologies they employ to get that work done, I think is really, really at the center of good transformation for any organization.

And people have said, oh, data is the new oil, so therefore information is the new gasoline. But I really think about it as information abundance. You know, digital transformation is more valuable when you have that, you know, information abundance versus scarcity.

And I will tell you, like in an M&A type of CFO, right, information arbitrage in a deal is a source of competitive advantage. But if you're a transformational CFO or an opco CFO, informational abundance is your source of competitive advantage because you're learning more and knowing more than you did yesterday. And being better informed makes for a better outcome tomorrow.

pieces it's not about just you know just becoming more efficient and more productive it is about the power of harnessing that data what that gives you um and it promises how you quantify that yeah you know until you get hold of that data you don't know what is in there and i think that's one of the things that a lot of the people i speak to struggle struggle

to quantify you know and struggle to to maybe sell to the stakeholders that they're speaking to as in you know How do they actually match what they don't know? How do they sell what they don't actually know they're going to find? Which is the interesting piece, isn't it?

I mean, entire careers have been made around building and trying to manage what companies call data lakes, where they would have these massive databases and just dump all this disparate data with no unifying semantic framework in order to then empower some analysts to pull data again into Excel typically and You know, come up with some decision support.

But what's really fascinating with machine learning and artificial intelligence is now the technology is probably primed and ready to real to realize what that data lake and database notion was 2025 years ago. It's just the the technology wasn't ready for the idea at the time, and I think we're at that inflection point where it is.

It's actually made it more important to know what's going on and quicker than it has, than it was previous because people need to know what's happening so that they can make decisions. But, you know, we've always, we've always talked about analysis paralysis. So that's a fine balance, isn't it? And that's a whole different conversation.

And. Earlier in the day, I was speaking with my small and medium business research director, a woman by the name of Sherry Lava, who's brilliant. If you're interested in the SMP space, she's definitely a person to follow.

And she was talking about how all these government assistance programs in COVID for small and medium business were things like rent relief or some other type of payroll supplementation. And she had an interesting notion that, well, what if government actually encouraged small and medium business, for example, to actually digitally transform?

Instead of looking for rent relief, figuring out how do you virtualize that SMB workforce so that you eliminate the need for rent. You're actually creating cash conservation while at the same time helping a business be more resilient and adaptive to, in this case, COVID. Then mentioning that to the Last night, he goes, you know, that's an interesting idea.

So he and I are going to have a conversation about that next week of, you know, how does government rethink even it's, you know, transforming how it supports its populace?

And maybe there's a piece in there about whether we, how governments can support those new businesses and those new entrepreneurs, not just about funding wages for them to, you to sit at home or not be able to work so that it can drive more value for the economy.

Wow. Now, I have to say, I think that's quite an inspirational point to end on in terms of how data can drive policy. Wow, that's a brilliant way to finish. So thank you so much, Sean. It's been absolutely fascinating to hear all about your research and your experience.

And again, for anyone that is interested in finding out more, we will post links to Sean's LinkedIn profile if you want to follow. He always has some really interesting posts.

And also, obviously, IDC themselves have some amazing research um so please do um pop on there and have a look so thank you so much sean it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show it's fantastic

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