Earlier this week, Leapfin hosted finance systems leaders for a virtual chocolate making class and to discuss the importance of real-time finance data and how to translate it into a common language for neighboring teams.
Participants enjoyed lessons from a chocolate specialist while Leapfin’s Chief Architect Jason Berwanger hosted two subject matter experts:
– Ryan Forish, the VP of Finance at Loop, a fair, equitable, and affordable insurance company based on the data on how and where you drive
– Cody Bayes, a Finance Systems Lead at several subscription, insurtech, and fintech companies including Root and Lower
Forish has experience working in both technical accounting and strategic finance roles. In his toast to the event participants, he brought up just how important real-time data insights are for Loop:
Loop has a huge reliance on accurate data. We process all these different types of events that happen while driving and use that to inform our strategic finance decisions. We look at data, for example the miles driven by our policyholders, to help us predict things like upticks or downticks in accidents. As a result, we can better anticipate our loss ratio. On-demand, real-time financial data is really important for us.
Cody Bayes has 10+ years experience as an accountant turned financial systems expert with an IPO and multiple successful startups under his belt. His core recommendation for finance teams is to focus on cross-team collaboration and improving it through technology:
One of the common themes or pieces of advice that I can share is to simply learn the language of neighboring teams and departments. Really put in the effort to understand their working parameters, their limitations, overall skillsets, at least in a broad sense. It’s a simple concept, but so many companies are still heavily siloed off.
The way I see it, it’s essential to either become that person who can speak many different languages or make sure you have the proper systems in place to do it for you.
