Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Rob Reid, EVP of Sage Intacct (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When you look around at the trends in your space, could you identify some open problems? If you were starting a company today, which problems would you go and solve and build a new company around?

Rob Reid: First of all, all the easy problems in business have been solved. Reflecting a little bit on what we just went through, now is the time to use artificial intelligence to find diamonds in the rough and drill into information that humans couldn’t do on their own. Let me give you an example.

In our data center, we have over 10,000 processors and over a hundred terabytes of memory. No human being could go through all that information. The system can. You can start thinking out of the box about how we can find these gems. When I started in technology, it was all about, “Let’s think about the big process changes, mainly for Fortune 500, and figure out how to make them effective and efficient. Start at the top and then push it down to make the individual worker more efficient.

Now with machine learning, everything is being turned upside down. You’ve got all this information. You can just go in and start making incremental improvements. As you’re making these incremental improvements, the machine is getting a better understanding. It’ll move up the stack to have this major impact in the overall business. I would say to entrepreneurs to concentrate on a specific business flow with a specific title.

Try to figure out how you can get them information that they don’t have access to today but would help them in being much more being effective in their day-to-day job. You’ll be able to build out from that and keep providing more and more. Ultimately, you’re going to have a system that impacts the whole organization.

Sramana Mitra: Terrific. Where do you see your space going in the next five years?

Rob Reid: I think that’s what I was reflecting on with regards to artificial intelligence. Most CFOs have been focused on accounting for the last 60 to 70 years. They probably put 80% of their effort into accounting and making sure that the numbers are right. Then they spend 20% on financial management. There’s going to be a total reversal where they’ll end up spending 20% on accounting and 80% on financial planning.

If you wanted to get involved, it’s all about how we can make their job better for financial planning. Most people that went into accounting and financial management, that’s what they wanted to do anyway. We’re going to provide people with a lot more satisfaction in their jobs as opposed to the mundane checking to make sure everything is right and getting into being a strategic advisor to the Board and other members of the management team.

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Rob Reid, EVP of Sage Intacct
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