Thelma and Louise - The Re-Boot
TL;DR WARNING!
Salma and Luiz (get it?) sat down to get some insight into what nuvemXP’s newest partner is all about.
Q: Hi Salma, Welcome to nuvemXP! Seems like such a weird thing to say!
A: Thanks Luiz. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier to join the team.
Q: Can you tell me a little about yourself? How did you find yourself here?
A: Ooooh story time! Well, I guess my whole Sage Intacct journey started back in 2014. I was working as the Accounting Manager at a quickly growing Edmonton Software Company. I joined the team after the Company had just done their first acquisition. For the first time the small accounting team was running 2 sets of books, one on Sage 50 the other on Quickbooks online. I remember my then boss told me about his vision for the team: Scale. He said, “I want this team to function like the accounting team at Stripe.” According to him (unverified) at the time Stripe was managing a multi-million-dollar company on the backs of only four accounting staff. I honestly couldn’t fathom it.
I spent the first few months spread between 2 systems and running consolidations in Excel. Ew! Eventually we got it together and I migrated the new company to Quickbooks (in retrospect I guess this was my first ever “Implementation project”), which helped a little. But my reports were still manually created in Excel. It was time to get smart.
After evaluating a number of different software options, Intacct became the clear winner. I say Intacct because back then it wasn’t owned by Sage. It was not a well-known software in the Canadian market, but had seen explosive growth in the US, particularly in the NFP space.
Back then I was the client! I was filling out all the templates. I was making decisions around restructuring our CoA and choosing dimensions that would help us scale. I was the END USER! We went live in May 2015 and never really looked back. We bought a few more companies in my tenure and before long I was the resident “Intacct Expert”.
After getting promoted to Controller, it became such that the only part of my job that I really enjoyed was the implementation work, so I switched gears in 2019 to being a full time Implementation Consultant. Gone were the month-end, year-end cycles that had dominated my life for so long.
Q: So, tell me what makes you like this line of work so much?
A: You know, when I started I misunderstood the job. I thought I was going to be bringing in my technical competency with the Intacct product and advising people on best practices. Wowing them with my technical skills! What I soon found out was that the skill I needed to flex most regularly was empathy! I had to learn to try to really understand not what clients were trying to achieve with the upgrade but more importantly WHY.
Re-designing your financial accounting system is often a once in a career opportunity for a lot of senior accounting professionals. We all know the pain of getting stuck doing the job the same way for years because the CoA is so hard to change once it’s set. I also learned that because I was once a user of the Platform my approach to implementations was a bit “different”. I’m super focused on the users of the system because I intimately understand that the reports and Dashboards that the C-Suite rely upon are simply a reflection of the quality of the data the junior clerks are putting in. Why not make it easy for them?
I like nothing more than seeing clients to the finish line and managing the emotional rollercoaster in between.
Q: I refer to you as our Sage Intacct nerd. What would you prefer me to refer to you as?
A: GREAT QUESTION!!!! I self-refer as a Sage Intacct Enthusiast. I really believe that the product can super charge a financial operation; and I say that from personal experience. We never did grow our team beyond four. I really took to the product and kept it updated with the latest and greatest functionality that Sage releases four times a year! Our instance from 2015 looked nothing like our instance in 2019. It kept getting better!
I also selfishly like that it can make an accounting team shine. Usually, the team is only noticed when something goes wrong or is late. Most staff think accounting is boring but necessary. Sage Intacct really helps the accounting team take a more visible role in an organization. When everyone is looking at a Dashboard that the accounting team manages, it becomes so apparent that the team is setting the tone of how the Company sees itself from a financial perspective. It also helps companies play by the same playbook. Everyone is looking at the same numbers. And the numbers are real-time! No one has to know how much easier the day-to-day has become. They’re just left wondering “How do they do it!?”.
Q: Wow you really are a NERD!
A: That’s not a question.
Q: Fine. Last one… What are you most excited about about joining nuvemXP?
A: Getting my hands dirty and changing the perception that implementations have to be boring. I guess working alongside my friends and re-imagining the space is cool too. Who wouldn’t love that chance?