Tom So

As the broader finance function continues to take on a more diverse and strategic role within organizations, the appetite to invest in software that tangibly improves process efficiency, data-driven decision-making capabilities and overall financial performance management will only continue to grow.

The size and sophistication of these models make it impossible to fully understand how they make predictions. They have billions of weights that interact in subtle ways to make a final prediction; looking at them is like hoping to understand psychology by examining individual brain cells. Even in academic settings with well-established models, the... See more

A natural forest is illegible. A tangle of plants. This is inconvenient from the standpoint of harvesting lumber. How do you quantify yield? Can you even make a meaningful map of this mess? Much easier to clear the forest and plant a legible “scientific” forest. Uniform rows of trees that produce good lumber. Now we can count the trees, make a map,... See more

As finance has started to take on more responsibility and influence within organizations, the technology enabling CFOs and finance teams has lagged. Most finance workflows, such as annual planning, quarterly actuals reporting and reconciliations, tend to be managed within disconnected spreadsheets with no automation or collaboration capabilities.

In the insightful (and accessible) book Design for How People Learn, Julie Dirksen covers five "gaps" that inhibit learning (and applying) something new:Knowledge GapSkills Gap (Knowledge + Practice)Motivation GapHabit GapEnvironment Gap