The 4 P's of Finance Excellence: Mark Dendle Reveals His Secret Formula for Business Transformation

Asking Good Questions Podcast: Interview with Mark Dendle Introduction Mark Dendle (00:00) Now with the AI agents, it's super exciting because you're going to be able to have a match, but then when it gets it wrong, you're going to get to teach it what it did wrong. Now it's still the humans doing it, right? So, you know, the days of George, you know, the George Jetson dream. You remember that? That's still elusive, you know, but the jobs are going to be changing. Edward Roske (00:21) Hello and welcome to the ever fun, Asking Good Questions. The podcast where we dive into the nuances of financial leadership by, well, asking good questions of really great people. I am your host as you just heard, Edward Roske Center of fun. And today I am joined by someone who has navigated the financial helm of companies spanning, I don't know, 10 plus industries. Global commodity trading, food production, highway safety. He's been recognized as CFO of the year by the Dallas Business Journal, led the most innovative finance team according to DCEO magazine. He's got a unique perspective on transformation leadership. He's even made that leap from CFO to CEO when he was asked to step into that chair. I first met him over 25 years ago in the great state of Texas back when he was VP of finance at Esselor and then CFO at Rexel and he's one of a few privileged people who has actually heard me singing on stage at a conference. That someone is Mark Dendle currently chief financial officer at Valtir. Mark, it is a pleasure having you on today. Mark Dendle (01:28) Edward, it is a great honor to be with you today and I am so flattered that you guys gave me a call. Always fun to try and share a little bit of knowledge and wisdom if I have any left and help develop the next generation of talent for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Eddie and the Consultants Edward Roske (01:52) Awesome. To get this out of the way, I did once write and star in a musical. It was Eddie and the Consultants, a System 9 musical. It was a comedy set to parodies of various rock songs about people implementing an entire Oracle EPMS based system over the course of a week. And Mark did actually get to see this. It was performed to sold out—in the sense that they were free and the room was packed—sold out shows in both Las Vegas and Orlando. And I still remember what you came up and said to me afterward, Mark. Do you remember this? Okay. Mark walked up to me at the end and he said, "I've got to say that was the most creative presentation I have ever seen at a software conference." And then he leaned a little closer and he said, "And it's that type of creativity I look for in a consulting company." Right? Mark Dendle (02:27) No. Well, you know, Edward, that whole presentation stuck with me. So did our, you know, Hyperion financial planning implementation when we did at Rexel. That was kind of an amazing story. And thank goodness we had creative consultants on that one, because when we embarked on that planning implementation together, I don't know if you recall, but our team was asked, what budgeting rules would you like put into the software? And so our team, which was a very solid, extraordinary team, came up with a good number of budgeting rules. And your team was excellent at getting them all logged in, programmed, algorithmically placed into Hyperion Financial Planning. And then when we turned it on, it worked, but it would take like four days for that database to spin up the answer. And we kind of looked at each other and we went, huh. And the lead of the project said, let me call Edward. And then you came in and you went, I think I see the issue. You guys have 64 budgeting rules in here. We normally max out at about 12. So give me a few days. And in four days we had that database running, you did from five days to I think about four hours and you said, I'm out of time this week. I'll come back in a couple of weeks. I think we can do better. And then a couple of weeks later, you had it down to two hours. And then what used to take four people, three to four days of work, we could now turn around in less than two hours with that software. So I think we set some records on that. Edward Roske (04:34) That's impressive. I didn't remember that story and you're actually making me feel good because I do want to clarify. Mark and I both believe in creative solutions, but not creative accounting. And that was definitely an example of where we took it and we creatively figured out a solution. This is surprising to the listeners that, I actually used to do consulting and I was pretty good on the technical side. And it's nice to hear that it made an impact and that you still remember it like 20 years later. Mark Dendle (05:02) Gosh, we literally just tuned our NetSuite ERP database that we created in 2024, bringing a transaction timing down from 20 seconds to four seconds. It just, memories came flooding back, Edward. Teamwork Philosophy Edward Roske (05:20) That's awesome to hear. And this is why Mark agreed to come on today. Mark, thank you. We're gonna start by talking about teamwork. So you have this compelling guiding principle. Teamwork takes a great team with diversity and inclusivity and empowerment, and it takes that to run a great company. And you have to partner with customers, you have to partner with suppliers, you have to partner with community. How did you develop that philosophy of what it takes to build a great team and all the different parts of it? Mark Dendle (05:54) You know, I think it happened over years and accumulative different data points, different bits of knowledge. In 1991, when I was working at Coopers and Lybrand, the firm, which then became Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte in US and then merged with PricewaterhouseCoopers to become PWC today. So we had the firm rolled out values and the values were teamwork, excellence, dedication, decisiveness, and integrity. And teamwork was, in my mind, the first one. And I reordered the five values because I couldn't remember them all until I reordered them to make "Teddy". Teamwork, excellence, dedication, decisiveness, and integrity. And teamwork always struck me as the first one. And I always latched on to articles reading about teamwork in ways to value the individual members in a team. So different articles would resonate. And then one time there was an article that came up, you know, team, together everyone achieves more. And just little nuggets kind of, you know, lock away over time as you start to see them. And then I was at Rexel where we really did some transformational work there and really brought together a team of formidable people at the top of their sphere and all of their specialties. And we really focused on those values. Teamwork was the number one. And whenever anyone did not display teamwork, the other team members would call him an Eddie. Teddy without the T. And so teamwork got reinforced within the whole team. And different companies will call it different things, but every company has a value around teamwork. And then when I was doing the executive MBA at SMU, was really kind of interesting because in the organizational behavior class, there was a part that focused on, that talked about hygiene factors and motivators. And the hygiene factors were all the basics, like are you paid enough to feed your family? You know, salary respectable, is your bonus respectable, you know, are you paid the market level? And then, you know, do you have a health plan? And then there was the motivators. And that is what really sparks the individual to really have that energy to come into work and to just perform at the top of their abilities and with the most motivation and the most energy. And so trying to figure out what the motivators are for each individual. That's a lot of work because it's a whole lot easier just to say, HR says we have this pay scale, this bonus scale. That's what you all get. But some need a little flexibility with hours. And my first working from home employee was in 2006 because their family needed to move two hours from Dallas, so they resigned. And we said, why are you resigning? You're one of the best employees we have. Well, I can't commute two hours to the office. No, but 95% of what you do is for our 430 locations around the country, 5% you do for our Dallas team. And so we set up our first remote employee because that was the right thing to do. And so again, figuring out how to motivate people is essential. And then at the same time, around 2007-8, I was introduced to the concept of servant leadership. And servant leadership, again, we could spend a whole hour just on servant leadership. But in traditional organizations, the leadership starts at the top and flows down. In a servant leadership organization, it's the inverted pyramid. So the CEO is at the very bottom of the pyramid and he serves all of his constituents. He serves his team. He serves his suppliers. He serves his customers. He serves the community and he serves the board, serves the shareholders. And so when you move to that level of motivation, to really drive motivation where you feel you serve the people in your team and you really think about what each individual needs, then I think you really hit a level of teamwork arising out of that, that is kind of hard to match. Edward Roske (10:37) You know, it's funny why you were talking. You and the listeners know, my entire adult life I've gone by Edward. It's because I'm a junior. My dad is Ed. And when people say Ed, it doesn't necessarily register they're talking to me. But when I was a child, obviously I wasn't Edward. I went by Eddie. And now when you're like, we used to call them an Eddie. I was like, he's talking to me. Wait, no, I have a team now. I'm Edward. Somewhere we have to like, now it could be like Ted word. Mark Dendle (11:05) You're a Tedward. Edward Roske (11:08) Thank you. I take that as a compliment. I also had forgotten that we both got our masters at SMU. I want to take a moment to say go Mustangs. They actually have a decent football team again after getting their football life nuked, the nuclear option a few decades back. So welcome back to the greatness of SMU right there in Dallas, Fort Worth. And speaking of, you talked about having that first work from home employee long before the days of pandemic, we should pause for a moment and just appreciate for any of our younger viewers on the call. We used to think that you could only hire great people if they lived within 50 miles of your corporate headquarters, which is kind of like saying I can love reading, but only authors that write their books within 50 miles of where I live. It's like, no, there are great people everywhere and we are serving everyone across the world nowadays. And thank you for getting it started. Industry Experience So let's take a moment to talk through some of those diverse industries. So you went through big six accounting. Yes, there did used to be six big accounting firms back in the days of Coopers and Lybrand. Every time they merged, somebody's name got dropped. And now, heck, we're just going with initials like PWC. So you went through Coopers and Lybrand, you did Optical at Esselor, Electrical at Rexel, Commodities at Ecom, fresh produce at Green Giant, highway safety products at Valtir. That is a ton of different sectors, ton of different industries. Is there anything common? Like are there common financial challenges that you saw, that you still see across all those different industries? Mark Dendle (12:54) For sure. You know, one of the things I love about accounting and finance and treasury and tax and IT, those skills are portable across every industry in the world. And there's not a single industry that doesn't need those. Now, deep knowledge is very helpful in certain roles. And, you know, when I joined Rexel, I knew nothing about electrical products and distribution to residential, commercial, and industrial contractors. And we had 130,000 customers. So not knowing much about that, I was very fortunate in the team. One of my team members had 30 years of knowledge in that area. Another one had 20 years of knowledge in that area. And we were bringing in team members also like the new head of credit, had knowledge in parallel industries that also had to do with lien rights, bond rights, but not that industry. And I learned a lot from the people that had the industry knowledge. But what I was able to bring to them was the best practices. And Esselor was the US subsidiary of a company listed on the French stock exchange. Rexel was also a French company listed on the French stock exchange. But when I was at Coopers & Lybrand, PWC, I'd audited a lot of public companies and knew a lot of the best practices, best internal controls. Being able to search and reapply and understand the context for each different industry and how to apply those best practices, there's a little bit of art to that. But if you have really strong, knowledgeable industry people, you can bring that knowledge to them and you can show them the path. And that's the other thing is if you show them the path of what needs to be done and you share with them the knowledge and the expertise, they will do an infinitely better job than someone who doesn't know the industry, right? So, but it's a matter of mirroring up the industry knowledge with all of the functional knowledge. And when you bring those two together, it's kind of like that budget, you know, Hyperion financial planning. You know, I knew how to bring technology to the table for a budgeting tool. They knew the 64 rules to come up with for the budget. On my own, I might have only come up with the 10 or 12, right? So going from one industry to another has been, for me, it's motivating because I'm always learning. But the projects have been very similar. At Esselor we implemented an ERP and we implemented a data warehouse and we implemented document imaging and we implemented an HRAS system and we were a million dollars into building our own laboratory operating system when we on a 10 million dollar budgeted project back 30 years ago when we found a company that did that was best in class and the people were retiring so we bought the software company for two and a half million. And we saved ourselves three years of development and eight million dollars of capex. And so that whole power of technology has really, really helped. Having a great grounding in US GAAP, French GAAP, UK GAAP, international financial reporting standards, because I started my career in England as well. That's just... You know, all of those are the kind of trade knowledge and then figuring out how to put it together in a functional way with the industry expertise and the different context in different companies is really been a kind of rinse and repeat because after Esselor we went to Rexel. What did we do? We re-implemented Oracle because the prior implementation was completely off. We then expanded the implementation. We added Hyperion financial planning. At Esselor we actually also did... we were the beta for Hyperion financial management and we did... we were working with the outside consultants in Hyperion. So the outside consultants were Deloitte and we did... apparently 90% of our recommendations got baked into the final product. They said most of the beta they'd like three or four betas. They said the next highest was 10% and we did the first ever worldwide consolidation in HFM. So the whole power of mirroring up the tools and the industry knowledge and the talent, that's very portable between industries. At Rexel, we also put in place a world-class credit system, and collections, cash collections system from SunGuard. We also then put in place a data warehouse. So, and we built the team. And then at ECOM, well, at Eagle Materials, was publicly listed company, everything was already built. But then at ECOM, again, we had to do re-implementations, data warehouses, systems, treasury management system was the big one there from SunGuard. At Rexel, we did get paid that I think SunGuard purchased. And then we did SunGuard's Treasury Management System at ECOM. That was a kind of fun story also. We did a survey of how many bank accounts we had around the world in our 28 countries and we had over 760 bank accounts. So we embarked on the software project and we closed down over 500 bank accounts. And when we were done implementing the Treasury Management System about a year and a half later, you know mind you we started with seven hundred sixty accounts we close five hundred we still had over five hundred when we did the survey people didn't even know how many bank accounts they had around the world it was that bad. And so you know so you can use software for some amazing transformational items and and then we went over to Green Giant same thing re-implementation of the ERP good data data analytics is a theme Edward you asked for themes. Having great data analytics without that, I don't know how people run businesses. Every single place I've been, we've developed that. Now here at Valtir, we're doing a NetSuite conversion from a 30-year homegrown ops sales quality assert system. And so we just, we implemented NetSuite last year. And then, also at the NSAW data warehouse that goes with NetSuite. And now the integrator has asked to do a case study on our NetSuite implementation. Apparently it's the most highly customized complex NetSuite implementation they've ever seen. And our NetSuite data warehouse team now, Oracle, apparently NetSuite wants to do a case study on that because of what we did there. You know, themes that kind of cross all the industries, you know, there's the teams, the talent, having the right talent and the right mix of industry expertise and then functional expertise, which sometimes you bring in from the outside, sometimes you have it in, sometimes you hire it in. Great data, great data analytics, high performing systems, really to pilot the business and to give you the information you need to make the right decisions. You know, you really see some themes that really kind of come through repetitively. And then really taking care of the individuals, making sure that the individuals on the journey are all at the right place, because the journeys don't always marry up with an individual's timeframe. They may have a new child and need to relax for six months to take care of their family, and you might bring in someone else to help them, right? So developing people. And I don't know, I haven't really thought about summarizing it, but if you think about the old people process platform, those three themes really permeate. And then I will also add in project management, solid project management. You're trying to, multiple of the companies I've gone to, it's been transformational exercises and really, if you don't have solid project management, you will get buried and inundated quickly. The Four P's of Mark Dendle Edward Roske (22:10) We will now call this the four P's of Mark Dendle, people, process, platform, and project management. I like that Edward. It's forever branded. When we talk about the four P's, we'll know we're talking about you. There are a lot of great things in what you said, talking about the importance of teamwork and bringing the right people with the right soft skills, making sure that you actually have decent processes. You're not just trying to throw technology at it, but using technology where it makes sense. I like the emphasis on data. I like the emphasis on analytics. I think that diversity of background that you have lets you rise up and see, well, here are how all the aspects come together. And by the way, I did take two years of high school French. Allow me to get this out of my system. That's about all I know to this point. Although, yes. Mark Dendle (23:00) Edward, suis enchanté. Je suis ravi d'être avec vous aujourd'hui. Edward Roske (23:05) Uh, uh, I'll see, see. Oh, I do. Um, I am able to put Duh and Duh together to get Katra, um, because there's something that never clicked until just now. Uh, I saw on your, your profile that you had degrees in international studies and French from UNC Chapel Hill. And I always thought what route gets Mark from a French degree into like, uh, Esselor and Rexel and... You just set the light bulb off like they're French companies. So unless you're going to tell me I completely made a connection that didn't make sense, I'm guessing that kind of led to that international foundation and the link up. Mark's Background and Career Path Mark Dendle (23:48) It really did and you sometimes if you if you kind of let the world kind of help you find your path if you listen to the world what it's telling you you will kind of occasionally meander in the right direction and it's interesting that you said deux plus deux equals quatre because my first word you know my mother was French my father was British and my first word was in French and it was deux so maybe I was fated to be an accountant. But my mother, when I was little, would give me one cookie and I guess I had two hands so I would go, duh. And so, you know, so maybe I was bribed with cookies into a future in numbers. You know, it's interesting. My father was a professor of Spanish literature. My mother was a teaching instructor. She taught French at American universities and colleges. And so, that background I'd kind of assumed I would just be a French professor I was good at French I enjoyed it I love French literature. I will tell you there's a tremendous amount of what I apply every day in the workplace that that I learned from that humanities degree. You know the study of human nature in French literature, everything from a lot of the bullet that Samuel Beckett, which sounds like an American name or English name, but it's French, to Saint-Exupery. Even the Little Prince has stories about human nature and motivation that apply every day in the workplace. And also at university, I arrived at university with a year of credit, but I still took the four years because I wanted to learn everything. And I took classes in psychology and you know my best friend today still I met in a pre-med class human anatomy. You know I so I studied physiology, you know the way chemicals influence the brain. I took classical music, I took you know history of the New Testament day, every single class that you symbolic logic. I took calculus, but I did realize I probably was not going to be the top of the math majors when I would study hard and take all three hours on the final exam to get a good grade. And the guy next to me never took notes in class, showed up to the final exam, finished it in like 30 minutes, and got like an A plus. And I went, that's deep competition. Maybe I should not go into years of math. Yeah, and then. And then after college, I really, didn't want a professional job. So I went and spent one year in the north of France, teaching English to three to seven year olds and to some members of the local town hall who'd organized the twinning program, the sister cities program. And, and then from there, I met the lady who is now my wife, who's from England and she was doing her junior year abroad in the same town. And so I went to England and tried to decide what I was going to do. And oddly enough I took a little computer exam and it ranked one to ten what I should do and I was like you know number one terrible I'm gonna just work on two to ten and I applied for jobs and you know sales manager stockbroker you know marketing and nothing really sparked and then I thought well you know I'd better go back and research number one a little bit because even though I struck it off, I'm not really finding the spark with the others. Well, the computer, the number one thing it came up with was Chartered Accountant, based on my likes and preferences and things I put into computer. And then I met some of the people from Coopers and Lybrand at a CareerSphere event a few weeks later, and they were just wonderful. And I was number 12 in a Coopers office that grew to 120 professionals in three years. We were entrepreneurial, Edward. We worked 80 hours a week and we loved it. And we worked 80 hours a week and we got together for dinner on Friday night together with spouses and everything. It was like a real, it was almost like a club. Maybe even, you know, just like, but no one ever told me your first job out of college, you didn't work 80 hours a week. So that's what I did. And that's how I ended up in getting into accounting was through the Chartered Accounting Program, which is very much like an apprentice program in England. Edward Roske (28:38) Well, I like that you listen to the computer eventually. What would the number? Mark Dendle (28:42) Data driven decision making. Edward Roske (28:45) Exactly. Turns out the computers are really good at things like that. And you obviously had the ability to count at a young age. Calculus is one of those quirky things. I find it easy to add an infinite number of infinitesimals and get a finite number. But most brains don't work that way. But what's really interesting is I've seen like adults and other people in like calculus classes like not get it at all. And then for funsies one time, I tried to explain it to my seven year old who instantaneously got it. And this was a child who obviously hadn't taken algebra or anything else. And it was like, well, you're adding a whole lot of these really small things and you get something about this big. And it was like, yeah, I'll tell you, I totally get it. And next thing I know is doing differentials like before you actually even learn so the variable is so yeah, it's one of those sticky things, but you were born to have a finance role, born to have a leadership role, also born to ask for more. If you're given just one but you have two hands, let's go. Can get a whole lot more than that. So respect. And on a side note, I have become a fan of Wales lately, more specifically the town of Wrexham, because I've fallen in love with this English football soccer team to the Americaners out there. And if you haven't watched them, it's great. They're making a shot at rising up to the Champions League this year. So I don't want to give it away, but it's coming down to the wire. Mark Dendle (30:07) That's otherwise known as the Ryan Reynolds team. Edward Roske (30:09) I coincidentally, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney may own the team, I was a fan. No, I'd never heard of them before. Ryan bought some random fifth tier football team. Yeah. Mark Dendle (30:23) We love that show and the Ted Lasso show and you know, there's so many things about that the way American culture and British culture kind of intersect. You know, there was a book called Brit think America think, know written like 30 years ago and the subtitle is two countries divided by the same language, you know. And so, you know, the richness, the depth of the culture and, you know, that's the other thing, you know, we were talking about diversity earlier, you know, growing up in a household where, you know, we had English influence, had French influence, you know, my dad would take us to travel. He would take college students to Mexico when he was little, when we were little. And when I was seven years old, I got to spend a month traveling around Mexico with college students. And my dad always seemed to have PhD students and master students showing up and their stipend wasn't ready. So we'd go, well, just live at our house. So my brother and I would double up and we'd have someone from Colombia or Peru or Chile or Spain living in our house. We grew up with just all kinds of different ever-changing things around us. And then my mother's from France and the French have a phrase and we're going to test your French again. Vive la différence! Hooray for differences! Edward Roske (31:50) Live the different. Viva. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Viva la differential. Mark Dendle (31:57) And so the interesting thing is when you put in your mind different is great, then it's really mind opening. And it's funny you were talking about your son. Now, by the way, is your son an Edward, an Eddie, or an Ed? Edward Roske (32:18) I either it's stopping at me. We're stopping at the second. So my older son is Mycroft and my younger son is Elliot. Both of them are literary names. Okay. Mark Dendle (32:27) Well, you still have time for a third. You know, who knows? Well, I remember on my laptop for years, my screensaver was just a banner going across and it said, all truths are paradoxical. And Lao Tse Tung, the Chinese philosopher, I believe, was the one who did that one. And it always struck me as, you know, there's a lot of things that are complex in the world. And something, a lot of things are paradoxical and you just have to accept that. And I remember when my daughter was five years old and she used to stare at my screen periodically. One day she looks at me and she goes, I get it. And I looked at her and she's, you know, she had a little glint in her eye. She'd been studying that to really understand what it meant. And I was like, oh my gosh, this child's so far ahead of me. At five, I would never have understood that. But it's really interesting because one of the other things that that viva la differance, all truths are paradoxical. I read a business article a few years ago that said that people who have the ability to carry paradox within their own mind on a daily basis actually tend to perform better in situations that require all that critical thought and the real critical thinking and the ability to bring different ideas to the table because if you're only overthinking one certain way, well then it's hard to onboard different aspects. Whereas if you're always thinking, hey, this is the way we're doing it, but maybe it should be done this way. Or I was just told X, but what about maybe Y? And if your brain's always thinking about other permutations, other ways to bring new ideas to the table, I think that kind of helps and also being able to just throw out yesterday's idea, right? So, Sonia, but coming back to the diversity, that diversity of thought, the ability to onboard different ideas, that is really kind of, I think that's a real powerhouse for the people that can do that. Edward Roske (34:48) Absolutely. There's so you remind me of a Scott Fitzgerald quote. He said the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. But I like the way you put it. It's two contradictory ideas helps you function better. Like, if you can handle that causing cognitive dissonance and look at both sides of it, it's going to advance you more. And speaking of advancing more, we're to take a quick break to hear from today's episode sponsors to whom we are very grateful, Caprus AI. This episode of asking good questions is brought to you by the great folks at Caprus AI. As someone who spent over 25 years helping improve the office of the CFO, I am genuinely excited about what Caprus is doing. They're bringing the power of AI to finance and accounting teams in a way that actually makes sense. Helping unlock insights buried in data and make better business decisions even faster. If you're an FP&A or accounting and you want to see how AI can transform your workflow, check out Caprus AI. Trust me, your future self will thank you. Welcome back, everyone. We have spent the commercial break talking about a whole lot of literature. I will say that there are certain books that when you go back and reread them as adults, they hit you completely differently. Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when you go back and read as an adult, you go, that's what they were talking about the entire time. Lord of the Rings hits differently. But the one that blew me away when I read it as an adult is the Little Prince. At the time, it's like, it's about a cute little boy and he wants to go off and visit the stars. Trust me, it won't, it'll take you like 20 minutes. Go back and read the Little Prince as an adult and realize what it's actually talking about and what happens to the Little Prince at the end of the book. And I will leave it at that. Also for anyone that doesn't know, this is breaking news just happened in the last week. This isn't breaking if you're listening to this podcast in the year 2047, but Ted Lasso season four is confirmed. Ted is coming back. I was about to spoil what the plot's gonna be, but I won't put that into the podcast, but be excited. The future of soccer and football is safe and we will finally get to figure out what offsides is. Mark Dendle (37:03) You know, Edward, I don't know if you've also been tracking, you know, the World Cup activity coming here next year, right? And I got to hear the Dallas sports commissioner speak about it at Financial Executives International, I think month before last. It's amazing the economic lift and the amount of work that's going into that. But I think Dallas is really special and really honored to have so many matches that are going be played here. Edward Roske (37:35) Yeah, I think it's something like 10, including one of the semi finals. And I went out to go get myself some world cup tickets and then I saw the price and realized I like food more. But I'm hoping that I can just save up, make a couple of really successful companies, but yeah, the economic benefit, the awareness that it's going to bring the entire world. There are a lot of people that have a very, I won't say backwards. I'd say very narrow view of what Texas is and specifically DFW. And then you realize that DFW has more Fortune 500 companies headquartered there than any area of the entire United States. Like it is a business hub and getting just that awareness out is going to be great for everybody. I mean, you're, are you still co-chair of the Dallas CFO community? Mark Dendle (38:24) Well, the Advance has been less active recently on the in-person events here. I'm just about to become the first VP of Financial Executives International, the Dallas chapter. Edward Roske (38:40) Early congratulations. Mark Dendle (38:42) Then I am active in the Association of Corporate Growth also here in Dallas. So that's the, you know, premier middle market private equity group. And I just joined the Private Directors Association because at this point in my career, I'm also kind of starting to work on directorships. And so I try to stay active in the community and involved. And I was super flattered that one of my great mentors and one of the people I greatly respect, Kevin Rupp, who was the CFO at Esselor that I worked for, after a recent event, he reached out and just said, hey, nice work, and we're going to lunch next week. And I haven't spoken to him in 10 years. But love him to death. He taught me so much on how to get stuff done in a bureaucracy, in a corporation, that Teddy Roosevelt damned the torpedoes full speed ahead. I learned that from Kevin. Edward Roske (39:44) That's awesome. Since we're giving a shout out to mentors, I do want to thank the person who brought me into the wide world of finance back in 95, no, 92. It was Paulette Howard at Moore Business Forums up in the Mundelein, Illinois, north of Chicago area. And he taught me that finance, the way it differs from math is it has a dollar sign and it has a bias. And I don't think I've ever given a shout out to Paulette. Well, and now I want to go meet with him because I haven't been talking with him in like a decade. So you've inspired me on that. So being at that, that forefront of finance transformation with all the groups that you're part of, with the directorship you've been involved on, with the companies that you've helped lead. I'd love to hear your perspective. How do you see, how do you see the finance function changing? Like, where do see it heading? Finance Transformation and AI Mark Dendle (40:34) So it's really interesting. I was a panelist at the Insight Summit recently at Dallas, and the topic was leveraging technology in the evolving role of the CFO. And so we kind of talked about the journey that systems have been on in companies. So if we think about where we're headed now with AI, with artificial intelligence and AI agents, it's really the kind of next step in a story that kind of started in the 1990s. At first, there was just document imaging. And I remember when our accounts payable team implemented document imaging, nine months later, we needed 50% less people to do accounts payable processes. Then there was some basic matching, you know, some optical character recognition that started kicking in and then the human would validate the input and that kind of started to go in and that was kind of more mid to late 2000s coming into the back at 2005 to 10ish. And then they got to little more powerful matching. And now we're to... You know, and a lot of juice got squeezed out of those turnips because a lot of headcount were removed. A lot of AP departments now are a fraction of the size they were back then. Now with the AI agents, it's super exciting because you're going to be able to have a match, but then when it gets it wrong, you're going to get to teach it what it did wrong. Now it's still the humans doing it, right? So, you know, the days of George, you know, the George Jetson dream. You remember that? That's still elusive, but the jobs are going to be changing. They're still going to need the humans because there's always going to be life is full of exceptions and business transactions. I don't know the percentage. It'd be interesting to see, but a high percentage of transactions, a high number still will have exceptions, but you'll be able to now teach the tool to kind of catch the exception the next time. So in our team, we've kind of set in our own objectives for Q2 this year to really explore AI agents. We would have done it a lot sooner, but we were busy carving a company out of Trinity Industries, implementing a new ERP, creating a new data warehouse, overhauling the sales area for all of the pricing and optimization, the cost optimization. So we've now gotten to where we're gonna be really focused on that kind of next wave of efficiency. And so we're kind of really excited to embark on that and to see kind of where we can make that continuous improvement in the coming year. Edward Roske (43:38) I like that you have a strategy that you're staying aware of what's been going on. Of course you have to handle the tactical heavy lifting. You don't really want to take and put AI on a 30 year old homegrown system that you know you're going to replace anyway. Do the lifting to get that up and modernize, wrap AI around it, let it start coming to those conclusions. It's interesting. You were talking about, we're not ready for Rosie the robot. Side note and true story, I call my Roomba Rosie because she just sort of runs around there on the floor and cleans up everything. But, most people wouldn't get it, but thank you for getting the Jetsons reference. Mark Dendle (44:16) Can you get your cat to sit on it so then you can do a YouTube? Edward Roske (44:19) So I want that to happen. I want my cat to sit in a shark costume. But I did a project for Roomba. And I was out there talking with them. iRobot makes Roomba. And I said, do you encourage people to put cats on these things and run around the room? And they said, no, but we definitely retweet it, when it happens. So it's for anybody that wants to get iRobot's awareness of just your cat on a robot and have it sent around the whole thing. I was talking yesterday morning with the CAIO, Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer of today's sponsor, Caprus, and I asked, are you seeing people losing their jobs right now due to AI? And he said, no, what we're seeing right now is a lot of what you're talking about, which is they're using it to help them as a co-intelligence. The humans are definitely coming in where there are exceptions, but the AI can handle the kind of repetitive work. But then he said something interesting. He said, but we have seen companies that are no longer hiring people for traditional roles like they would have, like financial analysts. They're letting AI be that kind of staff replacement where they're not replacing existing people, they're replacing open roles with AI. And I said, is that possible autonomously? And he said, no. It's definitely where somebody has to kind of work with it, but you don't need all the people that you used to. So do you see finance beginning to have kind of a mix of, I don't know how to put this, human employees and AI employees, working together? Or do you see humans more using AI to supplement their jobs? Like, where do you see that going? done document imaging and using the matching tools today for the AP invoices, they've probably squeezed 70, 80% of the juice out of that turnip that they're gonna get. And then if they're down to a smaller AP team, chances are they're having trouble finding really good AP people in this day and age. So if someone leaves, you know, and if not in that department and others, so. In actuality, if you have good people and you run out of AP work, there's probably other work in the company to give them. Or if they really want to just do AP, there's lots of demand for that around still. But I do think those roles are going to diminish in quantity and the skill sets are going to change. But it's all part of the same journey that started years ago, and AI is just another tool. If you have AI but you don't have document imaging, it's not going to work. Right? The stuff's got to come in electronically. So it all kind of builds on itself. It was interesting at the Insight Summit conference, you know, on the panel, I asked the room how many of you have already embarked on AI? There's, you know, probably, you know, 130, 140 people in the room. One person stood up. And I know him. He's a member of FEI, Financial Execs International. And all they were doing was starting to use Copilot with some of their spreadsheets. And he's like, it really blew me away that we could put our data in and I could then ask a question like, what were our sales in Uganda last year? And 30 seconds later, I have the sales in Uganda last year. So my understanding is there's a lot of things you gotta be... You know, you got to have your parameters well in play for protecting your data and making sure you have good security parameters. And that's probably that's a lot of the science that everyone needs to remember and probably needs the very best advisors they can get on that side to partner with them on AI. But the power is there. The jobs are going to change. We don't have enough workers today for the traditional roles. So I do think that that we're going to see, we'll see fewer jobs in future, but they'll probably be richer and more interesting in terms of what they're doing.