Rebecca He: The Modern CFO's Journey - AI, Transformation, and Beyond

Speaker A: I've been in business for about 25 years. I originally came from Shanghai, China but being in Australia for about 25 years now I've got five different academic degrees and I'm um, CICF, FCPI qualified. Got over 11 years of CFO experience. So across that 11 years that included a lot of ASX listed companies, public sector, large, not for profit and startups. So. So I launched my firm with the aim and game to support medium and small size of business because I truly believe every business requires a cfo but very rarely any business need a full time cfo. So let's think to incur the fractional cost and then uh, get the CFO who are able to provide the insights and leadership with that uh, fractional cost.

Speaker B: Welcome back to Books The Boardroom Season 3 CFO Catalyst podcast. Today my guest is Rebecca He. Rebecca is the founder and Managing director of RHCFO Consulting in Brisbane. Rebecca, great to have you on our podcast.

Speaker A: Uh, thank you for having me. Sumesh.

Speaker B: So there's a lot that I need to unfold. Your story is so passionating to me but I need to start from something that you put on your LinkedIn profile to say that you are a transformational CFO. So talk to me about it.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you. So I am the founder and Managing director of RHCFO Consulting. RHCFO Consulting is a CPA public practice firm as well which is very exciting. We got a confirmation last week.

Speaker B: Well done.

Speaker A: Um, so thank you. So it's offering, the firm is there to offer fractional CFO consulting services to a range of clients and in different industries. The reason is transformation in its sense is not only we are there to complete all the compliance set of things but that take probably 20% of what we do. Majority will be helping the clients understand how to optimize profits, reduce costs, leveraging AI, machine learning, automation and a range of technology platform to drive more insightful commercial insights and then help the business succeed.

Speaker B: Wonderful. That's very much like a modern CFO's role that you are explaining to me and that can give you the benefit of for the smaller businesses by compared to the corporates to get you a service in a fractional basis so that they can access the what is out there in the corporate market, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I've been in business for about 25 years. I originally came from Shanghai, China but being in Australia for about 25 years now, I've got five different academic degrees and I'm um, CACF, FCPI qualified. Got over 11 years of CFO experience. So across that 11 years that included a lot of ASX listed companies, public sector, large, not for profit and startups. So I launched my firm with the aim and game to support medium and small size of business. Because I truly believe every business requires a cfo but very rarely any business need a full time cfo. So the best thing to incur the fractional cost and then get the CFO who are able to provide insights and leadership with that uh, fractional cost.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I wanted to sort of highlight this. There's a lot of people going into this portfolio career or the fractional CFO career but some of them, I know that they are focusing on the more of the bookkeeping side of the business, not the strategy for the business. So how do you differentiate yourself and have you had that experience as well? Someone sort of doing that but not what is really required for the company to go forward?

Speaker A: Well, bookkeeping and compliance side of works are required. However it does not necessarily justify or need that level of cost. So out of my clients so far I'm quite happy to confirm, um, I haven't disappointed anyone. Everyone wants to keep me on and they're wanting to expand the time. But there are different aspects to the role for bookkeeping and M compliance those tasks there are different options. Either cheaper with firms that spend specialize in that area or a lot of automation and robotic automations can be done anyway which I'm um, very happy to cover. As in one bot these days costs about $20,000. It can do up to 4 to 5 FTEs work and for compliance side of things that can all be rule based anyway. So we are talking about $20,000 a bot working 247 with no sick leave or on cost versus adding $80,000 junior accountant.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So there are things that can be done with outsourcing options to bookkeeping firm or financial accounting firm. But the reality is the part that's hard to automate and hard to replace are the true transformational CFO side of things.

Speaker B: That's so true. I uh, really want to sort of deep dive into that later in the podcast. But before that I think there is a part that I can't just ignore and go that's your upbring Shanghai, especially your experience as door knocking through the sales. So tell me about that.

Speaker A: So I have been a curious person. If you ask my parents, they will say that uh, I just never stop wanting to try new things. So when I was 14 I really wanted a part time job and I thought sales Looks fun because there is commission coming with it. So I tried this door to door knocking sales in cosmetic and the cleaning products. So in Shanghai because there are so many high rises. So uh, for a 34 level building that tends to take a day it was very interesting to see different responses, uh, from housewives, from husbands, from children, how this dynamic of the family works. And it's very good to get the firsthand customer interactions and then build some resilience as a 14 year old and understand what defines an effective communication. So that's something that has helped me to look beyond numbers later on as in looking at business or any business at the end of day it's about people, it's about human connection. So yeah, the ability to read people's response in real time has been very helpful in the boardroom or not.

Speaker B: That's so true. And I think that's a really a good skill set for a CFO to have because not many CFOs exposed to the sales or marketing that side of the business. So mainly they go through that accounting channel and then uh, they go in the career ladder through that accounting. But you had started that way and I could relate to my own experience as well. I ran a burger restaurant or a burger bar but that gave me a different experience. That's the customer servicing and then of course rejections and things that you never see in the CFO world because there's an authority that goes through the channel so you don't need to have worry about it. But in a sales card you have no authority over your customers so you are uh, pretty exposed.

Speaker A: Yes, I completely agree with you Sumesh. The reality is every company, for that to succeed, effective sales are needed. So CFO may not be directly in charge of sales, but the understanding and appreciation of effective sales are important. So a ah, good CFO should be able to sell. They don't. They may not need to sell, but they should be up to sell.

Speaker B: That's a great point. I completely agree. Exactly. Because we should know like what they're going through, then we can relate to and then support more. Right, because that's what the CFO's role is, to support the other functions as much as you can. And for that you need to have some kind of an exposure or some kind of an empathy for what they're going through. Uh, that way you're going to be more effective CFO and the business get the benefit of someone with that understanding.

Speaker A: That's why I feel in most, in pretty much all companies I work with or uh, work for. I always get along with the head of sales. So typically speaking you always hear our CFO and head of sales don't really agree. I never had that challenge. So by showing that uh, I'm able to understand and appreciate while we still need to have a clear target and the KPIs and then how to collaborate and figure out the joint solution for the company tend to be a um, much better solution than just highlighting, hey, you did not meet your target, what are you going to do about it?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: So it's a much better collaborative way with our head of sales.

Speaker B: And Rebecca, I have a lot of respect for you for what you do outside of the CFO career, especially for you are a competitive pencil. So tell me about it. How do you, how did you go into that kind of sport and you have had enough success in that one. Tell me the marketplace about like how it works and how do you get involved?

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Look, I do have a lot of personal interest and sports uh, is certainly one of them. So as a family we like our ski holidays and then um, I have a 16 year old and 14 year old so and, and then my husband, the four of us go out for ski etc. Each year. My kids after they started a high school got incubancing and they really love it. So kids were saying mom, um, you really have to try the sport to understand why we love this fencing so much. So I thought I'd give it a go. What can go wrong, right? So after I tried it I loved it. So I have two different coaches teaching me professionally. One of the coach is the professional coach for ex Korea Korean Olympian B team as well. So anyway, three weeks ago I'm very happy to confirm that I represent proudly represented Queensland to compete at the Australian Open Fencing Championship. And our Queensland team brought home a bronze medal.

Speaker B: Congratulations.

Speaker A: So officially now a national medalist in fencing.

Speaker B: That's amazing. And I think it's so amazing that I can't see me doing anything like that in this age.

Speaker A: Anyway, I see that, I see that Sumesh just come book a time with you, I introduce you to the company. We can do a beginner sort that out.

Speaker B: I love to. Wonderful. So that's what I like about your kind of journey. That's the really a modern CFO's journey that I want to sort of tell the market about. Like you are technically very sound and you uh, are doing all the things that you need to do to be keep abreast with the technology and everything. At the same time you have Another for the leisure and for the competitive spread and things that you do to balance the whole journey to get. That's why I really have a bigger respect for what you do and saying that I think you got more experience in this AI and the automation area. I'd like to explore more about it. And I know you built up a like a bot or some kind of program for the Queensland Health, was it?

Speaker A: Yes, correct.

Speaker B: Tell me about that, what it does and how does that help the patients or the wider community.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Just to give a little bit background, I used to be a SQL developer about 20, 25 years ago. So I am a hardcore programmer, might not be very good anymore, but I understand the background, the data tables, the joints etc. The categorization, how important it is to have clean data and how automation should work. Things should be a rule based etc. API first. So because I come to me quite naturally and easily while I work in finance. For example, when I was a general manager in Queensland Health I was looking at our dental voucher system. So that was a paper based system in 2018 at the time. What happens is when public patients that could not afford private dental care call up and asking for public care, when there's insufficient capacity, public care will refer to uh, other patients to a private clinic that and then the government will pay for the care itself, which is a great thing. However, the process itself is very manual, it's all mail based. So there are about two or three different mails and form required for a process to be completed. So we are talking about public patients experiencing toothache having to wait for about five or six weeks before they can get their dental voucher to before they could make an appointment and get the treatment. So when I looked at that and then from the financial side of things, it's very difficult for Queensland House or for us to figure out how much liabilities are out there because it's all paper based. We do not know how many vouchers have been redeemed, how many liabilities need to be put on the balance sheet. So overall that was the reason I initiated this idea of building a dental online voucher exchange dub app. I brought this idea to Queensland Health, a seed funding round that was blessed and approved on the spot, which is great. So the whole app took about six and a half weeks to build. Cost less than $20,000 benefiting 18,000 patients a year. Then for the first year I believe it reduced about 184,000 patient wait days. So this product itself and the DAF app is I checked yesterday still in use which is great. At that time it was a return on investment payback of 13 days.

Speaker B: Wow. No, that's wonderful. I think it's a uh, it's a really good niche that you identified that you solved that problem most efficient way. That's hats off to what you have done and thank you for doing that for Queensland.

Speaker A: No worries at all. It's one thing I feel that's very important at the end of the day. We now are uh, saving postage fees while saving patient wait days. Patients get the best care possible then we are able to do accounting more accurately. So to me I uh. Like a win, win, win situation.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And Rebecca, for the CEO force though nowadays like they talking about AI these days and automation and but there's a bit of a resistance to going to that which I heard that people are still getting educated about it like they're still scratching the surface but they're not going deeper. So from your analysis what is happening that you have seen or you know that no it's not right but people are going straight at it or they're trying to sort of go deep into that to implement AIs kind of projects into in the mixture at the moment.

Speaker A: Because I uh, do go to a lot of AI forums and technology forums and I this year I'm also the 2025 Telstra Best of Business award judge and I was judging 2021 as well. I see a lot of AI tools being pretty presented and there's certainly a lot of hot topic and uh, discussions around AI tools, what it can do, what is about to be able to enable us to do in the finance area. My gathering is there might be some pushback in the past. I see less and less of that now. Everyone seems to understand and accept the fact that AI is here, it's going to revolutionize our world. But I do see there's a huge difference in and the level of understanding and the take up of the technology. The reality is currently generative AI is a new thing. Things like predictive analytics data, the machine learning that's been around for 1020 years already. The ones that are really uh, good at utilizing those products already are taking advantage and benefits. The generative AI part have like ChatGPT and then Copilot, et cetera are able to bring us a lot more content creation. So they are the ones that have evolved a lot recently there is. So by utilizing that new trend and new capability should be able to. And then I certainly am um, using that on a regular Basis and daily basis with a team m, with my clients, et cetera and in my own firm. That saves significant amount of time. When I do presentations or when I do my sales pitch deck, it's five seconds. As long as we have the content, humans still have to know what we're trying to sell, what we are trying to do. But AI can very much sex it up and then prepare that for us and create and provide a lot of ideas, et cetera. That saves us time. There's also then a lot of conversations about agentic AI as uh, in how AI is going to make the decisions, assess and then process things for us that based on what I've seen is still being developed. I don't necessarily think that will be available to us in a mature stage for a while. That's why I feel that robotic automation still has its own place which can still be utilized. So at the moment, to answer your question short, AI tools are getting better. Let's keep ourselves updated with our trend and understand what could be utilized and then keep an eye on where it is heading to. But the actual evolvement is still taking its time for us to be able to get there then the one thing I do want to remind all of us is the data privacy is important because um, while there are ChatGPT and Copilot, etc. Every organization should have its own AI policy and ensure all staff members with different maturity in understanding of AIs know what can be done, what can't be done. Because that's one of the risks I see that to all of us at the moment.

Speaker B: That's an interesting point Rebecca, because you have to sort of move with caution. Uh, you can't overshare your information in the, for the specially posting things like just a GPT or copilot kind of thing. So you like what you said, you had your own policies and the restrictions uh, within to make sure that you're uh, not giving away all your critical data.

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Because there are a lot of organizations, name a few like pharmacy for example Healthcare, ndis providers, those ones, a lot of them are human providing services. So there are a lot of clinical notes, et cetera that's required to be edited or improved. Well it is going to be problematic if the staff member is using a free version because that's what the AI tools is going to utilize and then getting the data back for training. So understanding what version is allowed to be used for what purpose in an organization is quite critical at the moment.

Speaker B: The other sort of fear that we most of the accountants or the accounting graduates or anyone thinking of accounting as a career, thinking that yeah, we replace their uh, the jobs in the future. So how do you see this happening and what we should do? Or anyone thinking of account, anyone already in the accounting to elevate their career or navigating through the challenges with the technical advancement but you're still relevant and you still will have a really professional accounting career into the future.

Speaker A: That's a great question. I uh, actually was at the Brisbane Career Expo yesterday talking about exactly the same thing. The students in year 9, 10, 11 all like well, robots gonna do it all, why do we need to have accounting and finance career etc. And the part that I was, I'm very proud I was able to bust a few myths yesterday. The reality is it's probably the best time to join finance and accounting career now because AI is there, it's able to give us more deeper and then broader data with more analytical insights than ever. And then because of the AI capability and robotic capability, a lot of the boring jobs, and I'm um, quoting my fingers, all those boring jobs could be automated. That means the ones that actually understand the business and uh, with the proper accounting and finance knowledge are ah, able to focus on really interesting work finding opportunities, looking at pricing, costing efficiency, sensitivity analysis, predictive analytics, capacity planning. There's no limit to what finance and accounting professionals can do now because of the AI automation and the data availability. So to me the ATAR points should go higher and then there should be more people applying for finance and accounting professions. For the ones that's currently in finance and accounting professions, I don't think there is any need to be worried. It's more about leverage what we already have as a core skill but also continuously polish up and keep up with the IR trend.

Speaker B: Of course it is the best time to be in account. It's more sexier than before. So that's why you have time to do painting. So that's the painting as well, which I didn't brought up at the beginning. So you're a painter as well. Right. So you can do other things, I mean outside of the CA post life also it gives you the time because you're not doing all these kind of mundane tasks anymore, which we used to do when we first started the career and since we were going through this transition. We understand that very clearly Rebecca, because we know what it was 10, 15 years before and what it is right now. The problem is we need to communicate clearly to the new undergraduates or graduates or the uh, people who are starting up the career like how good it is right now and you can do the accounting and finance now from anywhere in the world which you never had that kind of luxury like I remember. So you only go to the office if you want to do a thing or you go to office on a Saturday or Sunday or stay at night to finish the month in.

Speaker A: I uh, completely agree the part that I think I managed to convince some of the year end 9 and 10 students are uh. But when you do understand we want for the young people. Right. I know you all want to travel the world. You all want to be able to have the flexibility and sustain lifestyle. Finance and accounting can very much enable you to do that and tick all that boxes. I was in December last year I was in Shanghai with my kids at the Disneyland and one of the ASX account companies needed some ASX announcement to be approved. While my kids were on the ride. I was reading it over 20 minutes and it was all modified and then done and released. So all that could be done in finance and accounting and I will imagine some other career. Not all career and then there should. There's a place for all career are uh, interesting and exciting. But from flexibility and then the ability to support travel plan perspective, accounting and finance is amazing.

Speaker B: That's so true. Yeah, it's like you have a visa to go anywhere in the world.

Speaker A: Yes, I have a backpack and I have my laptop with me. I can do anything and achieve everything anywhere.

Speaker B: So true. And Rebecca, I take a bit of a segue here to talk about the esg because I know you are a big advocate of that and supporting that through CPA, your initiatives as the counselor. So what role should CFOs playing? Embedding the ESG into the everyday operation.

Speaker A: ESG is so important. The reality is we only have one world, one Earth. We all need to. That's like. That is one important part that impacts all of us. So I am, I uh, do think I am a green person. So I bought an ED before the tax benefits even was a thing. Right. I bought my EV7 eight years ago already. So my point is ESG reporting has evolved a lot in Australia, which is very exciting. The stage two is coming. All the three different categories of reporting for the organizations have been released as well. So that means from at ah least from compliance perspective, CFOs do need to understand what's required to be reported. At the same time, it is vitally important for CFOs to bear that in mind. As in ESG Consideration should be embedded into operational and strategic decisions. So sustainability is not just a compliance exercise but also a core drive of business value. So that's what we did. So I have worked in some manufacturing companies by looking at ESG from operational lens and then matching up with the current improvement in technologies. Once we're able to automate certain process and rely less on human, there's no reason why certain productions could not be done off peak. When it's off peak it is actually consuming the electricity that's stored in the bag when there was excess solar during the day. So that will be better from electricity usage perspective, carbon emissions perspective and also cost perspective for the company because the cost is uh, will be lower. So ESG is not just a ticking a box buying some credits. It's about looking at overall how to be better for the company, for the shareholders and also for all of us.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's spot on. End of the day it's about the education about the overall picture about esg rather than just go through the steps to fill the forms and then submit the return or something. Right. That of course we have to play a bigger role in educating the wider stakeholders to understand how big it is and how important it is for our lives. Beyond the uh, finance and accounting.

Speaker A: Well, we'll get there. I have seen a lot of so like I am m the divisional counselor at CPI Australia in Queensland. CPI offers a lot of ESG reporting and accreditations and then mini courses, et cetera. And I've seen a lot of companies where finance and accountants professionals are taking a lead in ESG reporting because at the end of day, whether the company is treating as a compliance practice or not, it still has to be done properly. So the reporting once it needs to be done, when there is numbers and credits and then activity reporting and that's required, accountants are there and finance people are there to help your organizations get

Speaker B: around and it's a new door open for the accounting professionals like when you leave the say the transactional level finance or something for the AI or the automations to take care of. So then you read something like this is more exciting or more impactful that you can be part of.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So that gives a uh, warm feeling to the heart as in I'm not only just reporting on profit and loss and share price and then owner equity movement, I'm working capital but also I'm looking at how to what the company is actually doing from carbon emission and ESG perspective, how we can operationally improve and get better. And I have Seen more specialized ESG reporting firms standing up offering those services to the clients. Most of them as far as I know are uh, all accountants, CPA CA members. So that's a very good sign.

Speaker B: We got the right stripes on our shoulders to do that. Perfect. And one last thing I want to bring up here in this podcast, uh, it's about outsourcing because that's part of my job as well what I do. And I know that you have a team in Vietnam, so it's helping you with your business. So what's the key success factor in having an outsourced team?

Speaker A: Thank you. Great question. So personally I believe outsourcing works and outsourcing works really well. This one of my clients currently have operations in Vietnam. But also there are other outsourcing options I've looked at in the past. So the reality is when we talk about outsourcing people tend to jump into it's for cost cutting purposes. I'm quite pleased to say that in my experience it's not just about cost cutting. That's one element to it. But at the end of the day we are talking about uh, being able to tap into a different pool of talent. Right. Currently we all having issues recruiting. There is a labor shortage for skill skilled and non skilled workers. So the ability to be able to tap into different talent pool is a great thing. Also from company coverage perspective, different time zone does have its benefits as well. So countries like where your company is offering services and then Vietnam, etc, we generally have about four to five hours a day that we can still work as a team and then apart from that there are uh other timeframe we can focus and then get the work done and provide better coverage to the customers and clients. So to me I also see great benefits from diversity perspective as well. Whenever we talk to and work with a team from overseas we do get a fresh different perspective looking at the same problem. So to me that's outsourced works really well in all aspects.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I love um how you explained about it like it's not about the cost saving anymore. It's a parity condition now moment you go for an outsourced provider so you definitely your cost is going to be lower but what matters is like the quality and the capacity, the continuity that you can have and the provider kind of prospect. Like what you said, like you get a different kind of perspective of the same problem. They are the ones that you can enjoy through uh, working with a team outside of Australia. No rap how you've explained it. Thank you very much. And one last question before we wrap up. Rigdeka. So if you want to highlight one main skill set that a CFO should master in this AI driven future, what would that be?

Speaker A: One skills that CFO need to endorse in this AI age. Be open minded, I think, and be curious and have fun. It's important when CFO have fun. The finance team will have fun and it may shock the operations team sometimes. But whenever I feel I'm there having fun explaining what I've um, discovered and what we think the organization can do, et cetera, that does provide a different vibe and then it sends a different signal to the organization. So to me, enjoy the AI, enjoy the journey and then um, being able to having some fun during the learning and implementation process is important.

Speaker B: No? Thank you very much. A lot of insights that you shared and I learned a lot as well from what you were talking about, the especially AI, uh, esg and also from inspired by what you do outside of your CFO career. And thank you again Viveka for being on the books of the Boardroom CFO Categories podcast.

Speaker A: Oh thank you so um much. Sumir.

Speaker C: Thanks for joining us on this episode of the CFO Catalyst Podcast Season three. If you enjoyed our discussion on CFO leadership, please subscribe on your preferred platform. When you share with fellow CFOs and business leaders, you're helping us build this community of strategic financial thinkers together. We'd love to hear your thoughts, connect with us on social media and join the conversation as we explore how the CFO role continues to evolve in today's dynamic business landscape. Until next time, keep innovating in your financial leadership and stay tuned for more forward thinking discussions in our CFO Catalyst series. Join us next time. Proudly sponsored by Brisker Global with production and distribution by disrupt x1.