From GE Audit to AI

Hello, I'm Richard Chambers, and welcome to another episode in my podcast, Speaking of Risk and Audit. I'm joined today by Justin Greenberger, Optro's very own Chief Customer Officer. Justin, it's great to have you with us. Thanks for having me.

You know, Justin, we know you and your background well at Optro, but for the benefit of those who might be joining us who don't know you, maybe you could fill them in a little bit on how your journey brought you to this point. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Long-time listener, first-time, obviously, participant.

But I started off my career at General Electric. So I started off at GE right from college. My very first job was programming ultrasound equipment for cybersecurity. So security was kind of where I found my niche.

And what we found was is that GE was really focused on leadership programs and everything else. And there was this program called Corporate Audit Staff. Corporate Audit Staff was basically like the GE Marines, like going out to any GE business, solving problems and finding new opportunities for the business to grow, et cetera. But that was all done on the basis of internal audit.

So I spent five years with the internal audit group and I actually led IT internal audit for all of GE. After that, I became the CIO of GE Digital. So I got like the enterprise tech experience. I deployed ERPs.

I've deployed service now, but I also got a lot of internal audit experience. After that, I joined a company called UiPath for six and a half years where scaled customer success, talked to CIOs about AI transformation. And then I got a call from formerly Audit Board and said, hey, we don't meet many former internal auditors who have worked at SaaS companies and done it at scale. And so I joined Audit Board about a year and a half ago, and it's been unbelievable ever since.

Well, that's an amazing journey. And I'm sure many of our listeners know that for decades, GE's internal audit function was considered the gold standard, certainly in terms of rotational staffing. In fact, GE set up its first internal audit function in 1913, one of the earliest corporate audit functions out there. Yeah.

And I think one of the most amazing experiences about GE is you learn, the history of the internal audit program. You learn all the great leaders that came from it. And it creates also this network effect within the internal audit group that I think is pretty unique to GE. Yeah.

Well, congratulations on your journey and we're excited that you're part of Optra. You know, as the chief customer officer, you're building success strategies for practitioners who are doing the exact jobs that you used to have. And I guess I would ask, how does having that specific practitioner background, fundamentally change how you approach our customers and enable their success? Yeah, I think kind of two sides of it.

One is the skills I learned in internal audit. And then the second is like the practical knowledge. The first, you know, I think GE's audit program taught me a ton about detail and communication. You know, when you're an internal auditor, detail matters a lot.

But communication matters even more sometimes. How are you communicating tough issues? How are you communicating to the business on improvement opportunities? GE taught me a lot about how do you dive into a business and really figure out how does it operate?

What are its constraints? What are its opportunities? But then how do you communicate with your clients and the business and really find new opportunities? So I think just from like a leadership standpoint and how I deal with our customers is details and clear communication.

I think on the practical side, I mean, listen, I've sat in a lot of their shoes. Like I led a big IT internal audit group. I've had to work with a number of CAEs over the years at GE, but then also now as clients. And so I think just being able to understand where they're coming from, understand the challenge and not only, skill sets and employees and evolving those, but also just the day to day of escalations and challenges and issues that might pop up, but then thinking about the future.

And so I think balancing all those things that can really come from their viewpoint and really find opportunities for our team to help in a pretty material way. Yeah. You know, I, having been a CAE myself for a long time, I can. I can say, I think sometimes it can be a lonely role and having someone out there who understands it, who can be a listening board can be, can be very beneficial.

So I'm sure they find your background to be really enabling in their role. I think also, you know, people forget sometimes, but our post-sales team is 50% former practitioners. And so I think just my ability to hopefully relate with our internal team as well as, hey, listen, like I understand the struggles your customers are going through and maybe here are some different ways we can look at it internally as well. Yeah, I think that's the thing that drew me to formerly Audit Board now Optro is exactly what you're describing.

I mean, it's a company that was founded by practitioners for practitioners. And even today with the Optro name, we're still very much about internal audit and enabling success. Absolutely. You know, in audit, internal audit, Justin, we rely heavily on professional skepticism and digging past the surface data.

How do you apply those specific analytical audit skills when evaluating customer health metrics, churn risks, or platform adoption at Optro? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. One is data will always tell you something, but context and nuance matter a ton. And so what we really try to focus on is what is the metric telling us?

And then what is the storyline telling us? And the storyline is really customer conversations. Like, what are they actually telling us? What is the messages that we get?

And I always tell my team, this is like every moment matters. And we like to say in our post sales organization, we're here to make it simple for our customers to get value, period. That is our whole job. And so I think when we do data analytics and we're looking at trends and understanding where the market is moving, we really focus on what is the data and what is the storyline.

And obviously, AI and other things are helping us do a lot of that right now, but nothing replaces a customer success manager coming in to talk about their customer. Yeah. You know, the internal audit profession at large and our customers more specifically are, facing massive disruption in the current environment from shifting global compliance frameworks to the rise of shadow AI. When you talk to modern CAEs and risk managers, what's the single biggest roadblock you find that they're asking Optro to help them solve?

Yeah, I think the single biggest roadblock right now is probably the articulation of value for AI. I think everyone understands what AI is going to bring. But I think being able to articulate it and say like, this is the amount of projects per auditor, this is the amount of cost savings we're going to get by control simplification. I think that has not been as focused of a discipline as it probably needed to be in the last five to ten years.

But I always say this, you know, being in software, it's like at some point in time, someone's going to look at how much they're paying and how much value they're getting. That time could be now, that could be in 10 years from now. But at some point, someone's going to look at this and understand what is the value. And so we're really focusing a ton with our customers on benchmarking, understanding their own usage and saying, hey, here's what your usage has brought you.

So I think AI value is definitely a topic that we're having a ton with CAEs, specifically around how do they look at it for their own environment, but then also across the different departments. And you know, that's not that different from historically, I think internal auditors have had to be able to articulate the value they bring, regardless of whether they're using technology. But now you're layering another dimension on it that you've got to be able to talk about what's the value internal audit brings and what's the value of the technology investment you're making.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're, I mean, we're seeing massive productivity and we've seen 70% controls automated in certain places. We're seeing a massive involvement in terms of control. So we're seeing it.

It's just like, how do you put it together with the team? Good segue to my next question. You recently highlighted some really staggering metrics from our customer base. You shared that teams are reclaiming 75% of reporting time and cutting SOX hours by 20%.

In an era where every CFO is scrutinizing the software budget, how is your team ensuring that our customers aren't just adopting Optro, but are really continuously proving that level of hard roi for their boards yeah i mean part of its culture like, internally to optro we've really focused on value, what is the value your customer is getting from not only the product but even our own team like what are they getting from us and and how are they making an impact in their own business and so i love the repositioning and maybe it's not repositioning, but like pointed statement around turning risk into opportunity.

And so we leverage that in a continuous way. So one way we do that is we hold our business reviews with our clients. And the first thing we talk about is value. We say, how much value do we believe we're getting from the platform today?

What are the places we think we could get more? And I think part of our role as Optro and former practitioners is to say like, Hey, listen, you're behind. There are very specific areas you're behind, but here are the ways that we think we can help you get there. And being a former CIO, like I hated when a vendor would say, we're everything to everyone.

Like we can do everything you want. Some of that might be us integrating with someone. Some of that might be us talking to a new department and helping it along. But, you know, how do we make our customers heroes in their own environment, and really drive that value?

So I think the value conversation is really what we try to bring to the table and really try to make sure that that is a part of the DNA of our team. It's a challenging environment out there right now for chief audit executives because a lot of survey data in the last year has shown that there's a lot of pressure on their budgets. IIA surveys. We've done some things out of, out of Optro.

And have you had CAEs who were, who were sharing, Hey, we're, we're, we're getting some pressure on budgets and how can we leverage the Optro solutions to compensate for what we're losing? Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a couple of different ways, you know, one is I always talk to CAEs about what are the other programs and initiatives at their company? Yeah.

Because Optro, while we're very important, we're not necessarily the focal point of everyone in that company. And so when you talk to a large enterprise, there's always what I like to call the town hall slide. When a CEO gets in front of everyone, what are those five or six initiatives that are up there? So what we try to work on with the CAE is saying, how does our initiative tie to one of those five, six big objectives for the company?

And then what we talk about is saying, okay, well, if we can tie to that, what is the value Optro is going to bring to that whole initiative or project. And so I think we've had really good success with places that are going through employee transformation, how we're bringing new skills to auditors with this new platform and with this new Agenta capability. We're having really good discussions about the risk landscape because if geographies and global expansion is a priority for the CEO, then obviously the political risk and other geopolitical situations in our risk module will help.

And so I think always tying with those big objectives is really one of our priorities when we work with a customer. And usually that helps even in an age where we're trying to do more with less and trying to leverage a platform that can provide that. You know, we're seeing a major shift toward automated controls and autonomous testing. A lot of conversation, you mentioned Nogentic AI yourself.

As Optro continues to roll out. Cutting edge AI governance capabilities, how are you preparing our legacy manual process customers to confidently take that leap into an AI-driven environment without the fear of the loss of oversight. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think one is being a part of the process.

So our autonomous testing, our new acquisition by midship, part of what's interesting about that implementation is that the person who knows the controls best is the one setting it up. And so I think that's different than maybe the old world of, hey, let us do your system for you. You are now a part of that process to really configure it and can impart your knowledge on the tool. And so I think that's a huge distinctive advantage as you think about going from manual to agentic is how do you get the people involved in a part of the process?

And then I think second, when you think about change management, like this goes back to like GE and like, you know, understanding your catalyst is how do you explain it to your team? Like, what is this going to do for them? And so having a really defined understanding of the mission, the statement for the team, some of the basics a little bit help get through the agentic transformation and. The tough situations are when you're using AI to use AI.

Like that doesn't bear any result. It doesn't transform the skill sets. Having a targeted use case and an explanation for your team really helps. Well, it's clear that this is top of mind out there because, you know, I did a recent survey, a LinkedIn survey of over 400 responses, and only 20% of the respondents said that they're actively using any kind of agentic solution.

But then there's a pretty good size chunk of folks that are maybe 30% or more, that are experimenting, that are just kind of like studying it and want to know more about it. If you could give one piece of forward-looking advice to an internal auditor risk leader today about the path that they should be looking toward taking to leverage more, agentic IAI capability, what would that be? I think it's a couple of pieces. I think one is focusing on what is that big, sounds crazy goal that you are trying to achieve, whether it's, you know, X percentage automated, whether it's a completely different style of workforce, but like what is that audacious amazing goal that you're really targeting setting it today i think is really important, i think the second piece is getting really detailed and deep with your own team.

You know, how can you expect your team to use Agentic on a daily basis if you're not using it? You know, what I find most when I talk to clients and customers today is everyone uses Agentic in some way, shape or form on like a weekly basis. Like once a week, you're like, hey, I'm going to use this report or I'm going to ask, you know, open, you know, chat GPTX or whatever. But there aren't many people who are constantly refining their thesis and their thoughts within Agentic.

And so I think having your leader really involved and experienced in it, I think adds a level of credibility to the entire organization. And then I'd say the last thing to really think about is what is the journey you're going to take your organization through and how do you show them that at the beginning? Like I discussed, you know, what is stage one, stage two, stage three, because you're not all going to get there tomorrow. And so taking them with you is really important as well.

The one thing that I hear more often than not when I'm trying to sell a CAE on the need to be more open to agentic AI is they say... But how do I know I can trust it? How do I know I can trust where it's getting its data? How do I know?

And, and what piece of advice do you give a CA who's skeptical about getting more active with the use of AI or agentic AI specifically if, if they've got these trust issues? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of ways. I mean, one, you can always ask the agent to prove its links and like make sure, you know, specifically we're talking about an assistant agent, but then anything autonomously as well like even in our system like it proves itself out to you and so i think being very conscious of what's happening there is is important the second thing i always say is like if it was a human, what would you do how would how would you make the human prove to you exactly where it got its data validated etc, you can take those same steps with agentic and especially assistance and so, i think there's just an understanding of.

AI is going to make mistakes, much like a human. That's why human in the loop is important. But the second thing is, is being able to understand and trace it and get your own logic to get there helps a ton. And so I think there's a couple of proof points that help.

And then just making sure that you obviously are partnering with it as well. Some great advice, great insights. Justin, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your perspectives. You bring a really unique background with your role and really thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And for Optro, we thank you for joining us on another episode of Speaking of Riskin Audit.