This episode features an interview with Hamza Benamar, CFO of Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions. Hamza has spent more than 20 years driving financial performance, 12 of which were spent internationally, in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Before Kyriba, he served in leadership roles in finance, operations, consulting, and pre-sales at companies like Amgen, Wolters Kluwer and SunGuard. On this episode, Hamza discusses the importance of being attuned to the global market, how we’re coming closer to full digitization of payments, and how the pandemic is redefining talent acquisition as well as the workplace.
This episode features an interview with Hamza Benamar, CFO of Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions.
Hamza has spent more than 20 years driving financial performance, 12 of which were spent internationally, in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Before Kyriba, he served in leadership roles in finance, operations, consulting, and pre-sales at companies like Amgen, Wolters Kluwer and SunGuard.
On this episode, Hamza discusses the importance of being attuned to the global market, how we’re coming closer to full digitization of payments, and how the pandemic is redefining talent acquisition as well as the workplace.
Quotes
“We are in an organization that is by definition across borders. Cash knows no limit and no borders. The fact is you have to think about global solutions that have local flavor, that takes into account the specificities of the countries. Whether they are regulations, i.e. can you actually send money without XYZ between one country or another? Which currency can you transact in and, and keep and send over? Those are all the little things that over time you start learning and you become much more aware of the questions that need to go into these decisions.”
Time Stamps
[0:47] Intro
[1:58] Interview begins
[9:33] The importance of international experience
[14:13} Cash Crossroads
[15:01] The pandemic: remote work and digitization of payments
[20:14] Redefining talent acquisition
[24:10] The Playbook
[25:46] Risk: A major pillar of the CFO's deliverables
[36:50] Harnessing data and automation
[41:40] Report from the Future
[46:01] Application of AI
[49:53] Winners make the most of uncertainty
[51:00] Quick Hits
Sponsor
The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com
Hamza Benamar: Cash knows no limit and no borders. The fact is you have to think about global solutions that have local flavor, that takes into account the specificities of the countries. Whether they are regulations, i.e. can you actually send money without XYZ between one country or another? Which currency can you transact in and, and keep and send over? Those are all the little things that over time you start learning and you become much more aware of the questions that need to go into these decisions.
Narrator: Hello and welcome to The Invisible Vault.
This episode features an interview with Hamza Benamar, CFO of Kyriba.
Hamza has spent more than 20 years driving peak financial performance at Fortune 500, publicly listed, and private equity companies across Europe, Asia, Latin and North America. Before Kyriba, he served in leadership roles in finance, operations, consulting, and pre-sales at companies like Amgen, Wolters Kluwer, SAP and SunGuard.
On this episode, Hamza discusses the importance of staying attuned to the global market, how we’re coming closer to full digitization of payments, and how the pandemic is redefining talent acquisition as well as the workplace as a whole.
But before we get into it, here’s a brief word from Kyriba…
So please enjoy this interview between Hamza Benamar, CFO of Kyriba, and your host, Bob Stark.
Bob Stark: Hi, I'm Bob Stark and welcome to The Invisible Vault podcast. I'm actually joined by an extra special guest. One of my colleagues from Kyriba in fact. Hamza is the CFO of Kyriba. Welcome, and I look forward to having a great conversation with you today.
Hamza Benamar: Thank you, Bob. Very much looking forward to this discussion today.
Bob Stark: I think it's interesting because we know each other, we work with each other, but we don't know each other, all that well. In fact, we've swapped war stories about everything from biking to other aspects of strategic finance. I think we can get into some interesting ground that will be news to me as well as everyone listening. So I very much look forward to this.
Hamza Benamar: Absolutely, a pleasure.
Bob Stark: So let's start at the very beginning. Everyone has a reason why they got into finance and why they became a CFO. Why finance for you?
Hamza Benamar: Yeah. If I look back at at my career, I think finance was a logical conclusion of many accidents that have happened. So, I started my career in engineering. I went to engineering school and in my first job out of school I spent some time in manufacturing and very quickly, I just started as a, as a curious minded person who was making these decisions and who gets to approve my capital spend or not? And ironically decades later I'm worrying about working capital and approving who gets to spend what? So, it it's it's through that those simple questions, 20 plus years ago that I decided to go back to to school at UT Austin and, and to to learn a little bit more about the basics of of accounting. And, and from there, I, I begun a career in consulting at SAP where it was just a crash course university in how AR and AP and a general ledger and the treasury, all of, all of these functions within finance actually functioned from a systems perspective. And and after spending three years doing solution architecting and, and presales I decided to actually go into corporate finance. So, so that's how I ended up starting a career in finance. About 19 years ago, 20 years ago. And I started where I would advise many folks to start, which is in the audit function, as it opens a lot of doors within an organization to first meet people and then learn about a lot of different functions. And from there on to decide whether someone wants to go the accounting route or the FP&A route, or to stay in, in, in, in controls or tax and so forth. So this is why I really look at my career and I say, I ended up in finance because I was curious to know how the decisions were made. And, and it's really interesting that decades later I'm learning every single day that my role is about decision-making and, and about using numbers, just like an engineer would. Tons of, of, of data to actually help a lot of stakeholders within the organization make prudent decisions within an ecosystem of risks that. That we're all facing.
Bob Stark: There's many questions. I want to ask you as a result of that, because I think that's such an, it's an interesting narrative in terms of where you started and then obviously your pivot to go into finance. Is it a fair statement to say that that background in engineering, the skills and experience that you acquired there really have helped you vault forward to get to the level in finance that you are?
Hamza Benamar: Very much so. Very much so, in that one, one of the critical skillsets that you acquire in engineering is not necessarily solving problems. It's actually being able to define problems and, and I, I go one extra step and I say, define the right problem. And this is exactly the daily menu that CEOs and CTOs and CMOs and the whole C executive panel is facing on a daily basis. And that's am I actually resolving the right problem, given the the symptoms that I'm seeing, given the data that I'm looking at? And then it's actually about figuring out what that action plan should be and operationally how to solve that that issue. So, working in being trained as an engineer, you, you basically acquire this knee jerk reaction to facing problems where you're always trying to define first and foremost, what are the conditions of this problem? What are the limitations that this problem actually is dictating to you and therefore, what kind of solutions could you actually propose from a short-term perspective and from a long-term perspective? So, you know, all of these engineering concepts of velocity. Of coverage. i.e do you want to solve a problem 100%, but then it's going to take you too long and it will be very expensive, versus should you actually bring forward a quick win solution? So that that's all should be very native and, and, and very much as I say, knee jerk reaction from an engineering mind. But I think the second thing that sets training and engineering apart from other educational backgrounds is just the ability to transact into a lot of data. Not only data, but data sets. And being able to bucket that data along different dimensions and the good engineers, just like the good finance profiles, are going to be the one that will make that data speak in English or whatever local language that you're using to run your business. I, I think data by itself and, and having the math problem resolution skillset by themselves, they're stale if you cannot actually translate your approach and your, your problem definition and your solution proposal into something that people understand and you can influence them in following the path to, to, to that solution. And, and I would say this to every daily transaction that a CFO goes through whether I get on the phone with a customer and we have to basically to get to a consensus around the terms and conditions of a contract, to be able to process in the background, what is that customer's need and what are the needs that we have financially as much as when I need to present to the board in a few weeks, and being able to distill the message to exactly what that audience requires and, and to keep asking myself, what do I expect from them rather than what they expect from me?
Bob Stark: There's actually a lot to unpack within there. So I, I think I'm gonna use the rest of our conversation to go through a lot of the things that you just raised. One specific one that I found interesting was the translation comment that you made specifically saying that it's need to translate it into, you said English or whatever the language is. Kyriba is a global organization. And in your past experience, you have tremendous amount of global experience. So how has that helped you specifically? And would it be far to say that you recommend that international experience, that background, to be an effective CFO?
Hamza Benamar: Yeah. You know, when I look back at my career, I I left the U.S back in 2003. Back then I was at Amgen, a very successful biotech company, headquartered out of Thousand Oaks in California. And my boss approached me and said, "Hey, Hamza, we want a multilingual person to head to Europe and set up an audit function. And it'll be just an 18 month, 24 month assignment. And then you'll be back in no time to California." And, and that 18 month assignment turned into 12 years assignment internationally between Europe and and Asia and, and, and what, what is a plus for a finance leader as we start modeling different scenarios as we are having these discussions with our CEOs about go-to-market strategies and where our bets should be, I think having that intimate knowledge of how businesses operate, how countries actually operate is, is a, is a major addition beyond that Excel-driven and data-driven modeling. And, and, and I keep going back to knowing your customer, knowing the different stakeholders is what sets apart, you know, great organizations from average or good organizations. So, my experience you know, living and working in Hong Kong and having to look at how do you actually build up a sales organization in China? And what kind of partnerships are needed in, in China versus how you would start an organization in Germany or expand an organization in southern Europe. All of these are what I would call soft skills that I can not summarize in a, in a memo or in a spreadsheet. They keep coming back as we're having these discussions. In fact discussions that just happened a couple of hours ago with the CEO of Kyriba in terms of we can't do it all. We have to focus. If we have to focus on the next three or four markets you know, should we tackle at the same time, Italy and at the same time, Northern Europe and at the same time, China and India and so forth? So having that kind of sensitivity meter that pertains to what are the stumbling blocks or the facilities that you may have in going into one market versus another I think is, is a major plus. But as importantly, I think being very attuned in this global world and we are in an organization that is by definition across borders cash knows no limit and no borders and no no country borders. Th the fact is you have to think about global solutions that have a localized flavor that takes into account the, the specificities of, of the countries, whether they are regulations. I.e can you actually send money without XYZ between one country or another? Which currency can you transact in and, and keep and send over? Those are all the little things that over time you start learning and, and, and you become much more aware actually of the questions that need to go into these decisions.
Bob Stark: And if I dare say It's what makes you able to be a proactive business partner instead of just reactive and answering the questions that are given to you by having that insight and knowledge
Hamza Benamar: Yes. And I think one of the upsides from living overseas and having experiences in different countries is that I have a very good network of ex colleagues that have become friends and that network, you know, tends to, to expand where yeah, I could read, you know, the front page of the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal to figure out how things are evolving in Brazil. But I can also reach out to my friends that are in the industries that are in the healthcare sector. I, I worked at Wolters Kluwer health and I was able actually to, to meet some really fully engaged folks in the health environment and system of care in, in Brazil. And they can actually provide me with a lot of insights about how their hospitals are doing and therefore how the economy may or may not recover. That kind of conduit. That kind of networking becomes very precious and priceless for CFOs over time.
Bob Stark: Yeah, absolutely. It's what you know, and who you know, are definitely the groundwork to build from. Let's go into our first segment called Cash Crossroads.
And here, I actually want to ask you about probably one of the biggest decision making opportunities or maybe tests is perhaps the better word that we've seen in recent history. Obviously we had in 2008, the credit crisis, that was a confluence of things. And relatively short-lived, maybe some long-term consequences, but what we just came out of in terms of the pandemic, I think if I dare say was a great test for you as a CFO and for every finance organization. So tell me a little bit about what changed at the onset of the pandemic in March of 2020?
Hamza Benamar: Yeah. Th this, this pandemic has put to the forefront of, of many dashboards and screens the concern and the focus on the health being of employees. This is something that we simply did not have to think about As much as we had to a year, a year and a half ago when it came to who's where, who's impacted, how could that actually impact our organizations, how families could actually impact our employees that kind of of a complex problem that hits us globally where there is no family that is safe from the ramifications of a, of a pandemic that is going well, I think was, was the first wake up call in terms of what's different in, in this case, you know, if we were just to compare our mindsets to the 2008, 2009 crisis, where, eh, it was, it was a different let's say set of priorities in, in, in the earlier months. The, the other thing that hit us overnight is how to make remote work, work. As, as you know, we are in in, I think a very unique industry where it's all about people. I see it on the P&L in terms of people costs, but that is actually our plus in this industry. It's all about IP. It's all about the brains that are developing our software and that are running our technology platforms and that are allowing our customers to keep transacting regardless of what's happening around them globally. So being able to manage effectively remote work overnight is something that we had to, to figure out. But I think if, if I shift my focus from organizationally, what it meant for us as colleagues and then I look outward, what we had to do is continue. And I think what, what, what COVID has done for all, for many companies is to help them accelerate building deeper relationships with, within their ecosystem, with, with their stakeholders. And those stakeholders could be, you know, their bankers, they could be the their boards, their customers, their suppliers, their employees, their, their partners. I mean, we have plenty of professional services partners that are implementing our, our software and therefore the depth and the quality of that relationship mattered a lot in, in the earlier days and still matters today in terms of how can we in a going forward perspective nurture and, and keep that integration with the different nodes within our networks. So we are not surprised actually by another pandemic or by another major event like, COVID th th the, the one thing, you know, I lived in Switzerland for a few years. And if there was one thing I did not miss living in switzerland, are checks. You literally could not write a check in Switzerland. And when I moved back to the U.S I basically had to to order some, some checks and to start writing checks and receiving checks. And, and, and what's happened over the last 18 months is we've been able to convert many customers and vendors to electronic transactions. Something that has been taking companies many years, and a lot of effort to accomplish is now actually happening at a faster pace. We're not at a hundred percent obviously, but the growth of payment vendors you know, for a C to C and B to C and C to B are mushrooming around us. You know, if you visit China Alipay or, or a web chat, WeChat I'm sorry, are taken now for granted as forms of payments and no one, but probably the, the tourists are reaching for, for some cash. I see that progressing at a faster pace here in the U.S. But more importantly, these B2B payments, I think we'll see a lot of, of, of benefits as much as we've accelerated our move to remote work. I think we will also accelerate our digitization when it comes to to payments.
Bob Stark: I would very much agree with you that the we'll call it the digital transformation or digitization of payments is here to stay. It's certainly There was a tailwind from the pandemic that got us to get rid of checks, or at least mostly get rid of checks. And in some cases that's an arguably here to stay. Would you say that some of the other we'll say changes that you implemented such as being able to support a remote workforce and is that here to stay as well? Or is there some element of hybrid that you feel is going to permeate? I know there's different schools of thought on this, but I've seen studies ranging from everything that suggests two thirds of CFOs expect there'll be some element of hybrid work whereas 80% of CFOs would like there to be some element of hybrid work. So it seems like there's different expectations. What are your thoughts?
Hamza Benamar: I I'm looking forward actually to, to the next few years, because. I'm convinced we will see a societal transformation when it comes to what we understand the workplace to be, what we understand talent management to be. Th th this is Nirvana in my opinion, to be able to redefine talent acquisition. So I started with the premise that we are organizations of people, people are our major asset that actually differentiates us from our competition. And that fostering invention and creativity is the most important thing that software companies can have as a competing differentiator and going into this no man's land, i.e we still don't know how it's going to really shape up, whereby we are disconnecting the talent from the GPS location of that talent for me is going to, in my opinion, unleash a lot of greater collaboration and greater innovation across different companies. We're moving from my headquarter is in Dallas and I'm going to start fishing for talent within 15 miles of Dallas. If you're in a European city, you're going to fish within five miles of, of that city as their concept of, of commute is a little bit more let's say, disciplined and sane than we have in the U.S. So I think this disconnect between location of talent and acquisition of talent is going, is going to give an edge to companies that actually understand this equation. And and act on it. Which will probably dictate that because of competitive forces and pressures, that many more companies that are not willing to actually align with, with this new approach will be forced if they want to attract and retain talent to actually give a little bit more, in my opinion, importance to this, this to this disconnect. Now, it, it, it puts a lot more pressure on all of us, talent managers and talent owners to not only attract the right talent, but actually groom them and provide them with the right level of engagement and with the right level of let's say perspective on what their careers could look like within a set organization. So we will be competing I think for, for, for the good talent. There probably will be a hybrid model. I'm just not sure as the newer generation you know, comes into the market, whether they will have the same concept and emotional attachment to commuting to a specific building in a city. I, I think we're in a transition, like all transitions, there will be multi-generational preferences and over time, that hybrid approach will be more of a convenience and the, the Zooms of and, and, and and Microsoft Teams of of 2025 and 2028, I think will be better and more user-friendly and, and, and so forth. So I'm very hopeful actually about the changes that are happening.
Bob Stark: Yeah. I like the way you phrase that because it's very insightful to think of the impact in the, overall organization and not just thinking all from a finance perspective, it's great to have people in the same room because you're right. It's, there's a generational shift and there's different preferences and it all is about finding the right talent. I would say your, your great insights are also echoed by the housing market, which seems to be increasing all outside of city centers as much as within them. So it's, it's great comments on that. I'd like to kind of get into that a little bit more. We'll do that in our section called The Playbook. The Playbook is where we go through business strategy. Now, so far, you've given us great insight into business strategy. In fact, every single answer you give is very strategic and insightful. So I think this'll be an easy part of the podcast for you. Let's start out with something just a little bit different, even though I think we'll get back into these themes of decision-making and being a business part of the organization. I want to start with a question. I ask every single guest: what does risk management mean to you? And I know that's a very open-ended heavy question, which by nature is meant to potentially give a very different answer. So from your perspective, what is risk?
Hamza Benamar: So I'll go back to maybe some analogies with within the engineering environment. Whenever you're trying to manage a set of variables, you have to understand what could be influencing those variables. And I'll use here a concept from accounting and controls that says can I have some certainty or some confidence or assurance about the completeness of those variables, about the timeliness of getting insight into those variables and so forth, the COSO framework that accountants would be familiar with. So I, I, I go back to how I, I look at risk as a CFO and I consider it as one of the major pillars in terms of deliverables that a CFO needs to own. Is I, I look at risk and I say, I ha I'm facing as an organization that is working with different stakeholders that is not an enclosed system. That is under its full control. And this is where risk actually come in. What are my financial risks? What are my operational risks? And what are my IT risks and other risks that I be facing? So it it's really about these disruptors that if I don't have the right controls, if I don't have the right understanding of my ecosystem they have the potential of surprising the organization, the leadership. And therefore, how can I actually build an organization. An infrastructure, a set of processes and tools, and and I urge people to always think along the lines of your people, your processes and your systems, so that, you know, from a financial risk perspective, that you're not hit with a noncompliance. A noncompliance could be as simple as your tax filing or tax considerations that are changing in, in, in. In, in one country that that could be a surprise to you. It could be your debt covenance. It could be your liquidity availability. So those are all the different risks that the CFO and his team should actually put at the forefront. I'm a big proponent of having processes and frequency of reviews that actually do assessments, multiple assessments of of, of these risks. And then you go to, you know, your operational risk and you start thinking about your personnel, your supply chain, with, you know, a ship that is stuck in the Canal of Suez. You know, where a lot of companies probably were sweating it as to when will they get actually their shipment. Those are the kind of questions that an organization that is risk management-minded will be asking. In a proactive way, rather than in a reactive way. And, and that forces us to actually Institute some systems and processes that say how, what your approach would be in managing short-term risk versus midterm risk. And, and I, I keep focusing on the liquidity question of if I had a repeat of a pandemic, if this pandemic would actually to go backwards in terms of being able to control the spread and the consequences of a pandemic, you know, do I have enough liquidity or cash in the locations that are needed over the next - and then this is where leadership plays a role - is it for the next six months? Is it for the next nine months? It's looking at when actually you are in a steady state, as most of us were in march of 2020 .And like a plane, you're hit with mega turbulence. How do you actually manage that turbulence overnight, whereby you have processes and then suddenly in simple terms for a CFO, some of your vendors started dropping because they're running out of business. How do you replace those vendors overnight? Do you rush and you start sacrificing some of your fraud detection and assurance of qualification of vendors? Or actually do you stick to the processes that you have taken time to build and stress test over time? So having that kind of an approach that is multi-dimensional to risk management, where you're thinking about the time horizons, when you're taking, when you're thinking about the proactive, reactive risk management, I think are two key criteria for me to figure out whether we're doing a good job or not in, in, in managing our risk.
Bob Stark: It was a very holistic answer. I like it a lot just because it touches on a variety of areas. One thing that you mentioned, and I don't know if very many people are, are great at this, is talking about the frequency. Not just setting the policies or the processes or the workflows, but the frequency. Because what I've noticed certainly in, in finance, certainly in AP or AR or treasury, is there's this tendency to set and forget a policy. And those policies, to your point, don't stand the test of time. Certainly don't stand the test of the pandemic and the scenarios like that, but even just general evolution, they don't necessarily stand the test of time. As you get new technology, new services, new customers, new suppliers, like everything changes. So why is it, do you think that there is this tendency to set and forget? Not I mean, obviously you don't and you believe differently, but why is there a tendency in others to do that?
Hamza Benamar: Yeah, I think this is where the discipline and the advantage of setting processes people usually are very allergic to the concept of standardizing processes. Yet, what what we all forget is the upside of standardizing. And you see that as you grow into a larger and larger organization with multiple locations, multiple countries, multiple currencies, and so forth that your risk becomes exponential internal and external. And therefore that standardization of processes, that standardization of documentation, and being able to revisit... You know, I always liked this expression of, "Trust, but verify," becomes all the more critical actually to what you would consider to be a well-controlled environment. I think if you don't build that muscle reflex within your organization that first understands that what's special about risk is that risk is not something that you can control 100%. That is not what the, the mathematical equation is all about. It's actually about measuring the risk. Analyzing what your risk is, measuring what that risk is, and what therefore your exposure is given yourself circumstances, and that's where I say, I open a parentheses and say, but your even your circumstances will evolve over time. Every six months, every nine months, you may actually be facing circumstances that are very different within your organization or within geo- geographies or within business units within your, your organization when you are a holding company. And therefore going back through this cycle risk management, it has a life cycle of its own and, and some organization will have much greater sensitivity than others in AWS that is providing access now to millions of businesses and where the, where if it were to stop its global news within a minute of not being able to provide those transactions same thing for Alipay or WeChat WeChat I bet you there that their risk management is very sharp and very well-documented. And it's probably measured in hourly reassessments that probably are automated with AI and with other tools. Versus probably, you know, another environment that has a much slower, slower cycle in terms of changes, i.e. an agricultural farm that is looking at the weather patterns. And, you know, it does not have to react to it within a second. And even if it did, you know, there are certain things that it cannot control by putting in more CPU's to, to, to solve the problem. So I think, I mean, you, you raised a great point, which is risk management is a very dynamic chaotic environment. It is certainly not static and there is no final destination in terms of risk assessments and risk remediation. As every single every single day an organization is evolving, just like a human body.
Bob Stark: Yeah, that's fascinating, actually. I like that. It, it really does show the importance of understanding what your risks are and then developing a strategy based on that. Maybe that's a Testament to your engineering approach and mindset that you're looking at the problem first, before trying to build a solution around it. I see a lot reverse order of that, and it doesn't come across as well as you explained it.
Hamza Benamar: Absolutely. And I think what is important to, to add is risk as much as it is the responsibility of, of a, of a CFO. I certainly look at it as a pillar of my main responsibilities. You cannot have a good risk assessment and a good exposure assessment. If I'm, if I'm a say it better if you do not have multiple stakeholders, actually involved. And they could be from IT, they could be from marketing. They could be from sales as much as they could be from legal. I, I think risk is something that, that should be owned by all different functions. I certainly can not think of a single exception within an organization and what I say, well, you know, they may not, they may not have a seat at the risk table. So being comprehensive in, in how you approach your data collection and your data points and being comprehensive and, and very strategic in how you discuss actually your exposure it's only by getting better inputs that you would get actually a better, a better assessment. And, and this is where I think organizations that have gone through a greater digitization of their processes. Whether it's an ERP system or a treasury system or or HR system, those are the ones that can, or have the ability or the luxury to spend less time wondering whether they have the right data and actually more time discussing what that data is is, is informing them. And, and that, for me, I see it on a daily basis where, when, when you think about fraud, for example, as, as a risk factor if you have manual processes and, and, and you don't have a computerized workflow then your risk management is made all the, all the heavier, all the more complex and all the slower in terms of how you could react to what's facing you.
Bob Stark: Spoken like a true business partner. So well said on that, it sounds like data being date-driven, and being very automated are hand in hand in terms of being and having an effective data-driven approach. Is that a fair statement?
Hamza Benamar: Yes. I think being data-driven for me means what I said earlier in our conversation. It's about disability or developing over time within an organization and a culture, this ability to have the numbers tell a story. And that story is about your business, about your challenges about your opportunities. I think what's, what's important is beyond analyzing your data and understanding your data is what you're gonna do with it. So w we're seeing all these AI algorithms that are coming online and they can certainly crunch a lot of data. And, and if I look at it as, as, as a math person I'm looking at AI as one tool in my toolbox that allows me to actually detect trends that as a human being, I'm unable to .I mean, we are well programmed to, to reach saturation very quickly with data for good reasons. Because for, for a few thousands of years, we needed to worry about where the lion was hiding so that we could save our lives. So our data points were very focused, which in fact, I think is a good lesson for everyone. Focus, focus on what you're trying to, to analyze, but we have reached in our generation, actually, this luxury level of sophistication, where CPU's with 16 cores and 32 cores, and you just aligned them in parallel, can sift through tons and tons of data and can bring up to the surface some trends. Now, those machines, quite frankly, and for many years to come, I, I I'm willing to, to bet will not be able to actually come up with business recommendations that are based on those trends. And, and the reason for that is I, I, if, if that is the case, then you need to push that reasoning to its extreme and say, but then every other company has exactly the same data set or access to a similar data set. And the conclusions will all be similar if it's, if the algorithms are actually logical in, in, in their design. And therefore what becomes then your differentiator in, in, in what you actually do with that data. So as, as a, as a decision maker, surrounded by other decision makers where I think finance can play a major role, whether it is in investment, working capital decisions, or treasury, cash liquidity decisions, or what have you, I think it's actually leverage those mountains of data through the lens of algorithms and say, given these trends, what should be actually my, my decision? And what should be my, my decision matrix? As without those algorithms, I would not even have thought that there was, and this is for me, the, the key scientific linkage that I make what I see data and AI offering us as decision makers is the ability to provide us with correlations. But it's for the humans to decide whether there was causality between the two. And oftentimes people actually confound these two concept and think that if they can only actually drive the data or the KPIs to certain correlation, then there will be a Newtonian causality, you know, downstream. Well, it doesn't happen that way systematically. That's not how it works. So I'm really looking forward to how actually this, this this world is going to change around us, where if you were to ask most CFOs today, we start with a mountain of data and then we have some very smart analysts that massage that data in Excel. And then we dump that into some kind of a of a reporting analytics, a UI presentation, a tool that could be Tableau that could be other other good good tools. But we spend most of our time in a linear in a linear environment where we just don't have enough time to actually look at all the intricacies in existing trends that we just cannot actually see. So there is that bias confirmation in a lot of what we do, because we don't have that bandwidth to actually try a lot of different hypotheses and actually focus on a conclusion around the data. I hope that was clear enough and not overcomplicated. Okay.
Bob Stark: I think that was, that was perfect. That you actually did a very nice job at identifying the opportunity that data provides us and data transforming into information. So let me ask you this, because you've alluded to the technologies a couple of different times. Is the technology evolved enough to meet that opportunity yet? Or do you see that there's more room to grow?
Hamza Benamar: I think where we stand today, the technology is ahead of us. You know, whenever you look at technology, there is the what I would call the, the hardware versus the software. I think the AI hardware is ahead of us. I think our software tools are not, have not yet matured to a level where we can take advantage of the trends and the correlations and the causality is that these algorithms are spitting on, on screens. So, the, the differentiator for companies that I think will, will be born over the next few years are the ones that look at AI as a utility. And they look at it as just another engine. And they're going to do something with it in terms of how do you actually take mountains of data and what process do you walk that data through? And out of those outputs, what do you rep, what do you, how do you present actually the output of those algorithms? I keep going back to we have a lot of very smart people that can handle a lot of mathematical equations, multi-dimensional. The issue is being able to tell a business story in layman's language. And, and I think this is my conviction that the the good CFOs as much as the good CEOs and so forth are the ones that can tell a story to the street, to investors, that can actually be very convincing about the investment thesis that they have in terms of the value proposition that they're bringing to the market. So I think where AI is today it it's, you know, it reminds me of our early days, 20 years ago when we did not have 4g and 5g. And, and I still remember working at SAP where we were thinking about someone approving a purchase order on a, on a, on a phone, on a Nokia. And I still remember, I forgot the name of the technology. It wasn't even 2G, but it was basically the transfer of text. It was grandiose version of text messaging that you would send from your Nokia to an API that goes into the back, back end of SAP, and basically says, you know, I've, I've, I've approved this, this purchase order. Those were the baby steps. That, that was the concept of, this is what you can do. Now, if only the the bandwidth and the user interface, because back then that user interface was was really wanting on a, on a Nokia that was black and white and, and, and with a few with a few keys. So AI today okay. I think it's a, it's a great buzzword. I think there are some real applications among data scientists in universities. I think they are able to actually write their own algorithms that, that are learning in nature and, and they have the time and the tenacity and the patience to actually look into what the data is telling them. I think we're at baby steps right now. The user interface in my humble opinion is going to be the empowering differentiator for these AI solutions.
Bob Stark: Yeah. I agree with you. There's there is still work to do on that, but you need to have the vision and strategy first. If you're going into these kinds of conversations or going into these meetings trying to figure out, how is AI going to help us? It needs to be the other way around. Here's the opportunity that we see. What sort of technology, what sort of people, what sort of data scientific approach and discipline needs to be put in place to help us solve that problem? Your mindset and your, your vision for that I think is exactly the right one.
Hamza Benamar: Yes. Yes. And, and, and, you know, I, I have some, some application of AI that I'm looking forward to. I hope they happen before I retire. And that's can a CEO and a CFO have that one pager when they start their morning? And that page, that one page actually detects trends within the organization and within the geographies where they're operating that could educate them about certain priorities or certain issues that are not on their radar screen, that they should put on their calendar that day. And, and it's, it's, it's frankly the simple stuff. I'm not asking for complex things. It's about that AI engine, knowing who my top 50 customers are. And if anything happens with those 50 customers, I need to know that day. If, if they go IPO, if they merge, if they get acquired, if they lose a big account if, if. Whatever is publicly available, not even, you know, inside information, those are the kinds of things that AI, I think could help multiple functions figure out. I can think of business development functions that are actually educated about what's happening in certain geographies, in certain industries. So maybe out of this pandemic certain industries are going to see more spend on XYZ. How can we know that as soon as possible so that we can actually prepare and plan for that? What, what, what we see still is I, I maybe abuse this, this, this word. We see a lot of linear thinking. We see airlines a year and three months ago basically getting rid of a lot of airplanes and we see the same airlines putting orders into billions of dollars for hundreds of planes in June and July of 2021, just just 15 months later. These are capital-intensive decisions that are made with tremendous financial ramifications from a liquidity perspective and from a from an ability to react, to actually a ramp up in the markets and, and witness how the Southwest Airlines are canceling flights left and right yet they should be actually seizing this opportunity, to keep as many flights on schedule as possible. That linear thinking of we will make the decision as it comes, I think this is where AI could have detected a lot of trends and actually provided to those airline CEOs with the insights that you just cannot figure out with with spreadsheets.
Bob Stark: It's a really good point and I almost want to dive into the airlines part, but I'll leave that alone for the moment to just kind of encapsulate what you said is, there's an element of structured decision-making that needs to be done better. But it's bringing in the unstructured data into your analysis that is really important. And that seems to be the missing ingredient. Even some of the AI algorithms that exist today, a lot of them are relatively simplistic and they focus on structured data. So it's kind of validating what I already thought, as opposed to tell me the things I didn't know. And your point was there's things I don't know that I'd really like to. That's important as making sure that my decision around parking airplanes was a good idea given at the outset of the pandemic. But now I'm seeing a strategy where we actually realized we need more narrow-bodied, longer aircraft that serves more passengers in our hub markets, as an example,
Hamza Benamar: Yes. And, and, and I, and, and I think this is the same discussion around risk and around visibility and around the role of CFOs within organizations and other C-level leaders, and that's, we're paid to manage uncertainty. And the winners are the ones that actually make the most out of uncertainty. A lot of the winners that we will be talking about in the stock market in two or three years or six years are probably now, now probably $20 million companies or $5 million companies or not even born. And I think those are the folks that have, are actually seizing on the opportunity of tremendous uncertainty over the last 15 minutes 15 months, I think the only greater uncertainty is during time of war. I think pandemics actually come right behind. And I may be wrong on this assessment, but when you look at that, you say actually, being developing these capabilities to manage uncertainty becomes the different differentiator between the winners and not so winners or losers within industries and within new industries that are, that are be informed. AI is a tool just like so many other tools but that human intelligence of making the numbers speak is still very much relevant today, as it will be in 10 years.
Bob Stark: Great point, and great segue to our next and final section, Quick Hits. Because speaking of winners and losers I want to get your view on just a couple of those. So these are quick questions in search of quick answers, but first winner and loser, future of crypto and digital currencies. And I'll qualify it by saying for treasury and finance, because I realized there's a broader question, but I'm going to ask this, the finance one for now. What do you think?
Hamza Benamar: Listen, I think it's a good sign when I went for a haircut yesterday at Great Clips. And the hairdressers were talking about Bitcoin prices and Game Stop prices. So I was thinking, you know, maybe this stuff has some legs but on a, on a serious note I mean, putting aside all these major swings up and down of, of valuation of these crypto currencies, at the end, what we're trying to do as as a civilization is trying to remove intermediaries in the payment process. In the transfer of liquidity of value of an asset from one set of hands to another, and yet be able to validate actually that transaction. At the end, this is the mathematical problem that we're trying to solve that has a lot of social, and in my opinion geopolitical ramifications. Because as you know, the, the, the entities that are issuing the Fiat currency today, and that are overseeing the payment process and that have every incentive to make sure that taxation is, is respected and illicit transactions are not happening our governments. I think we are in from a finance and treasury perspective, I, I think we can see in a crystal ball, what what will happen over the next few years. As a treasurer, I think what is happening here is, we're going to have a few more tools, a few more tokens that will be digital. So another asset type that I'm going to have to manage, that I'm going to have to forecast, and I'm going to have to transact in and I'm going to have to move around the globe. And, and, and, and what's happening today is different countries are trying to solve different problems. If you look at Uruguay and Ecuador, they're trying to basically enhance financial inclusion of their citizens. People with bank accounts, they aren't are not the vast majority in those countries. So how can I give you a phone? Everyone has a phone. And you, you can start using a digital currency to transact. The Swedes are in probably step two or three. They're not using cash anymore. They're relying on private payment companies. But they want a backup plan, because if those private companies were to go bust, then there is an issue with how Sweden Swedish citizens could actually keep transacting. And that's why I think they're, they're coming up with the e-krona. Then you have the Chinese model, which probably is going to be the model that we in, in B2B organizations will need to, to take into account, which is the Chinese do not want to actually eliminate the banking system. They do not want to eliminate the private payment companies, i.e. the Alipays, and the WeChats. What they're trying to do is maybe do it all. And maybe that's, that's where we're heading. And that's to say, you know what? The government will issue digital tokens, just like it's issuing cash today. And I'm going to actually give them to the banks. And the banks will issue that just like they're issuing cash to the customers. But I'll be able to trace every single transaction that is being transacted within my system. And I will have full control actually of what's happening within my economy. And I'm seeing already things that we may not need to worry about from a corporate environment, but maybe from a B2C environment, is that even the Chinese are realizing that they need to be a little bit more creative or agile and say, you know, how can we have what I would call low value digital wallets, where, you know, you don't need all that overhead of oversight and control and validation and so forth when you're trying to buy your French baguette you know, for one Euro. You know, how do you do that? So I think it's coming. I think like everything else in life it will be an evolution rather than a revolution. I w what it certainly tells us is cash and checks are gonna be items in museums very soon. And, and it also gives me a lot of, of, of hope about the fact that from a treasury perspective, we just will get faster, more available tools and assets that we can move around. And for the time being it's very expensive and very onerous to actually move monies around the globe across countries. So that cross border, I think, functioned from a treasury and finance perspective, I think has brighter days ahead of it.
Bob Stark: Yeah, once again, it's a great answer because you talk about the opportunities as much as just the reality is, does, do we need digital currencies? Well, let's not worry about do we need digital currencies? Let's look at the opportunities that they could potentially solve for us. It's a, it's a great mindset and a great approach to what is an interesting topic of the conversation, even amongst your hairdressers. Question number two artificial intelligence. So we've talked a lot about AI, even in this podcast. Does AI replace people?
Hamza Benamar: No, I, I think it's a tool. It's not an end in itself. I don't think there will be conscious intelligence coming up from the artificial end of this process. I, I think it is an absolutely a useful tool for us homo-sapiens that can not actually that oversaturate very quickly from a brain power perspective with too much data. You know, marketeers always remind me that if they give me more than six options, I'm lost you know, at the grocery store and therefore it's better to give me less to choose from. That's what AI I see it as very complimentary to human intelligence. Because we have to take into account what I would call the cultural aspect. We have to take into account the relationships that we have with our customers and, and, and we should be very attuned actually as to how, what the relationship is with one account versus another. What is the history? What are the personal relationships between I, as a CFO, vending something to a customer and the CFO on the other side, all of those things. And, and, and you, you said it earlier actually who you know matters a lot. AI, I don't think has an algorithm for that. And, and it becomes all the more important when you leave some of these societies and you move into societies that are now seeing a lot of growth in Southeast Asia in the Middle East, in Africa, and even in Latin where relationships matter a lot. And, and, and it's better for you to leverage what AI can educate you about your market, about your customers, than actually delegating your decisions and the approach of your decisions you know, to, to a machine. I just want to remind people, I, you know, we, there are so many discussions about working in the office versus versus everyone working remotely. And there are many CEOs I think for good reasons, speak to the culture aspect. That, yes, we, you can automate everything. You can have laptops and tablets and, and, and, and fiber optic connections at home, et cetera, but many sales speak but how about those get together where people are exchanging ideas and they're trying to innovate in their approach. And thinking outside outside of the box. So I really hope for us that we look at AI as that gate opener to outside the box so that we can start thinking outside the box. I would like to think that the folks that have spent a lot of their time programming and in math problems and physics, et cetera are the ones that are actually pushed for that right balance in terms of we can do things faster and better. But the decision-making is not necessarily to be programmed into an algorithm. It still needs that human massage and, and packaging before he goes out for consumption by by our partners and our network.
Bob Stark: That's a great answer. AI is a enabler of a system of insight and making people more valuable. It's a great opportunity for technology to help us. So thank you for that. And thank you overall. I feel like I could ask you 20 more questions and probably after the podcast, I will, because you've piqued our curiosity in many different areas. But for today, I just want to say thank you very much. That was a fantastic conversation. Great insight. And as always, a lot for people to think about in terms of the, the role of decision-making and the technologies and processes that support So Hamza
Hamza Benamar: it was a pleasure, Bob. It was a great discussion. Thank you. Thank you for taking this time to have this discussion.
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