Ep 17: Protecting Value From Your Data Analytics with Greg Kogan, Assistant Professor at Long Island University

As self-service data analytics tools become more mainstream, how do Finance Business Partners know their outputs are accurate?  Greg Kogan, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Long Island University, shares how governance frameworks are critical to protecting value from our data.  Greg also shares how college curriculum is changing to ensure higher productivity and a focus on interpretation of data rather than just aggregation.  And he offers several steps Finance Business Partners can take to incorporate these critical skills into our daily work (hint: it's time to learn Tableau).   Join us!

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Matt

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hi, this is Matt Cooley, host of the podcast Upside Downside, where we explore what it takes to be the best finance business partners possible. I'm a finance business partner myself and former president of the New York City chapter of Financial Executives International. As finance business partners, it's important to keep a wide view on the value creation landscape. Today, we're going to explore how data analytics is transforming university curriculum and driving stronger finance business partnership. Joining me is Greg Kogan, assistant professor of accounting at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Welcome, Greg. Hey, thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. The pleasure is mine, and I'm so privileged to have you here today. Please tell us about your role at LIU and how you came to be there.

SPEAKER_01: 0:47

Yes. So at LIU, I'm an assistant professor of accounting, which involves teaching undergraduate and graduate accounting courses. And how I came to be there is I basically had a background of undergraduate I actually had a computer science degree from Rutgers. And then I had my MBA in accounting also from Rutgers. And I started my career out at Ernst and Young actually as an auditor. And I was in the CPA track there for about four, four and a half years. And after doing some public accounting, I actually transitioned to doing some private accounting as a controller at a tiger management startup hedge fund. So I did hedge fund accounting as a controller at a startup fund, which was a lot of fun. And, uh, I learned a lot more as a CPA and working on doing operations and accounting and working with vendors and even some trading. And after about seven, eight years of pretty much working in professional accounting, I got an opportunity to go back to my alma mater at Rutgers and teach some classes in accounting. And I really enjoyed it. So I actually transitioned to teaching as an instructor from professional practice at Rutgers initially in Newark, in New Jersey. And I really enjoyed it. And at the time, I was living in New Jersey. And then a few years later, I had moved to Brooklyn. And I joined LIU as it was just simply pretty much in my neighborhood. So it was very close. So that's how I came to be in LIU. And I really like teaching accounting. I really like being involved in university and the service-oriented parts. And I'm actually completing my doctorate now in accounting as well. So I'm getting into more of the research, which is how I got more into data analytics. There's so much going on now with data analytics that I've been doing. That is my research topic in my doctoral program. So I'm

SPEAKER_00: 2:45

really enjoying that

SPEAKER_01: 2:45

as

SPEAKER_00: 2:45

well. Yeah. Wow. That's neat. So from hedge fund accounting to professorship, I love it. That's great. Good for you. And earlier in life, too, than you'd expect. That's really cool. You recently co-authored a book about self-service data analytics and governance, which I think is really intriguing for managers, where you talk about protecting value. How can finance business partners put this book to use in their organizations?

SPEAKER_01: 3:12

Yeah, absolutely. So, in the book, what we primarily go over is governance for self-service analytics. And what we call self-service analytics in the book is primarily Tableau, Alteryx. These are popular tools that many, many finance and accounting professionals are using now. So, the way to put it into the use is the issue that we've encountered is actually there's so much use of self-service analytics, but what about the controls around it? So how can finance partners put it into use is basically it actually provides a unique and original governance framework on how to create internal controls around that self-service analytics. So imagine you're importing a file, you're running it through Tableau, you're running it through Alteryx, you're getting the outputs that you need, but how do you know that it was cleansed properly? How do you know that it was blended properly? How do you know those visualizations actually have proper controls? And we were motivated by essentially what we found out through interviews and talking to professionals that there really is no standard. There are best practices, but there's really no standard. So we put a framework out there that basically involves like about 30 or 40 recommendations for project governance Risk governance. And then we also go over investment governance, which is like, hey, how do I know which analytics to invest into? Because there's so much out there. But how do I know which projects to pick? How do I know which projects will be the most profitable in deploying that analytics? So it's kind of a three-pronged approach with project. Risk is on risk assessment. Investment is on investing in the right projects. And project governance is about protecting each individual project that you're deploying.

SPEAKER_00: 5:01

Wow. Wow. That's outstanding. This really is data analytics taken to the next level because it has felt like such a wild frontier for a while now. So the fact that you've produced something about governance and a framework for that is really cool and I suspect will be very useful. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 5:20

we're very excited about it. We're very excited about it. And one of the most interesting things as part of the project was going back and reviewing all the other frameworks that are out there and trying to integrate some of those legacy frameworks into what would be applicable to data analytics. So that was a really exciting part of the project of kind of picking pieces of COSO ERM, picking pieces of COSO internal control, some of COVID, some of model governance, and even looking at some stuff regarding artificial intelligence where they have black boxes and models and learning even about data ethics. So I really enjoyed the project and it's very exciting. It seems like it's only growing and growing these days. So I'm very excited to be part of this. Thank

SPEAKER_00: 6:04

you. That's pretty neat. How is analytics changing the accounting profession, Greg? And is it changing how we advise our executive business partners?

SPEAKER_01: 6:15

Yes, I think it's changing the accounting profession. I think there are two different directions that I've been seeing from doing this research and seeing and talking to a lot of people in the field is that one is some things are being automated and we hear a lot about that. Um, you know, but some of that automation is creating a lot, a lot of new roles like specialists, like process specialists or control specialists around these automation projects and maintain how to maintain these projects that have already been automated. And the other one, um, is, you know, the capabilities really just allow you to do your work faster. So if you're an accountant out there that has been working in Excel and, and struggling with field lookups and importing all sorts of files, um, And that maybe takes you a couple hours a day. You can actually use these new capabilities, create stabilized workflows using Tableau and Ultrix or some RPA. And maybe you could do that in 20 minutes a day. And the rest of the time, you could be a better business partner by reaching out to your partners and interpreting those results. Hey, look, I have all these wonderful charts. I have these beautiful dashboards. Let me walk you through them and basically create value by delivering reporting much faster, more efficiently, and probably even on demand. So I think there's a lot of value that accountants can provide as business partners now using these new tools. And on the other side, I think there's an upskilling area where accountants could probably benefit from learning some of these tools if they haven't already and understanding the potential of some of these things.

SPEAKER_00: 7:57

Yeah. And I like this. I mean, I myself work for a larger company and the accounting Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 8:31

we started with working with data sets and working with Tableau primarily. And we started by basically creating dashboards in Tableau. One case study that I've been doing over and over again is just taking a big data set of just the S&P 500, all the companies in the S&P 500 and five years of their balance sheet and income statement data and basically importing it and analyzing financial ratios. So, So students can learn how to analyze big data sets. They can learn how to visualize those data sets. And then we have them also create presentations where they'll pick a company that they think looks better than other companies based on all this big data analysis and benchmarking. And they basically have a dashboard that shows all the evidence behind their decision making. So that's one thing we've been doing. We just started doing more old tricks where they actually create automated workflows. similar projects where they have a workflow that they work through and then they have certain outputs. And we're looking to do a lot more. Now we're looking to do some RPA case studies where they'll do RPA to automate some kind of routine process like reconciliations. And lastly, now we're looking to integrate more around internal control testing. As IT audit is becoming much more rigorous and much more needed, we're looking to beef up our accounting information systems class, where they'll be looking at additional controls around cybersecurity and how to apply COSO ERM essentially around the whole business. And I see that as taking off as well.

SPEAKER_00: 10:15

Wow, that's outstanding. So the traditional technical skills are being heavily augmented with these new tools. Oh, that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01: 10:25

Yeah, yeah. Basically, we're continuing to focus on traditional But we're also exactly there. And it's almost like they have to build up a little portfolio. Hey, I have a little Tableau. I have a little Ultrex. I'm proficient in Excel. And some of the other classes going forward, they'll do a little bit more statistics as well, exactly, to emphasize those technical skills. Because it seems like that is obviously already is valued. But where are we going? It seems like that will be more and more valued in the future.

SPEAKER_00: 11:25

Yeah, that's super interesting as well. Where is the broader finance business partner role headed for you? from your perspective and what should people be doing now to prepare for that future? And I would ask you to include people at any stage in their careers.

SPEAKER_01: 11:41

Yeah, I mean, I think that role is heading into being more, from what I understand, as kind of an interpreter of results rather than an aggregator of the results. And I feel like it's heading more into a situation where as a finance business partner, your data aggregation will probably not be as much of a role as it used to be in the past, right? And it's all going to come together somehow in an automated fashion. But your role will focus more on breaking it down, on forecasting it, on using analytics, on visualizing it, and perhaps also keeping an eye on applying more advanced techniques like predictive or prescriptive analytics in the future to Maybe deploy modeling techniques into the data that you have in your domain to identify relationships and to identify patterns that can't really be seen with the naked eye, but with the capabilities that can be easily deployed today, perhaps there's tremendous value there as a finance business partner to actually create more value for your partners through this deeper analysis.

SPEAKER_00: 12:57

If somebody wanted to take a next step and they don't have much of a background in in these tools or frameworks, what would you recommend as a good first step? Take a class at LIU, probably,

SPEAKER_01: 13:10

but what else? Yeah, I mean, what else? I mean, you know, I feel like there's like several levels exactly. Where do I start? There's sounds like so much. And I think from what I've seen in my experience and talking to lots and lots of people, if you haven't kind of, if you haven't dipped your toe in the waters yet, then Tableau seems like a great, a great avenue. And I know you may have mentioned earlier that you've seen that tool out there. It just seems like it's very friendly. I've seen people use Tableau and in the first couple of hours, they're like, wait, I love this. I want to do more

SPEAKER_00: 13:42

of this. I feel that way too. It didn't take long to learn it, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

Right. It's almost one of those things that it sounds like, hey, I have to go back to school and do this and this, but actually some of these are more like an hour or two, if you like, you know, especially, and I would say the other part of it is that know your data, because I see that milestone We work with the same data set for like 15 weeks during class. And when they don't know the data, they don't feel that confident. But by the end of class, because they know their underlying data, they feel very comfortable. So if you have a data set that you really work with on a regular basis, and you put it into Tableau, you'll have a lot of progress. If you want to get a little bit more advanced, the Altrix community page, if you go to altrix.com for that, a little bit more advanced capability, there's very interesting stuff there. And they have lots of videos describing what to do and how to do it. And I see the Ultrix designer core certificate, very popular as well. And that's like a 10 hour, 20 hour kind of certification that you can complete and then you're certified. And then further than that, there are analytics certificate programs like LIU or other universities will have like a nine month certificate. And if you really want to, if you really think you want to kind of advance your career in this area, we actually, in LIU, we have a master's in, in business analytics. And that's a one-year 30-credit program. Absolutely. If it's somebody who's looking to just kind of jump in and add to their skill set, that can really be beneficial. And that's not going to take you years and years. I think it basically takes like a year or something like

SPEAKER_00: 15:16

that. Wow. That's great advice and very practical ways that we can all build our skills in this area. So that's wonderful. Greg, thanks so much for sharing with us today. And I also want to say a big shout out to all your students at LIU. I mean, I can hear your passion just through your voice and the ideas that you're sharing with us. So I'm sure they appreciate you. So a big shout out to them as well.

SPEAKER_01: 15:39

Thanks very much. Really appreciate it. And thanks very much for having me. And thanks so much,

SPEAKER_00: 15:43

man.

SPEAKER_01: 15:45

And a big thank you to our

SPEAKER_00: 15:46

subscribers of Upside Downside and hope to see you soon.