A Bloody Head

One of my favourite quotes, attributed to Albert Einstein (incorrectly as it turns out…), is this:

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“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

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We all do this every day, accumulating a nasty head injury along the way from banging it against the metaphorical brick wall.

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Why do we do it? It’s part of how us humans perpetuate the myth that we’re in control. But it’s even more perplexing when we are most certainly facing the inevitable and monumental step-change that we know is coming down the pike with AI, particularly in revolutionising business-process tasks in coming years.

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In 2023, we at Better Business Basics built FinMatch.Me. It was a new experience for us. We are a service-based finance organisation that was building software. What did we know? What authority did we have? We certainly had deep experience in delivering the in-house Finance function for business in an efficient, risk-protected way that drives productivity. But software? Really?

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Ultimately it was to test a series of pesky little truths that came up time and time again when talking to business going through challenges in the finance area of their business. We had more than a decade of experience in streamlining this business-critical role across more than 1,000 SMEs.

We saw this over and over and over again:

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• The promise of the tech salesperson is empty. Install this software and reduce your headcount! If all you change is the software but don't refine the process or adapt your people, the investment of time and money is wasted
• The traditional employment model where people are remunerated based on time does not drive productivity. How can the role still take 5 days a week when turnover is down and we've brought in automation? Easy. The role will take the time you give it and not a minute less, if left to its own devices
• Women in finance roles are still asking for and accepting less financially, particularly those with pre-school age children, in a way that men are not, especially in roles that offer flexibility or flexibility is specifically requested

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I’ll be posting a series of articles in coming weeks on what our research prior to, and during, the building of Finmatch.Me showed us and how we built the technical capability within the platform to start to address these systemic issues (and many more), but in the meantime here’s two 90-second views of what FinMatch.Me does for Organisations filling a Finance role and Finance Professionals looking for a great role that’s just a little bit different.