Nana Guenther, CPA, CA, joins Gary to talk all about how using Dext can improve your firm!
Nana Guenther, CPA, CA, joins Gary to talk all about how using Dext can improve your firm!
Are you looking for an application to save your accounting firm time? Is your team spending valuable time on data entry? Nana Guenther, the Senior Practice Solutions Expert at Dext, shares how their application can help accounting firms achieve more efficient workflows and 99% accurate data extractions, all while integrating with your chosen accounting software.
Listen now to learn how Nana found Dext, why it's important for firms to adopt new technology, and how to encourage young accountants to join and remain in the field.
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Gary DeHart
Welcome to Accounting Insiders. I am Gary DeHart, the publisher of Insightful Accountant. And today my guest is Nana Guenther, CPA, CA. Which I learned something I didn't realize you combine those now. So it's always tough to learn something with Dext. So welcome!
Nana Guenther
Thank you so much. Nice to meet you.
Gary DeHart
Nice to meet you as well. Thanks for carving, carving out a little bit of time to join us. So I told you there was going to be a trick question on the front. So let's get the fans go on so you don't burn up on it. So here it is. Who is your favorite cartoon character?
Nana Guenther
Mila Superstar.
Gary DeHart
Oh, wow. Easy peasy. And even like, I've never even heard of that. That wasn't even like, you know.
Nana Guenther
I'll tell you why. When I tell you a little bit about my background.
Gary DeHart
Oh, ok! Now I have to wait. I like it. Alright, so tell me a little bit about yourself. Because we have not met until today.
Nana Guenther
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Nana Guenther, I'm a CPA, CA which a little bit of a cheat in Canada because I became a CA and then later on, they decided to merge the accounting designations. They were opening at the time in Canada. And they're like, You know what, you can keep your original one. But we'll also give you a CPA. So you know, that's the trick. That's why I have to but apart from that, I am a senior practice solutions expert here at Dext. Which means effectively that I'm part of the sales enablement team, looking to strike thing, the knowledge for our sales teams in terms of their customer base, the tone or the dynamics within accounting environments, and how that affects their sales strategies as well. And then ultimately being becoming a product expert as well and helping them link their sales strategies to the product and real life product examples right and how they how they get used. So rewind a little bit about my professional background while I'm dealing superstars, my favorite cartoon. So I was born in Ghana, I actually lived in Finland for three years when I was growing up. And all my favorite cartoons were in German, and on RTL and RTL to for any of the German listeners. And, you know, it was actually a Japanese cartoon dubbed in German, played in Finland, and that and playing volleyball and she was just a stock superstar superstar when I was a tall girl, so I knew I could do it. So anyway, that's how that became my favorite cartoon now before I came to Canada, and, you know, just exploded in heights even more and decided, You know what, I can't do all the all the heights related sports, I'll become an accountant. What else could I do? I mean, who wouldn't want to do that? That's right. That's a Yeah. So a little bit about my professional background, actually. So I after university, I started working at a very small practice, fantastic experience, I actually got really hands on experience with Intuit and CaseWare, several different products, and actually really focused and really enjoy educating some of my clients and connecting with them directly. Excellent experience, but I knew that I wanted to eventually work at one of the big four. So moved on to Deloitte for several years. Got my designation, and as you do, flew and started working in industry, worked for a small infrastructure company for a couple of years in corporate accounting and, and reporting, then moved on to a massive multinational conglomerate working for their corporate accounting, and then eventually corporate controlling roles, and then eventually becoming the Corporate Controller for the head office. And then with the the Canadian head office, rather than finally working as a finance manager for a large private equity real estate company. Before then deciding you know, I've spent several years working on process improvements and focusing on how things are done. And that's really what intrigued me. So I enjoyed the technology. I've always been the person who liaised with it to implement ERP software and that's what I was really good at. And that's what I really enjoyed. So I'm going to take out all the reporting and the month and the quarter ends of the year end and just focus on the technology aspect of it. And that's how I ended up at Dext earlier this year and loving the experience.
Gary DeHart
That's great. And then there's gonna be a string for Dext and having somebody with you know, the accounting background right they are with the sales team and the development teams going, Hey, that sounds good in theory, but this is what really happens. And new Mr. sales guy who, that's my background in sales, we tend to maybe not share all the details, right or may not, we may make it seem a little too long later than it is. And so it's great that they have that position, and that you hold on to money, keep those guys accountable, but also really to improve the process and prove the solution and make their efforts more worthwhile.
Nana Guenther
Exactly. And really build that customer empathy for our sales teams as well. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that they understand they truly understand those pain points, so they can understand how to connect with their potential clients as well as their existing clients.
Unknown Speaker
In Toronto, you said there's 30 ish?
Nana Guenther
Yeah, about 30 of us. Yes, sales marketing one person from product and they're an accountant as well. Okay. That's right.
Gary DeHart
And then a handful people in the US?
Nana Guenther
Handful of people in Detroit. Yes.
Gary DeHart
Is there still office in the UK?
Nana Guenther
There is, our head office. That's right. So lots of presence there in the UK. That's where we started. Yeah. And so we're actively growing our North American market, we have an office as well, in France now, as of last year, and in Australia. Yeah, we're taken over.
Gary DeHart
Take the world tour! Office world tours, so and so. So you talked about, you know, ducks, which is great. I don't did they have that kind of position prior to you coming in?
Nana Guenther
they had entered the UK and each of the regions, it took a long time to actually hire for my position in Canada. Because you know, it is a specialized skill set, to be honest, right? To be interested in IT And to be a CPA, you don't go into accounting, thinking about the technology, right? You know, some some of our partners started doing accounting on paper, let's be honest, and then move moved over to Excel, which I am an Excel nerd. But, you know, eventually, we needed more controls and more stability. And so you know, we started using general ledger software. But there's so much more that accountants do besides just the general ledger type of activity. And so we just wanted to make sure that we provide solutions for all the activity that we do.
Gary DeHart
So outside of being super nerd on on the technology stuff, what what else you'd like to do?
Nana Guenther
I like to garden. Okay, yes. So I don't like bugs, which is really hard. It is so hard for me. So every time I go out there and I see something crawly. I want a Nobel Peace Prize or something or an award for all the hard work that I'm doing, but I love it. It's absolutely really really enjoyable. I love walking aimlessly for hours. I can walk for two or three hours at a time. So yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's weird. I mean, it's really something.
Gary DeHart
Is gardening. Is it like, are you harvesting vegetables? Or is it more?
Nana Guenther
Just flowers, yes, yes. I love the different colors. And so it's I'm very lucky. I have a nice front yard, which is cottage style. With all the pretty flowers in the backyard. We focus a lot more foliage. So I've learned a ton since in the past couple of years. That was my pandemic hobby. Okay. Yeah.
Gary DeHart
Hydrangeas is what my wife used to love.
Nana Guenther
Oh, yes. Yes. Can't beat head of hedge of hydrangeas.
Gary DeHart
Growing really well right now. Yeah. And we've already limelight on.
Nana Guenther
Oh, yeah. Limelight standard, can't beat limelight standard. And they come in at the end of summer when most of the other flowers are exhausted. And they just show off on.
Gary DeHart
The sun is so perfect. So are well so how do you say you get lost walking? And through the garden. So it must be huge garden, right?
Nana Guenther
No, no, Toronto, anyone knows about real estate prices in Toronto!
Gary DeHart
So is there a way to balance those two like work in and the gardening or the garden maybe the gardening does give you the grounding for the balance for work?
Nana Guenther
Now that I work for a tech company and I get actually a lot more time to work on the garden, which is lovely. You know, the pandemic was actually a blessing from that perspective to have all that time to set up the garden. And now I actually just have to water it fertilize a little bit and just sit down and enojy.
Gary DeHart
I'm sure with your CPA see a background it happens all time every time every day as is supposed to you bet I know too. We're out there water, fertilizing every six weeks. Maybe you need to come to our house to do that, because that's we're not the best at that, we may be known to kill some plants.
Nana Guenther
You know what I won't tell you how many I've killed in the learning process, but you know, it's part of the process.
Gary DeHart
It's fun. So, so on. So what do you think I'm gonna bounce back over to Dext? We were talking kind of in the green room, if you will. So it's the product solution. Even we'll just say like the old Receipt Bank, right, just receipt matching. It's such a time saver, right? And a there's 100 reasons to do it. Why is it? What's Why is it difficult? Not that you didn't say these are my words, not yours. Difficult to acquire new users? Yeah. What's the why? How was that a challenge? This should be like water. Right?
Nana Guenther
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, the truth is, again, the technology aspect and the alleviating of pain points. For accountants from that perspective is it's a new topic relatively, like maybe in the past 10 years, we started to see a lot of FinTech companies come up. And now we're seeing through like a lot of conferences and a lot of connection and communities. Now, those products, generally not just desktop products are becoming a lot more popular and prolific. And so I think accountants are still in the mindset of just survival, a lot of times, and we're just gonna get the information and make it super simple. Make it super quick. And sometimes we're just thinking about the stakeholders that exists today, or that we know of today. Okay, well, I can just get the bare bones information into my system for this stakeholders that exists today. And then tomorrow, you get a new stakeholder and you have not captured the information required to report for that stakeholder. Right. And so it's, it's I think we're still in that mode, where we're not understanding that the accounting starts at the source, let's get as much information in as possible. You can do whatever you want with that information. Right. But you can't report on data that has not been captured and digitalized. You just can't do it. Right. And so I think it's it's it's gradually changing, and we're definitely getting there in terms of the digital side of things where information was already digitalized. As particularly for the E commerce or digital commerce clients. I think we are starting to understand that we can't get away from it. Right. I was talking to someone yesterday who one of her colleagues said oh, yeah, he has I attended Dext webinar last week about e commerce clients, and they're calling you beatings. And note, we are not going to do anything with E commerce clients, you want nothing to do with them. No digital commerce clients. I said, and they said we focus on nonprofits. Why is that? Well, how are they capturing payments? Sometimes? Oh, they use square that is now considered digital commerce right digitalized information. So and they need a solution for it. Because it's it's difficult to reconcile, particularly in cases where you have clients who are are operating on several different marketplaces, but then are their payments are being processed through a square stripe or PayPal even right, who would have thought that PayPal will make a comeback like it has in the past couple of years, we need a solution for accountants to then extract all that information without having to log into several different platforms. And sometimes, you know, the solutions, for example, if index commerce was only came or came on the market in 2018, right, just in the past couple of years, but we've seen an explosion of digital commerce activity. And we know why right over the past couple of years. And so now accountants are getting on the ball in terms of recognizing that we can't get away from it. So we need a solution. Right. So we'll get there, I think, slowly but surely, but I think the activity is wrapping up.
Gary DeHart
Yeah. And sometimes as I see as I've got to learn it and get to spend time on it, I don't have the time to do that.
Nana Guenther
Processes around it. Well, actually, some of these, these products are plug and play, right and the support team is there, right? So even if you're not a quote unquote tech savvy accountant, you know, you can contact the support teams and they can kind of hold your hands through a lot of these processes, onboard your clients. So you don't necessarily have to every time and make it as painless as possible for you to not only implement but continue to use the technology to make your business more efficient.
Gary DeHart
And then what do you see on the horizon? This kind of wrapping up here on the horizons as challenges opportunities, not necessarily for Dext, but or it could be for Dext, but for the profession as a whole CPAs, bookkeepers?
Nana Guenther
Yes, I read the other day that we have a pipeline problem, right, in terms of getting young people into the profession. So that's certainly going to be you know, I think it's going to start being a short term issue for us as a profession, but I think the technology aspect is, you know, the double edged sword. So now a lot of CPAs, who might not enjoy traditional accounting, the way that they intended to, or wanting to when they went to school, they have a lot of options, they could go work for a tech company, you know, or they could, they could still go and work for industry, they could still work in public practice, and particularly in Canada, as well, I talked briefly about the merger, they could get their designation at somewhere outside of a big four. And they'll still get the same designation, right, they'll still get that CPA. So they have a lot of options nowadays. And so we have to entice young people to become accountants and remain accountants and become young leaders within our profession. So how do we do that with technology? Well, we can show them that, hey, the technology exists. And it's actually we can get even more creative than Excel, right. And they're amazing solutions, and all of those internal controls and the assertions that we have to make sure our their technology can, can be used to assert those as well. So and it's cool, let's be honest, it's just cool to see some of this stuff. If I take a picture of a receipt, sometimes I've taken a picture of a handwritten receipt, and the OCR technology recognizes all the data on the receipt. It's just cool. And that's what our young people want to recognize. That's why it populates it and then categorizes it. I mean, it's remarkable. So we need to show them that, that all that cool. Technology exists to make accountants life easier. So they're not working, they don't have to work so incredibly hard, right. But you know, as the as the population evolves over time, and, you know, the younger generations become the leaders of our profession, perhaps face less resistance to with adopting some of the technologies, some of the challenges that we talked about earlier, could become, you know, obsolete, right. And, and perhaps that could solve some of the problems with that we have currently with a pipeline.
Gary DeHart
It was interesting, probably five years ago, when they first had the first Xero con in the US, I think it was five, maybe six years ago. The we're at scaling new heights, we're filming this at scaling, new heights, 2022. And traditionally, the QuickBooks ProAdvisor audience or QuickBooks Pro advisors a little bit older crowd and desktop based, that certainly has changed in the past three or four years. But even walk around the floor that that's still the case, not not the desktop side, but the the age. But on the Xero con, like walk around the floor. It literally was just like they were half the age. Right. And, and their technology first, right? And so it's how do you impress upon that, like you were just saying, impress upon that group that or people in that age group, that you know, it's not, it's not the grain ledger sheet, right? We're doing a lot more than that. There's, it's really, it's a technology business. Now. I mean, certainly leveraging technology, in every step of the process, to make it work, they still have to understand accounting. Maybe it's bookkeeping, maybe you don't have to go all the way and get the CPA. And you still do and still do a phenomenal amount of work for small businesses that need it. And I think there is a messaging thing messaging issue there. Because it's, again, it's not about general mergers, or the debits and credits. The long term of it is about advising. That's what the talking heads have been talking about for years. I still think people have fully embraced it from a professional standpoint. But advice as a small business owner advice is what I need. I need somebody in my ear saying look, you can keep going that direction. You keep doing this, this makes sense but You're gonna run out of cash or whatever the issue may be. We know where our business is, but we don't necessarily spend enough time on it to, to be looking out for these red flags, because we're so focused on those points.
Nana Guenther
So and as you should right, as you should, because, you know, we see that every great leader has a focus, and they hire people in very intelligent people who focus and have strengths in other areas to support them. Well as an as an accountant, I can support you from the financial aspect, I can only do that if I have the capacity and the data to do so. That's the end. That's just a reality, right? We're not we're not getting less data. I'll tell you that. Right. It's just going to become a tsunami of data. So we need to get a wrangle on a get a hold of it. And we need to demonstrate to young accountants how to do that right. And then they can pioneer those those solutions forward as well.
Gary DeHart
Absolutely. Well, that is all I have you have anything else you want to share anything that comes to mind?
Nana Guenther
I think that's it for me.
Gary DeHart
Thanks for joining us.
Nana Guenther
Thank you!
Gary DeHart
Thank you all for tuning in.