In this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Jason Miles, SVP Finance at Conde Nast, the global media company with a portfolio including brands such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired, among others.
In this conversation, Jason and I dive into some of the complexities of multinational expansion and how businesses can effectively manage those challenges that come with that.
🌟 Some of my favourite parts were:
✅ Considerations around when a business is ready to enter a new market;
✅ How to ensure the vision and values of your business are respected as you grow;
✅ Maintaining control over your cash as you enter markets with different payment practices;
✅ The benefits of a federated vs. centralised model to ensure consistent & accurate information;
✅ In house vs. External – insights into setting up offices and the trade-offs around speed, cost and risks to compliance.
Business Book Bonus Recommendation –
The Culture Map – Erin Meyer - https://amzn.eu/d/0YWNcg5
In this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Jason Miles, SVP Finance at Conde Nast, the global media company with a portfolio including brands such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired, among others.
In this conversation, Jason and I dive into some of the complexities of multinational expansion and how businesses can effectively manage those challenges that come with that.
🌟 Some of my favourite parts were:
✅ Considerations around when a business is ready to enter a new market;
✅ How to ensure the vision and values of your business are respected as you grow;
✅ Maintaining control over your cash as you enter markets with different payment practices;
✅ The benefits of a federated vs. centralised model to ensure consistent & accurate information;
✅ In house vs. External – insights into setting up offices and the trade-offs around speed, cost and risks to compliance.
Business Book Bonus Recommendation –
The Culture Map – Erin Meyer - https://amzn.eu/d/0YWNcg5
Adam (00:02.967)
Okay, so today I'm here with Jason Miles, SVP Finance at Conde Nast, the global media company with a portfolio including brands such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired, among others. And reading from your website, you cover a billion consumers in 32 territories, which is quite the footprint. Jason, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are you doing?
Jason (00:28.502)
Thanks Adam, very well thanks. Thanks very much for inviting me on. I'm delighted to be here.
Adam (00:33.123)
Thanks for being here. So today we're going to dive into some of the complexities of multinational expansion and how businesses can effectively manage those challenges that come with that. So Jason, perhaps to start, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far?
Jason (00:50.99)
Sure, sure. So for nearly all of my career, I've worked in multinational companies, international companies, both small and large. Started out my career in Marks and Spencers after university, and at the time, they had a much more global footprint across Asia, Europe, and the UK. Then I moved from there. I moved into a manufacturing fashion clothing apparel.
global company who were the biggest producer of clothing for the UK, single largest producer of clothing for the UK. So at that point in time, they produced clothes for pretty much, you know, many of the big high street names from Topshop to right the way through to most of the Arcadia group and British Home Stores and others. And then for the last 20 odd years of my career, I've been at Condé Nast and the first half of that was very much focused on
on business expansion and development through a financial lens, but with the strategy side within mind as well. And more recently, I've focused more on the finance side and oversee our markets around the world. So as you rightly touched on there, Condé Nast is a large global company with a huge consumer audience base and a footprint in many markets around the world. So I feel I've got some
some background knowledge around this topic area.
Adam (02:21.087)
Excellent, very good. So I guess to start with, it would be interesting to get your experience about expansion and sort of perhaps to start, could you explain for our audience who typically are small marketing and media businesses, so on a different scale to your experience, but if they're looking at their first expansion opportunity, can you perhaps explain in your experience why a company would decide to expand into a market?
Jason (02:51.986)
Yeah, I think I'll explain from sort of my background and my experience, I'll also explain just from some thoughts, general thoughts I have as well as to why you might want to do that. And I think it's, there's sometimes reasons that people don't always consider. The most obvious reason of course, is that you think there's growth opportunities and there's a potential for growth and there's for your product or service in a target market or country. And that might be because you've seen,
orders coming in from that country, you've had requests from that country, etc. You might see that your competitors are already operating in that country and anecdotally or through some of your own research you find out they're doing pretty well. And that's a helpful indication. So there's certainly the business growth opportunities is normally the first and foremost reason you want to expand.
it's not the only one. And in my experience, it's definitely not the only one. You beyond sort of business growth and opportunities, there may be other reasons. You know, so for example, you might think there are talent opportunities in another market that you don't have in your own market, or they're not as prolific, or the cost base isn't the same, or they're, they're harder to, you know, retract and retain those staff. So,
there may be a talent reason that you are looking at, you know, expanding into a different market, you know, so, um, if you give you some, give you some examples, um, if you think of video production, film production, if you, if sometimes it's quite hard to find that talent, there's a lot of talent in the UK and London around that, but there's equally some huge pots of talent, uh, in the EU and outside of the EU. So if you think of film production, video,
where many media companies are moving to now. You think of Madrid being a huge hub of talent there. Or you think of Mexico being a lot of talent out of Mexico. And you see these trends happening as, and if you keep your eye on big players, so for example, video, if you keep your eye on companies like say Netflix, Netflix has 25,000 people doing production in Madrid on video, film and TV. So there is a huge pool of talent there.
Jason (05:20.63)
the same in Mexico where they do it for the Mexican, Latin market, but also for North America. So if you expanding your business to think about talent, it might be R&D talent, it might be engineering talent. So Condé Nast has a very successful engineering hub of our software engineers, all our security ops, et cetera, set up in India. And we've got a large team there. And I mean, in that market...
you can find really, really talented individuals around in that space. And it's a huge talent pool that would be hard to find in a market such as in some of the ranges in the UK, in London, et cetera, which is a much, much more competitive.
Adam (06:11.859)
Great, and sorry, I was just gonna follow up on one of the points you raised there, because obviously if you're expanding into a country like India and Mexico, very different sort of compliance requirements, tax requirements, and it just, it made me think about the complexities of expanding internationally. So how do you, if you're gonna go into one of these markets, how would you recommend sort of doing that?
Jason (06:12.348)
You can
Adam (06:40.775)
and staying abreast of those kind of requirements, making sure you don't fall foul of any unknowns, I guess.
Jason (06:46.954)
Yeah, great question because there's a huge complexity with compliance and it can be, particularly for smaller companies or companies doing expansion for their first time, it's a real concern and it's a challenge and it can be a headache because you're investing a lot of time and energy in trying to understand something that's quite complex. I think if you're starting out, you absolutely find...
a local firm that can support you on the legal compliance and the financial compliance would be my suggestion as a first port of call. I mean, even a company, you know, with the breadth and knowledge of Condé Nast, we don't rely on people sat in London or New York or in our HQs to do this. We find experts on the ground, sometimes in house, sometimes a third party, an outsourced partner that really help us with this. And the level of
Complexity is considerable. And that's not to put people off because there are clearly many companies that have international expansion. So there are many people out there that can help with the compliance side around the world. But it can be quite onerous at the start and it's very different. So your compliance in India versus say France versus say a different country.
they have different focus on different areas. India loads of bureaucracy. If you don't know much about Asia and how their system of seals and chops at work instead of signatures, that's a whole new world to expand into. In France, you have much more around, you know, employment law and legislation, which you have in, to a lesser extent in, but still there in Italy and in Germany as well. So much more rigorous than say in the UK or...
requirements or considerations around works council. So all of these things are, whether it's legal compliance, whether it's employment compliance, whether it's financial and statutory compliance, you don't want to become run foul of that. So my advice would always be either hire some local expertise in that market onto the payroll or use an outsource provider to provide that compliance advice.
Adam (09:14.115)
Sorry, I think we lost you there for a sec, Jason. Could you just go back about 10 seconds and repeat what you just said, please?
Jason (09:19.734)
Yeah, sure. So my, it's a very complicated area. So my advice would always be to either hire someone onto your team that has that compliance advice or find an outsource third party provider in that market that knows that market to provide that guidance advice around all of the different aspects of compliance. I think it's very, it's nigh on impossible to do it yourself from a UK hub and try and expand and expect to be.
and expect to be able to manage that yourself with the knowledge that you currently have.
Adam (09:55.483)
Okay, great. And just to follow on from that, I mean, many, many businesses will typically start in their home market. And I'm thinking agencies here, they would go to the US first and then to Europe and Asia. And as you rightly point out, they believe it gives them that guaranteed growth. And you've touched on some of the considerations. Do you have sort of a wider list of, and I'm sure you do, but could you just perhaps high level, give us some wider considerations that you consider?
in your experience when deciding if you should or shouldn't enter a new market.
Jason (10:31.414)
Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, it comes down to a strategy. So in your strategy, what are your priorities? And have you really thought about this as a leadership team and you as the head of finance really thinking about this and considering this and really then thinking through those implications because international expansion offers huge opportunities if it's done well, it can be very damaging if it's done
It requires a significant effort on time, which can be time very well spent, but it is time that's not being spent maybe on the domestic market. And I often think with strategy that it's...
With strategy, you have many plausible options. And these are all plausible things that you could do. You could do certain things domestically, certain things internationally. You could develop new products and services. You could expand your domestic customer base. They're all plausible. What you want to do is try and decide which is the one you want to go after and then defer or put on pause the ones that are least attractive. So I think first and foremost, I would say, make sure there is that alignment.
your leadership team and that sometimes takes quite a bit of time to get there and there are different views and then make sure it's properly resourced both in terms of time from the from the current team you have the funding that you have the realism of the amount of time it's going to take to build a business in an international market you know that runway and it will differ from business to business but can be can be very different you know
Adam (11:47.483)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (12:16.054)
What does that look like from your business? You know, it depends on the business. You know, if you're, we work with, we work with some paper companies, clearly, as we publish both magazines. That's a smaller part of our business now, our main business is digital business, but paper companies, I was talking to one of those, they work on 30 to 50 year timelines because to build a paper plant, that is a massive capex investment. So when they do their business plans, they're typically 30 years. Now.
Adam (12:43.403)
Sorry, Jason, we lost you. We lost you when your digital businesses are larger than your print, but you're talking about paper, but then it cuts off with the Wi Fi. So I think could you just go back that far?
Jason (12:54.974)
Yeah, sure. So with, within Condé Nast, our digital business is a much greater proportion now of our overall business. But we still have a print business. And I was saying when I was when you think about international expansion, think about your timeline, have a very clear financial plan, what it's like. So I was talking to a paper company recently, and their timeline, their business plans are 30 years out because they need to build.
Adam (13:22.503)
Well...
Jason (13:24.462)
huge, huge paper processing mills and plants. So whereas Condé Nast, you know, when we're looking at it, we work, you know, we work on a five year plan. And we think that's a reasonable plan until you reach a level of maturity in a country if you've launched a new brand. But it depends on the company, it depends on the products and service. So I guess I'm saying, make sure you have that financial plan, make sure you've looked at it rigorously, make sure you've worked it through with your
with your finance team and your leadership team to make sure everyone's comfortable with that and have a timeline that's appropriate for your business to reach that level of maturity. And you will underestimate all the things that you need to consider. So factor in costs for all of those unknown contingencies that will undoubtedly come along.
Adam (14:12.067)
Excellent, that's very good advice. And you actually segued nicely into a question I was gonna ask next around the planning of it, because often, companies can go and look at the addressable market and can go and look at the potential growth opportunities, as you rightly say, but don't necessarily consider that ramp up time. You talk about five year plans. How does a smaller business go about doing something in such volatile times?
how would you consider the volatility and plans in the current climate over five years? Just a high level thought about how you and your experience would do that.
Jason (14:52.85)
Yeah, I don't think you do it once and then you walk away and it's done. I think what you do is you're constantly looking at it. You're constantly, you know, keeping track of the market you're interested in. You constantly try and find people in the market that operate in that market and you talk to them, you find out what's going on. You hear from different sources. So that's something that I'm constantly trying to get feedback on. And I do that more in markets that are highly volatile. So, you know, I'll have more challenges. So.
Adam (15:19.324)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (15:23.694)
I think that's important. I think you can come up with a framework. So in companies I've worked in, previously we've come up with frameworks and you look at that framework of what that is. So, and those, so like rubrics of criteria that you're constantly assessing as whether that market is attractive or not. And that gives you a framework. I guess what I'm trying to say is a combination of art and science.
The science is keeping track of the fundamentals in those markets, what's going on, what's changing. And then the art is listening to people, hearing what people say anecdotal, your own research, you want to probably, you know, people would have visited the market they're thinking of expanding into. What have you found out from your time there? What did your gut tell you? So that combination of art and science, I think helps you determine what to do.
I would say, I would, I would summarize this and I was having a conversation about this last week with someone. There is, if you expand internationally, there is always risk. You cannot mitigate all that risk. There's never going to be a perfect time to expand into a new market. There will always, whether it's, you know, whether it's, you know, political, socio-political, economic, talent, whatever it may be.
they will always be at different stages in the cycle. So there'll always be some risk. I think the judgment that a good finance leader makes is, is this a risk worth taking at this moment? In the context of my wider company and strategy and what I'm doing. And that's the judgment. I think sometimes people think, oh, there's too much risk there. There will always be some risk. So it's a judgment call. And if you look at it with that art and science mentality,
then you're probably in a better place to make a judgment on that risk and a go, no go decision.
Adam (17:25.431)
Okay, that's great. Some good advice there for our audience. And I think the last question I just wanted to ask you on this section is around, and you mentioned before about talent, finding the right people in market to help you with this. You've obviously worked with some very high profile brands and companies in the past. And so one of the risks that you mentioned that you need to manage are, you know, how do you control the quality?
particularly I guess in more creative environments, some of my audience will be will be working in, how do you make sure that what happens with the talent on the ground adheres to your very high quality standards that you might have in your host market?
Jason (18:08.634)
Yeah, it is another great question. It's, it's, it's difficult sometimes. You're trying to find, you rightly want to find talent in a, in another market to, to have a, that will help adapt your product and service to, so it's more relevant to its local customer. I think there's different ways you can approach it. Clearly many companies, you know,
they use an expat model and they take people from the domestic market and move those into the market that's being expanded to. And that brings a level of knowledge about the business, the product services, et cetera, from the domestic market, from the UK, say, but doesn't bring any real understanding about that local market. So I think whilst that is a model for expansion, and it might work for some brands and companies, et cetera. And you know.
The companies I've worked with now or in the past have used that. And it's a faster way sometimes to get going and sometimes perceived as a lower risk. But I think you hit a, sometimes hit a ceiling and you need to move towards a local talent fairly, fairly quickly because markets are so different and it depends slightly on the product and service, but often they need to be tailored to the local market to be really effective and to really be successful.
Jason (19:37.866)
I think you need to work closely with the talent. You need to recognise that approach for talent differs from market to market. There's a massive cultural difference. You need to listen, empathise. I think the cultural differences cannot be understated, and even from UK to France, let alone UK to China, these are, or Brazil, or wherever it may be.
you cannot understand these cultural differences. I think what you need to do is if you share with the local team very clearly what the vision is for your business and share with them what the values of your business are. So the vision of where you want to get to for your business and then the values that you hold true as a company. If you've done those two things and
you've hired reasonably good talent, I've, I've generally, you will be successful. You won't always be successful. The talent, right? Won't always be the right person and you know, that may have to evolve and change. But generally if you lock in on the vision and the values, in most cases that gives someone a very, very clear North star of where you want them to go. And with some support, generally speaking, they it moves in the, in the right direction.
Adam (21:07.499)
Okay, good, good. I'm going to segue slightly to a more financial area now and looking at some of the financial challenges of working internationally. Starting with cash, because obviously cash is king, as everyone says, and how you manage that across international companies or subsidiaries is and can be challenging. And particularly if you're not used to doing that as a small business
in the first instance. So from a cash management banking point of view, how would you recommend a small business just starting out maintains that appropriate visibility, that appropriate control and efficiency of managing their cash in banks?
Jason (21:58.87)
It's a challenging one, particularly with international expansion, where you're typically probably investing for the first few years. So how do you ensure you're collecting that money quickly and efficiently from your clients? How do you... So if you start at that end of the process, the collection terms are very, very different from one country to another. So...
a country like Japan, collection days are very short. You know, you're talking 15 days, something like that. Very, very low, bad debt risk. Companies, you know, you're not chasing companies to pay, whereas you've got at the other end of the spectrum a country like Italy, where they're very, very long lead times for collections and DSO. So...
you need to be, I go back to the financial plan here, you need to be very mindful when you go into a market that you do understand what the collection terms and the norms are for that market. You need to have done your research because if you're at 15 days in Japan and 180 in Italy, that has a major impact on your cash flow. You need to then secondly understand what is the most effective way for collections in a country and there's very different, you know,
Again, this comes back to culture, comes back to business norms. So if you dive into a country like Germany, say, dunning letter system is really effective. It's ingrained in German business culture that once you receive the dunning letter, you pay and that you generally collect pretty much all of your money as soon as that dunning letter comes through. And if it doesn't come through, sorry, and if it does come through and the client for some reason can't pay, they will generally contact you.
So actually it's another very, very efficient system, but you've got to have a good done process. If you haven't got a good done process, you know, your clients aren't generally paying because that's what they're used to seeing. In other countries, it's all about the phone call. It's like, they're not going to pay until there's that phone call there and there's someone at the end of the line saying to them, you know, you owe this amount, you owe this much, I have to, to you. So again, comes back to culture, comes back to business norms in those markets, it comes back to doing the research.
Adam (24:23.995)
Okay, great. And in terms of that research, and you mentioned about partnering with local experts on the ground, at the outset, when you're planning ongoing in market, at what stage would you sort of cut that support, if you will? So would you use those local experts when you're going into a new market to help set up your finance department, your finance team, your collections process? Is that something that you would manage?
through actual internal hires, or does it very much differ on a case by case basis?
Jason (24:58.51)
I think it differs on a case by case basis, what you're doing, what you're trying to achieve, what's the scale of your ambition in the market. I think you can, if your intention, if your intention is to have a big base in that country over time, then you know, you may move more towards an in-house team and building that up. If you expect to have a very light touch, then probably you're better off, you know, outsourcing it to a third party that, you know, can do it very, in a much more straightforward way and has the experience of doing that.
I think it's a trade-off. I mean, I think you just look through your strategy and your plan and you try and gauge whether it's better to have teams in-house or have a third party providing that service for you. So if you look at time being spent to set this up, if it's in-house versus outsourced, you're gonna have to be investing a lot more time to set up a team in-house. If you wanna look about flexibility versus risk and compliance.
You can have more flexibility if you set up your own in-house team and how they work and how they operate and how you direct them. But you've got arguably more risk and compliance if you've got an in-house team because you know, you haven't got the local expertise from an outsource provider. Speed to execution. Again, if you're doing an in-house team, then that's going to take you longer to find the right people, hire them, understand the norms, etc. Versus.
an outsource team. So how important is your speed to execution?
cost would be another one I would think of. I mean, and it's a trade off here. I mean, outsourcing gets you up to speed quicker, but clearly you're paying two or three X the cost of the individual. Whereas you're, if you've got your own team, you're just paying for the cost of that team. So there's many considerations. It will also depend on the market. You know, you might think.
Adam (26:46.989)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (26:53.054)
Okay, I feel I'm moving into an Australian market. I will have our own in-house team because I think that's easier for me to navigate. I understand the language, the cultural norms are more similar between UK and Australia, et cetera, et cetera. I feel more comfortable doing that versus I'm establishing a setup out of Brazil. That's an area I feel far less comfortable with. I don't know the business norms. I can't travel there quickly and easily. So I will go with a...
an outsource provider at least initially.
Adam (27:24.727)
Okay, yeah, some great advice there. Thank you. And just in terms of the, once you're up and running, and obviously you've got a central organization that is wanting to understand how performance is going in those satellite offices or subsidiaries, how do you manage that? And what I mean by that is obviously, you know, setting up a new system, setting up consistency in terms of reporting.
having a structured setup so you can report back in a consistent way as early as possible. I'm sure that's something that your investors and your board are going to want, but as you know and I know very well, doing that takes a lot longer than one can expect. So how do you and have you ensured that consistent and accurate reporting as early as possible?
Jason (28:12.214)
think it comes down to what your model is for managing that overseas activity. If your model is that's an extension of your UK base or if it's a more federated independent business and there are pros and cons of both. Clearly if you've given it a more federated structure and operating model, you're giving it more freedom, you're giving it more flexibility and
how you have that reporting back and that level of granularity on that reporting will probably be...
Adam (28:45.127)
Sorry, Jason, we just lost you there. I think the last I heard was federated. So you're talking about federated teams and then you cut off.
Jason (28:54.062)
Okay, if you are, it depends on your strategy and how you are thinking about operating that overseas arm. If you're going down a more federated route, you will probably give that overseas business more freedom, more flexibility, more independence. You'll be having less granularity in your reporting. You might say to them, you know, go and find your own accounting system, accounting software. You find a product that's tailored to your local market.
and tailored to local conditions, local tax compliance that is more relevant for you. And that will limit the granularity that you have on the reporting coming back to the UK. However, it might give you more speed and agility or give you a finance system that has really strong local language capabilities, really strong local compliance. Conversely, you might go down the route of, and your business strategy and your operating model might be, no, we want this
We want to know everything that's going on in that local market. We want to really understand that. We want to manage it from the centre. We need that granularity. We'll take our current accounting systems. We'll be leveraging those in that overseas market. We'll be using exactly the same chart of accounts. We're using the same reporting structure. We'll be using the same accounting policies. We'll roll out our accounting policies, our other standards that we use internally. We will require them to report to us in...
They'll have to run two sets of accounts, one in UK gap, because we want all of theirs done in UK gap, so we can consolidate in a consistent way. And then separately, locally, they'll have to do a separate set of books in their local gap. So I think it depends very much on what the operating model is, to say the level of granularity that you want. I think it depends on how you intend to manage that overseas market and the level of freedom and independence you want. Are you in?
Are you hiring a local person to oversee that business and giving them that freedom to run that business or are you managing it much more hands on from the center? And.
Jason (31:05.918)
The model can change over time, I would say. I would say as your business evolves and change, your model of the level of reporting granularity, the level of governance over that finance team will rightly change with that as well. So I think the key takeaway for, I would suggest, is that flexibility. Go in with a flexible mindset. You might set up in one way, and then three, four years down the road, you might say, actually, our business has changed, our operating model has changed.
Our growth means that we need a different model and approach now to how we manage that offshore, sorry, that overseas finance team.
Adam (31:43.555)
Okay, great. And I guess one more question you touched on a little bit before about federated versus central. And often going into a new market, there will be a natural tendency to work across borders with people working on projects from one market into the other. And you then obviously have the transfer pricing considerations that aren't something that most small business owners are aware of.
but are something, you know, particularly as you get larger that you need to consider. So can you just tell me a little bit in your experience how you manage people working across borders from a rate card point of view, if you're doing profitability analysis on particular projects or particular clients from an invoicing or payments perspective.
Jason (32:32.194)
This is not specifically my area of expertise. What I would say is you've touched on a very important point on transfer pricing that is often, as you rightly said, not fully considered. And you being thoroughly on top of that is important because it won't come back to bite you on day one, day two or day three. It will be a few years down the road and then you'll realize you're not, you.
haven't been compliant and there'll be a tax investigation. And if you start going down that route with the tax authorities, it takes up a huge amount of time with investigations and then the risk of interest and penalties, et cetera. And what is interesting is, I mean, I've been working with international companies for about 30 years now across a range of industries. What has been really interesting over the last 30 years is countries around the world,
and tax authorities around the world have really strengthened their compliance around transfer pricing. They are much more thorough, rigorous and focused on it than 20 or 30 years ago. And the global standards around TP and BIPs, et cetera, have significantly strengthened. There are, get a TP expert, I would say,
There are different options. Some are very straightforward and you can be compliant relatively easy with a pretty straightforward model. Some are much more complex and require more nuanced and probably more third party advice.
But my advice would be make sure that you've got that area covered off because you don't want it to come and bite you two, three, four years down the road.
Adam (34:29.919)
No, absolutely, absolutely. And final question on this, just about, and you mentioned before, in some cases, being flexible with systems that you roll out, having sometimes a local finance system, other times systems that are sort of centrally mandated. Where you do have that mix, how do you manage your consolidation? So how do you ensure that you're bringing in all the information into a way that's
understandable for sort of central management or understandable for decision making centrally, any tools or technologies you could recommend.
Jason (35:09.674)
Yes, so in the early days at Conde Nast, when we expanded the business globally, it was across 12 owned and operated markets from Russia to China to Mexico to Spain, South America, Japan, etc. So it was very much a federated model. So we tried to hire the finance director, the most talented finance director we could find.
and gave them more freedom to identify local finance systems that would be most suitable for their business. And that meant local compliance, etc. Local language, availability, many of the finance systems that are in the UK are not available in Mexico or Japan or China. And so we ended up with 12 different finance systems across 12 different countries.
as you rightly say, this then becomes very challenging to manage reporting. But there are tools out there that you can sit above local finance systems. So there are various products that can be used and we implemented one of these products globally, which is a reporting layer that sits on top of all of those local finance systems. And that reporting layer, you've obviously got mapping from those local finance systems into the reporting tool. And you can do a
you can manage quite a lot of your business through a strong reporting tool, both on the financials and on the KPIs around those financials. So it takes a bit of time and effort to put that in place, but once it's in place, you can manage a very large global company with that. Now, clearly that's a middle step, and if you wanna go to a much more integrated model, you roll out the same core finance system, the same.
ERP around the world and you migrate then to that and then the need for that reporting layer that sits on top, that reporting tool that sits on top, is less relevant because you're all in the same financial system. So there are pros and cons of each. Rolling out a core finance system is quite a bit of work around the world, especially if you're in quite a few markets. So some people might may choose not to do that and instead if they've got different finance systems, different markets.
Jason (37:36.01)
just have this reporting tool sitting on top that can manage pretty much all your management reporting, your consolidations that are acquired, cash, et cetera.
Adam (37:48.627)
That's great, yeah, as you say, definitely a cost benefit analysis needed before going into any kind of large system rollout. And yeah, it does take a lot longer than you imagine. And actually, it's a nice promo for an episode we've got coming up. So more to follow on that. Thank you, Jason. And moving on to what I'm calling our business book bonus section, where we're asking our guests to provide us with a recommendation for our audience of a business book or any...
business content to make it a little bit easier. That's helped them during their business career and that they want to recommend. So from your point of view, Jason, what business book or other content would you like to recommend?
Jason (38:29.998)
I was thinking about this and I thought a book, I'll try and have a book that's relevant to what I've just discussed. So a book that I read maybe five years ago, but still, and I've recommended to so many people, is called The Culture Map and it's by Erin Mayer. And it's a book that helps you try to understand the different cultures around the world. And it's...
It's a fabulous book. It's really, really well written. I'll explain. I explained a couple of reasons I like it, but clearly, you know, in our ever more interconnected world, having a book that helps us be more culturally aware in business, just all in life, I think is critic is absolutely critical and incredibly helpful. And what her book does is it sort of comes up with eight cultural distinctions and, and then,
puts those on a scale. So if I maybe I'll give you a couple of examples from the ones I remember. For example, decision-making. So how are decisions made in a country? What is the cultural norm for how decisions are made? And decisions can, from one end of the spectrum to the other, decisions can be made top-down or the other end of the spectrum is consensus. And different countries have different styles of making decisions. So that's one, decision-making. Another one I remember being trust.
Adam (39:29.715)
Sure.
Jason (39:54.218)
And different countries, the way they build trust is very, very different. So, again, it's a spectrum and some countries build trust by how well they really know each other, how much time have they spent together, have they really built that personal bond? So like a Brazil or something like that. Down to the other end of the spectrum, trust is based on what work have they done together? And that's more of a, let's say, a US type approach. Another one is like communicating.
Adam (40:18.283)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (40:24.358)
Some countries have very low context communication. So simple, clear, et cetera. Others are much deeper in meaning. So what I loved about this book was she had a, I like the combination of, we have many things in life. I like the combination of a great framework, but lots of case studies and practical examples and bringing it to life. And that's what she does really, Erin does really well in this book. There are loads of examples of, you know,
Jason (40:54.862)
Examples from her experience, but examples also of the clients she's worked with. You know, there's a Japanese person with an American business person. Why can they not get the conversation going? Why is it that the Japanese person says nothing at all in the meeting and the American goes away thinking that person was so shy, they're introvert, they've got nothing to say? And why does then the Japanese person go away and say, that American is arrogant, they never even asked me what I thought. And the...
knowing that in Japan the culture is you do not ask questions until to a senior person, unless you are asked for your opinion. And unless you're asked for your opinion, you often will not give your view. Now that's clearly very different in American culture where, you know, people speak up freely and liberally and give their view very easily. So there's so many of these great examples that bring that she really brings it to life. So combination of a theory or a framework of those eight areas and the spectrum of those
combined with lots of brilliant examples and quite funny ones as well, as you can imagine different cultural clashes across different...
Adam (41:59.527)
Great, that's the culture map. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Thank you very much for that. I guess before we wrap up, is there anything that we haven't covered, Jason, that you'd like to say before we finish?
Jason (42:12.826)
No, that's been great. I mean, I'm excited that this podcast series has been set up. I think it's great way for small and growing businesses to learn about what's going on and get more input. I'm a huge consumer of podcasts and I think the more that are out there providing high quality information, the better. So it's great to hear that this is being started. So thank you. And thank you for inviting me.
Adam (42:35.859)
Well, thank you. Thank you. And thank you so much for joining. And I appreciate your insight and your perspective in your time. Thanks for joining me.
Jason (42:45.142)
Thanks so much, great to be here.