Welcome to our latest meet the team blog

Welcome to our latest meet the team blog. Today we introduce Ewan Smith who joined Bedford in May 2023. Ewan is an FP&A Subject Matter Expert with over 15 years’ experience within Financial Services organisations.

What made you consider joining Bedford?

There are a few things that made Bedford attractive, the first is the culture, to me work is more about the people you work with than the job you do. The Bedford culture of being humble and collaborative yet incredibly professional and competent in what they do and stood out from the competition.

The second is the value that Anaplan represents, helping customers solve challenges and improve their processes and outcomes is more impactful than getting the right data at the right time. It affects teams, their morale and experience of their own work lives. I have worked with challenging systems and processes, so I see it as an opportunity to not just help companies make better decisions, but a way to improve the happiness of my fellow accounting and finance professionals as well.

Why did you apply to be a Subject Matter Expert for FP&A?

I spent nearly 20 years working in and leading finance teams primarily in business finance, FP&A is something that you live and breathe in those roles. Being able to use that knowledge to help customers improve or streamline their own processes is something I enjoy so it just made sense.

The SME role is also new to Bedford, which is exciting, being one of the first to join Bedford allows me scope to shape the role and prove the value it offers. It isn’t often that you get the opportunity to do that!.

What’s the most important skill that someone needs to succeed in your role?

Picking just one is hard, so I am going to give my top three, none are likely to surprise:

Listening to your customer and understanding what they want to achieve and the challenges they face is important. We rely on our knowledge and experience, so it is easy to default to what we know. Every customer is different though, so you need to be open to hearing their story so you can bring your skills and insight to finding solutions that work for them. We may have SME in our job title, but we don’t know everything, and every engagement is an opportunity to learn, which allows us to bring more value to our next customer.

Communication, as with all change processes, being able to communicate effectively is essential, both to be able to convey complex solutions, but also to ensure that across stakeholder groups everyone understands what needs to be done and why.

Finally, creativity and a can-do mindset. Solving problems often calls for a unique way of seeing things to be able to find a way to make it things work. I am a believer in the saying, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” You need to be able to believe you can find a way and stretch your thinking into new directions.

What is the biggest challenge that you think you will face?

A large part of my job is helping customers understand the changes they need to make to be able to take advantage of their Anaplan implementation. They know they want the change as they are talking to us which helps, but they are not always ready for what that means in practice. Guiding them through the broader change that goes with a new system and new processes is not always easy.

In your experience of working in finance, what are the biggest challenges to overcome and how do you see Bedford & Anaplan supporting customers?

There is no universal answer to this, different organisations will face different challenges. I would say that realising their potential is as close as I will get to the biggest challenge.

If I were to use an analogy of the human body, the finance team is the brain of an organisation. It tracks and monitors what is happening in all parts of an organisation, monitoring the health and status, tracking inputs, outputs, and performance. As a brain though, it spends far too much time in gathering and recording information, and far too little time in using the information to help the rest of the organisation be more responsive to what is happening. Providing the feedback in the right way to let the organisation know what to do. This goes beyond just financial performance but adding value and insight to those financials.

A lot of this is due to their systems and data landscapes, a lot of effort goes into getting data from systems, transforming it, and putting it into other systems leaving little time for the thinking and responding. Anaplan and Bedford can help by connecting and automating a lot of the processes creating the time to provide that feedback and engage effectively with the various parts of the organisation, this is the start of changing the finance team from being a back-office function to being an essential part of the DNA. With automation and AI enhancements moving rapidly, finance needs to find its calling beyond reporting.

What are you most looking forward to?

I am looking forward to spending time with customers and understanding their businesses and helping them realise their potential.

How has your experience at Bedford been so far?

So far it has been amazing, it is one thing for a company to project their culture but then not live up to it. Bedford lives the culture it promotes, proving talent, humility and kindness can be matched with professionalism to deliver a brilliant culture.

Email Ewan to connect directly about your finance processes, review sessions or ask any other questions you may have here.

We’re also hiring! For more information on our open roles visit our careers page.