Finance Essentials in AI, Data Science and ERP

Glenn Hopper is the author of Deep Finance: Corporate Finance for the Information Age. Glenn is a likable expert who helps the rest of us better understand artificial intelligence, data science, and ERP solutions.  As a hands-on, self-taught digital expert, his writing is still easy to understand. In this conversation, we cover machine and deep learning, practical applications of data science in smaller businesses, and comparing comprehensive ERP solutions with best-of-breed tools that are stacked together.

Who is Glenn Hopper?

Glenn is a former journalist who later became a marketing expert and then found the CFO corner office after another career pivot.

He claims he’s not a software engineer, but through intellectual and passionate curiosity, he’s found ways to democratize data throughout every organization he’s touched through data science, certain narrow-based AI solutions, and best-of-breed ERP software stacks.

He’s the author of Deep Finance and has written a section in the book, Quitless: The Power of Persistence in Business and Life. He could possibly be one of the only CFOs to have written a movie script, The Hanged Man.

Relevant Links:

• Author website
• Amazon author page
• LinkedIn profile
• Twitter
• Forbes Councils Member

Interview Questions

1. How did you go from journalism to marketing, to finance?
2. How did you get into the car wash business and how did you use data to improve the business?
3. Explain the democratization of data.
4. What is the difference between general AI and narrow AI?
5. What is the difference between machine learning and deep learning?
6. What is a simple example of machine learning in the accounting back office?
7. Deep Blue – machine or deep learning?
8. How do we create the QuickBooks of data science in small businesses?
9. What is RPA?

Four Post-Interview Questions to Consider in Your Company

After reading Glenn’s book I’ll be going through it again. I also took close to three pages of notes during our interview which prompted the following questions for your organization:

1. In your business, how effectively is data being democratized across the organization which includes data from marketing, sales, operations, finance, and other support functions?
2. Name two or three areas in your business where robotic process automation (RPA) could be applied? Glenn mentioned that off-the-shelf solutions exist for even basic RPA tasks.
3. Assess your current ERP situation or best-of-breed software stack. What improvements are needed?
4. Similar to the RPA question above, where could you apply machine learning in your organization?

Books Mentioned by Glenn Hopper

• Books by Cormac McCarthy
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence
• Competing in the Age of AI
• Lead and Disrupt

Producer’s Picks

If you liked the show with Glenn as much as we did, there are two other similar episodes we recommend:

• A CFO’s Playbook for Data Science and Analytics with Jon Daniels
• From Data Extraction to Business Insights with Dan Murray

If interested in learning more about data science after reading Glenn’s book, he recommends Havard’s, CS50: Introduction to Computer Science which you can audit for free.