John Hrudicka’s passion for finance-related technologies started with an Essbase project at Motorola. In a recent interview with blogger Steve Player, Hrudicka (now VP of finance at Elkay Manufacturing) offers words of advice for up-and-coming finance pros: Look for the two or three initiatives with the biggest potential impact.

Steve Player: How did you get interested in technology in finance?
John Hrudicka: My first throw at this, which probably fueled my passion, was when I was a director of finance for a small, $200 million division within Paging at Motorola. At that time the Paging sector was about $2.5 billion, so we were very small, and our processes around planning and reporting were very manual. We had a reporting system and the ability to produce reports, but they were canned reports, and everybody wanted something different. So we would print the reports and input the data into the formats that they really wanted, creating wasted activity. We had people doing that at the sacrifice of value-add activities meeting business needs.

We did some research and discovered a tool called Essbase.  With it, we could produce a financial reporting package at the end of the month, in the formats people wanted, taking more time to print the package than build the reports. The Paging sector liked it so much, it was implemented across the $2.5 billion business. From that point forward I’ve been diligent in pursuing technology solutions to increase the productivity and value output of the finance team.

Steve Player: What advice would you have for people in finance who are getting started, looking back at your career and all of the things you've been able to do?
John Hrudicka: A couple of things that may sound straightforward, but I don't think they always are.  When you’re in finance, you get comfortable with finance roles, tasks, and responsibilities, but whenever you can, you should extend yourself outside that boundary. It may be incremental work, it may be more than what you were asked to do in the job, but pursue activity with the intent to create business impact.  Any job I've ever been in, I’ve looked for two or three impactful initiatives that support significant business needs. I'll work even harder to get those done, because they tend to be incremental on top of your day job, so to speak, but this is why the company employs you in the end.

The other thing I would offer is this: There’s a transition you go through from individual contributor to manager. What I have seen many finance people do when they start to graduate into management or leadership levels is to bring their individual contributor mindset with them; they’re still trying always to get the job done by themselves. When you become a leader, you've got to realize that your success is represented by the output of those who work for you. It sounds like motherhood and apple pie, but hire great people, develop great people, and reward great people. If somebody knocks on my door  to tell me about what a great job one of my team members did, that’s the biggest testament to my leadership and the accomplishment that I am most proud of.

To read more of Steve Player’s interview with John Hrudicka, click here.