The CFO Agenda: Vytalize Health's Jess Wijesekera
Learn more about NetSuite Planning and Budgeting: https://tinyurl.com/bdhm7phf In this special episode of the NetSuite Podcast focusing on the CFO’s agenda for 2025, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with Jess Wijesekera, SVP of Global Accounting at Vytalize Health, a leading value-based care platform. They start the episode by discussing Jess’ background and what brought her to her current role [1:55]. Jess then delves into Vytalize Health and its exponential growth over the last several years [6:26]. Megan and Jess discuss technology and talent issues [15:49]. They end the podcast episode by covering Vytalize Health’s priorities for 2025 [31:52]. Follow Us Here: Vytalize Health: https://www.vytalizehealth.com/ Jess Wijesekera LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-wijesekera-7290196/ Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: https://social.ora.cl/6000wKFhC X (Twitter): https://social.ora.cl/6007wK2zD Instagram: https://social.ora.cl/6003wK2Hv Facebook: https://social.ora.cl/6005wK2Dv #NetSuite #CFOAgenda, #Accounting -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;04;21 - 00;00;28;20 Hello, all you Suite listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. Now you all are in luck because today's episode marks the start of a mini series we are doing called The CFO Agenda. As we approach the end of 2024, we wanted to gauge what's on the docket for finance and accounting leaders. 00;00;28;23 - 00;00;50;23 In the first installment of the series, we have Jess Wijesekera, SVP of Global Accounting for Vytalize Health, a leading value based care platform. If you attended SuiteWorld or if you tuned into NetSuite OnAir to watch the main keynote, you would have seen her make an appearance with NetSuite Founder and EVP Evan Goldberg. 00;00;50;25 - 00;01;19;08 Vytalize Health has grown by a casual 90,778% over the last three years, so this episode is a great pulse check on what high-growth companies are prioritizing this coming year. We talk all about Jess’ background and her current role of Vytalize Health, the company's exponential growth, and her plans for 2025. With that, let's go ahead and dive in. 00;01;19;11 - 00;01;45;23 You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;01;45;25 - 00;02;03;26 Hi, Jess. How are you today? Hey, Megan. Good. Really great to be here. Good. We're so happy to have you. Yeah. Thank you. All right, well, we're going to dive right in because we have so much to cover. We want to hear, first of all, about your background. Did you always know that you wanted to get into accounting? 00;02;03;29 - 00;02;26;29 I did not. But I was always very good at organizing people and organizing projects. And I think that organization has always really been a part of who I am. It's going to sound silly, but in kindergarten I used to and tell them where and how to jump rope, and they always just happily listened to what I had to say. 00;02;26;29 - 00;02;57;23 And I felt really like a natural leader and I knew I wanted to do something that captured my personality. So, for me, accounting is just a really nice because it's taking project management and organization and unpacking a puzzle takes a lot of patience, which I'm learning to have a lot of patience, but it takes a lot of kindness for interacting with other departments and some tenacity with dealing with service providers. 00;02;57;23 - 00;03;31;23 So, I didn't know I always wanted to do it, but it is feeling like a really good fit. I couldn't help but stalk you a little bit on LinkedIn. You majored in accounting at Villanova, which is where I went. Yeah, Wildcats, you know, so I know I just had a great experience there and I chose it really because they had a very solid business school and I had this accounting professor who taught financial accounting, and he told me that accounting was the hardest major in the business school. 00;03;31;26 - 00;03;58;08 And if I could do accounting, that I could do anything, I could do finance, I could do management, I could do marketing. And he was really right. And I followed my accounting degree up with a master's in finance at Boston College. And it's really worked well, I think, to have this understanding of everything that’s accounting is past and everything that's finance is future and we meet in the present. 00;03;58;12 - 00;04;28;26 So it's kind of helped shape my career and where it's gone. That is such a cool perspective on it. And, and speaking of your career, could you talk a little bit about your past roles and your path to where you are now? Yeah, so like many accounting majors, I started at the Big Four, so I was at EY and I stayed longer than most. I was there about 15 years and I did a grand tour of about four offices. 00;04;28;29 - 00;04;55;29 So, I started in Palo Alto, and then did Boston, San Francisco, and I also did a three year secondment in the London office. And every time I felt I was going to leave public accounting, I stayed because I got a new opportunity or worked on a new client or with a new team. And it was this feeling that I could really add value, but also learn something completely new, which added to my skill set. 00;04;56;02 - 00;05;20;15 And I can't even tell you the number of times that I've cried in an audit room. I do think about those experiences and really how it shaped me. I got to work on Warner Brothers and Hawaiian Airlines, and towards the end of my career there, I was a national instructor for 606 when that Rev Rec standard was completely new and nobody knew what to do. 00;05;20;15 - 00;05;48;11 So that helped me with my foundation for where I am now. But after 15 years I decided to go into industry, so I started as an assistant controller. I was at a bottling company and my very first day on the job I realized I've never booked a journal entry in my whole life and a few roles since I have taken on kind of new areas of responsibility and kept growing my own skillset. 00;05;48;13 - 00;06;14;09 And I'm actually really lucky now to have brought on a couple of people I've worked with in the past, you know, kind of through EY and other companies because we just really enjoy working together. So that all of that brought me to my life. Well, I mean, I don't think you've really worked for a Big Four unless you've cried somewhere in an office, so you, you sent that experience home. Probably an office without windows. 00;06;14;11 - 00;06;40;07 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did my crying in a phone booth, so. Yeah, yeah, No windows. We're all here now. We're all here. And better for it. So speaking of Vytalize, you ended up joining Vytalize Health about two years ago? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what Vytalize Health does? Yeah, so Vytalize is a value-based care company. 00;06;40;09 - 00;07;10;11 Value-based care is a collection of doctors and service providers and payers that work collectively to have better outcomes for patients. And coincidentally, that's usually at a reduced cost. So, what we do is sit between the primary care physician and CMS, which is the Center for Medicare Services. So we help our physicians strengthen the relationship that they have with their patients. 00;07;10;13 - 00;07;41;13 And if we succeed in that and meet certain quality metrics and achieve these better health outcomes, then CMS as the payer, they give us a share of that. So, I'll use a fancy terminology, but it's really aligning incentives, right? So, we're all incentivized for providing better, higher quality care, not necessarily more care. And it's really working because we're giving these doctors more time to spend with their patients. 00;07;41;13 - 00;08;18;00 So, we provide services like care coordination and virtual home care, in-home care. And it's particularly important for the Medicare population. You know, if you think about 65 plus and then people that are, you know, often not able to get to the doctor, in-home care is so critical. And really, we see ourselves as an extension of the physician so that we operate as part of their practice and really preventing hospitalizations and improving the quality of life and, you know, for an accounting major, that's certainly something I can get behind. 00;08;18;00 - 00;08;42;02 And, you know, the mission and kind of what we're doing, it feels really good. What does a typical day in your shoes look like? So like many companies in the pandemic, we went remote. So I have a little office that I use in a coworking space and I bring my puppy with me and we have a lot of meetings. 00;08;42;02 - 00;09;07;10 So back-to back-video meetings, I do a lot of meetings direct with one on ones, with my direct reports. We are constantly meeting with our EY tax team, Connor Group accounting specialists, so treasury and tax report through me. And then I just took on the FP&A function as well. So, this week was a lot of meeting with department heads to try and craft our budget. 00;09;07;12 - 00;09;34;04 But I find my typical day is really helping my team make good decisions and collaborative points of view and just making sure that we're prioritizing the right thing at the right time. Because like so many companies growing as quickly as we are, you know, you're this can be really long and kind of helping decide what comes first and what can come when, as you know, is a really big part of my job when I also have the puppy. 00;09;34;04 - 00;09;57;04 So she's as cute as can be. And we try and get out of some walks in between all of the meetings. Yeah. So for our frequent listeners, the puppies she's referring to is actually the guide dog puppy that attended SuiteWorld that we talked about in our SuiteWorld. recap. We are obsessed with Mayberry. I think she might be the new NetSuite mascot she's so sweet. 00;09;57;04 - 00;10;19;10 So she's training to become a guide dog for the blind. And I'll have her through next June. And she's part of the Walnut Creek Club here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And she's just a little delight. So her having her experience SuiteWorld in Vegas, I think opened her eyes. I mean, she's doing really great. 00;10;19;12 - 00;10;53;13 She did so good. She was all scared of the casino. Yeah, we all are. So Vytalize Health has this crazy growth trajectory. So the company ranked number one on the Inc. 5000 across all industries after achieving $1.5 billion in revenue for 2023 and a three-year revenue growth rate of 90,778%. Can you delve into the Vytalize Health's growth story and how that all came about? 00;10;53;15 - 00;11;22;19 Yeah. So Megan, work with me here on some math backwards. So to get to 1.5 billion, that means we started as a single health care practice. So we had one practice. It was in Rockland, Maryland, and it still exists, but we've grown from about one medical practice to over 200, I'm sorry, 2600 primary care physicians. We found that we were very good at these additional services. 00;11;22;19 - 00;11;49;15 Right. The care coordination and helping the physicians make better decisions. And instead of growing our own practices, the business went through kind of the modeling approach that we would instead partner with physicians and they would join our value based care program, which is it's called Accountable Care Organizations. So those practices joined our ACO and we taught them value-based care. 00;11;49;18 - 00;12;18;21 And through that we shared a part of our savings with them. And in that model, we were really able to grow quickly. So we went from, you know, just a few thousand Medicare beneficiaries to now over 260,000 patients. And that's a staggering number because we're probably taking care of someone that, you know, and it's part of Medicare's goal to have every Medicare patient in an ACO by 2030. 00;12;18;24 - 00;12;41;04 So for people who don't know what value-based care is, all of the sudden they must participate in value-based care by 2030, in six years we'll be there. And Vytalize is really helping with that transition. And it's working. It's working really well. We're seeing a lot improved outcomes for patients and decreased hospital hospitalizations. And yeah, it's going really well. 00;12;41;10 - 00;13;06;23 Yeah, clearly, clearly clear. So were there any challenges that came with this rapid growth? And if so, how did Vytalize help tackle them? Do you remember Facebook? They used to have this tagline and slogan and it said, ‘Move fast and break things,’ right? And I was googling it recently and I was like, I think they have abandoned that tagline. 00;13;06;25 - 00;13;35;10 Yeah, maybe with the move to Meta, they're like, Yeah, maybe not and break things. Yes. So that's the hardest part, right? Is because you can move too quickly and break things and sometimes that's an okay thing. But a lot of the times we should really be adding a lot more thought, a lot more time and a lot more considerations to some of the larger decisions that are going on. 00;13;35;10 - 00;14;02;29 So really, to me, the biggest challenge with this rapid growth is taking the time and the thought process to really think through decisions and not move as quickly as you can. So one of the other things that we've done to kind of circumvent that is adding a policy and procedures committee and a policy and procedures role in our organization. 00;14;02;29 - 00;14;37;20 And I'm not going to take any credit for that because it was already in existence and it was already working really well. But we were able to then write some policies pretty early on that helped our controls and helped our vendor contracts who could engage if vendor who could approve a payment. And a lot of those early policies and we're still writing them, but a lot of those early policies helped us, you know, be able to go to the rest of the business and say, ‘Hey, you know, you can't X, Y, Z because of this policy’ or ‘You can, but you must do it in this way.’ 00;14;37;24 - 00;15;07;28 And kind of making that consistent across the organization was really helpful for me. Well, that kind of leads into a good question for our listeners here. Any best practices for companies that might be looking to grow or any pitfalls to avoid? I think growth in general is having good technology to scale, right? So how do we make something a repeatable process and how do we put it in a system to be able to make it repeatable? 00;15;08;01 - 00;15;39;14 My app director, Lisa Kemper, and I joke all the time that life is full of one-offs, right? Like this is all a one off and if you're tackling something over here and over there, you would need 300 people in your accounting department to be able to support all of the one-offs. So, we very much we do use this Policy and Procedures Committee, but we're also standing up a lot of our tech products and using NetSuite to be able to get, you know, some standardization. 00;15;39;14 - 00;16;07;11 But also I'll call it kill the one offs, right? We can't be doing an exception. Everything has to fit into a process and become part of the rule. And how has Vytalize Health been using NetSuite? Oh my gosh. We're big, you know, signing some new statements of work all the time. So, yes, I love it. I know the one we just signed was the budgeting and planning tool right now. 00;16;07;11 - 00;16;33;05 So we started with the financials and budgeting and planning. But I would say we're really starting to use a lot of the subledgers in the way that they were intended to be used, and that has been really helpful for us. So, our biggest NetSuite, and I spoke about this at SuiteWorld, is our bank reconciliations. We have, you know, 47 bank accounts and transactions galore. 00;16;33;11 - 00;16;58;00 Right? And sort of as we talk about standardization and automation and killing, the one offs, what we're doing is making sure that we can put something in a process and make it repeatable. And the bank reconciliation module has started to learn the way that we're matching off our bank recs and the way that we're matching off transactions. And it will start to do that for us. 00;16;58;00 - 00;17;21;05 So every time we make a bill payment debit this account credit that account it learns it and then it'll just do it in the background and then we approve it. So this used to take three people their whole full-time job. Not to mention there are a lot of errors in this process. And now that we actually turned on the bank rec module, it's kind of all working for us in the background. 00;17;21;05 - 00;17;47;26 And I was even talking with my accounting manager, Kelly Allen, and I said yesterday I was like, Kelly, how's the bank matching going? And she's like, ‘You know, I don't even hear about it.’ It's really working for us. And, and it's been helpful to start to automate these things so we don't have to think about it. And it previously it just felt like we were playing catch up, you know, 45 days. 00;17;47;29 - 00;18;06;14 It would take us to close the books. And, you know, 45 days ago was the end of August or August is long gone by now. Right? We're making business decisions all the time. Do we need more? You know, funding from investors? We want to take a loan, whereas, you know, where are these larger payments coming from? We're going to we can't wait 45 days for anything. 00;18;06;14 - 00;18;32;25 So it's helped us, you know, make some real-time decisions. Well, why is having a strong tech stack so important for Vytalize Health specifically and how did it perhaps help facilitate some of the massive growth that you mentioned previously? We had a previous controller at Vytalize and every time we needed financials, he would say, okay, like I need three days. 00;18;32;27 - 00;19;02;08 He would take, you know, we had QuickBooks and, you know, it was the right size and shape for us when we started. So, we're using QuickBooks and he would take three days to prepare a consolidation and then to do the elimination journal entries. And that was a very manual effort. And three days of those financials and, you know, the manual errors that could exist. 00;19;02;08 - 00;19;23;13 And, you know, it was almost like, well, I don't need it anymore that I asked for that three days ago. We've moved on. That wasn't at least, you know, last week. So finally I looked at him and I was like, we have to get this in NetSuite and we have to do like journal entries and post them on the system. 00;19;23;13 - 00;19;43;21 And, you know, we're going to need elimination entries and we're going to need to have this reporting in a moment's notice. And, you know, when we ask for the report, I need it in 20 minutes, not three days. So we moved it all into NetSuite We've also gotten a tool called Workiva and Workiva connects to NetSuite. 00;19;43;21 - 00;20;09;08 And I'll give a shout out to Ryan Mueller, who's our senior manager of tech accounting and NetSuite syncs with Workiva so we can produce financial statements and reports at a moment's notice. And I can say, you know, I want the Q2 report to investors and I want that Q2 report to include these entities and Workiva pulls the information from NetSuite. 00;20;09;08 - 00;20;32;08 And then we can have it ready for an investor immediately. And that has really been a game changer for us. We do a lot of reporting. We have board members and boards of each of our ACOs, so there's about six of those. We need frequent reporting for about six different entities. And then on top of that, we're supporting an audit from Deloitte right now. 00;20;32;08 - 00;20;58;13 For us to pull all of this reporting very quickly and only, you know, I have a team of five here in the US doing accounting, and that is really essential for us to have these tools so that we can, you know, keep our headcount costs low, keep the work interesting for the people that are here, and be also, you know, be providing that to investors. 00;20;58;15 - 00;21;24;18 NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory, HR, and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at netsuite.com/pod. Well, can you imagine the poor controller just getting an email saying, ‘Hey, we want the numbers’ and thinking, ‘Well, there goes three of my days.’ 00;21;24;21 - 00;21;47;29 My god, I'd be dreading emails. Yeah. And, you know, sad story about QuickBooks. You have to have separate legal entities. So, we had 16 legal entities that he had. Like, you can't run a report. So we got a bolt on tool. So it's fun. But you know, just to sort of highlight like if you think you can do it, it could probably be done. 00;21;47;29 - 00;22;13;10 So moving to the new technology helped us immensely. Yeah, thank god. Thank god for saving the controller on a click of a button. We've kind of alluded to this, but you participated in a keynote with NetSuite Founder and EVP Evan Goldberg at SuiteWorld this year. What was that experience like? It was so cool. That was really just kind of a highlight for me. 00;22;13;15 - 00;22;35;08 I think the best part was people coming up to me afterwards and saying, you know, they resonate with my message or, you know, they really liked whatever point I had to make. And, you know, yeah, it's cool to be on stage and meet Evan. But really, for me, it kind of came full circle when people, you know, could kind of even tell me back what I said, did I say that? 00;22;35;10 - 00;22;57;26 But yeah, that was that was a really great experience and, you know, fun to kind of share how Vytalize is doing. And, you know, this big award has, has really opened a lot of doors for the company as well. One of the anecdotes really stuck out to me personally in your keynote with Evan was how someone on your team essentially automated himself out of his job doing bank reconcilations. 00;22;57;28 - 00;23;21;26 But he ended up moving to FP&A, which arguably more of a value add for the company. So as more manual task and accounting and finance are automated, what do you think the future of those functions will look like? Yeah, and I have this funny title. My title is global, which you know, often means it's a global company. 00;23;21;28 - 00;23;48;29 But for me, this global title is actually represents to the people on my accounting team and we are all over the world. So the individual who automated himself out of his job, Dether, sits in the Philippines. So it's kind of this added layer, Meggan, that, my goodness, an outsourced role in the Philippines, just automated himself out of a job. 00;23;49;01 - 00;24;21;13 But the people are working to offshore stuff, but like my offshore person is working to automate. And just a quick update on Dether: he has been so helpful with the budgets for us. We are going through our budgeting process right now, as so many companies are, and that budgeting process is really leading to a lot of great conversations with our department heads about what costs we’re needing, what vendors we’re going to be needing for next year, what strategic initiatives do we have to plan more costs for, where is more revenue to compensate for that? 00;24;21;15 - 00;24;45;29 And he has been so incredibly helpful in that role and I think it's very fulfilling for him so often times, you know, what is the future of the function looks like? It just looks like it's at a higher level and we are starting at the baseline is just moving up, right? So your entry-level position is just doing higher quality work. 00;24;46;01 - 00;25;10;07 Hopefully fewer tears in the audit room now. I think the tears will exist, but I do think people will have a more fulfilling job, start for themselves right out of college or right into the workforce. What skills do you think will become must haves and kind of this new normal? Yeah, I think the go-to skill for me is just a willingness to learn. 00;25;10;10 - 00;25;44;25 You know, I think I even told Evan on stage I don't know everything and I really don't, but at least I know where I can look it up. Or I might know who to ask or, you know, in me and in my team is this willingness to learn and the willingness to change. And I think kind of that positive outlook and that positive environment is something that will forever be a must have, especially as we have all these new these new automation ideas and everything that's new and exciting. 00;25;44;27 - 00;26;09;28 We really just have to embrace it. And getting a little more granular here. What are you looking for when hiring talent? Are there any kind of talent gaps that you are trying to fill? Yeah, and I think especially as a scaling company, I think in any organization you often wear many hats, but as I'm scaling, I'll just use my senior manager of accounting projects as my go to example. 00;26;09;28 - 00;26;36;25 But I'd worked with him before and when I hired him I was like, ‘I just I need help.’ And the first thing he says, all the time, Rob Dulgarian, is how can I help? And it's this willingness to learn new skills and the willingness to you know, get in and get your hands dirty, figure something out and, you know, kind of right size, whatever it is that you're working on that. 00;26;36;28 - 00;27;08;13 And that's a skill that the skill that I'm looking for when I hire people, you know, people we have people in Jordan, we have people in the Philippines, and we have people in the US, and kind of across the board. Anytime we're hiring, that's really what we're looking for is, you know, I've never done that before and I don't know how I'm looking for people that say, you know, I've never done that before, but let me explore, you know, how it's just this really positive outlook and where we are. 00;27;08;13 - 00;27;39;27 We especially get that from our global team members. They're just ever so, ever helpful. How do you assuage some of the fears in your team and your leadership, whatever it might be, about being automated out of a job? How do we get people to kind of embrace automation and AI and not really fear it? So I admittedly was unsuccessful at this at my last position, and I have been unsuccessful at this before. 00;27;39;29 - 00;28;24;18 I think it takes the tone from the top and really having, you know, the board, the C-suite, your investors, having those individuals excited and ready to embrace change is where it starts from because not to throw a cliche out there, but it really will all trickle down and having them excited and on board. At my last job, I think the only one that was excited and on board and it was really hard to get change, to get people excited about doing something else because, you know, they often have fear of losing their position and that that fear is very normal and very understandable. 00;28;24;18 - 00;28;51;05 But I think that as long as the, you know, the top of the company is willing to be flexible and encourage that change, I think it'll be a lot more effective. The accounting profession, it's been the news recently due to a shortage of professionals entering the role. So as a leader in accounting, how do you think companies can combat that shortage and attract accounting talent to their teams? 00;28;51;10 - 00;29;17;13 I feel like I'm going to bring this answer back to your previous questions, right? So it feels like automating and, you know, kind of holistically globally, looking at the talent workforce that's there. I mean, I think that's how companies are going to be able to continue to succeed. I kind of saw at the tail end of my career at EY how it was harder to get new accountants in. 00;29;17;13 - 00;29;57;15 And then also combined with COVID, was very difficult to start training people without being without being on site and in the same place together to be able to train. So, you know, from my perspective, I think it'll flex and change over time. Maybe I should teach some more accounting classes and get people excited about being accounting majors. But, you know, I, I do very much think it'll be a combination of roles like global accounting roles throughout the world, combined with this idea of people really embracing and getting change and automation and up and running and tech stack too. 00;29;57;15 - 00;30;31;17 I think one of the other things I wanted to mention is that we've been using Numero and Numero is a tool that we've used through Connor Group. And what Numero does is extract key terms out of documents and summarize technical accounting. So we're using AI to write our technical accounting memos, future state, and we're using a lot of this AI to kind of take and develop things that we would have done manually. 00;30;31;17 - 00;30;56;04 And you don't even think about how manual it is to create a technical accounting memo. But, you know, if I can give this bot a topic and my three lease agreements that can write an ASC 42 memo for me and you know, how cool is that? Because basically what we're doing then is taking the people who used to prepare the work and making them reviewers instead. 00;30;56;06 - 00;31;16;22 And I do think there are some additional challenges of like, how do you review something you've never prepared? But, you know, I think it'll create higher value work earlier in the process for people when they're launching their accounting careers. Yeah, I think taking some of the tedium out of it is going to be huge. So much tedious. 00;31;16;24 - 00;31;38;29 So much teedious staff work. Yeah. And now we have technology. Yeah. I wish I were starting my career now. I think I might consider an accounting career. If we had the. No, I would be terrible at accounting. I'm not organized enough. But then again, I could talk you into it. But maybe someday. But not today. I do come from a family of accountants. 00;31;38;29 - 00;32;06;02 Unknown My family is in medicine. So some helpful lessons for me. Yeah. For a health care company. Yeah. You blended it. Yes. So it was both. Well, we're kind of like coming up on the end of the year, so I wanted to pick your brain kind of around your 2025 agenda. So as SVP of accounting, what are your top priorities going into 2025? 00;32;06;05 - 00;32;32;07 So we are building out all kinds of really great reporting. So we're using the NetSuite Budgeting and Planning tool to also do our financial reporting for us. So what we're doing this year is building our budgets and we're building them at the vendor level. So it'll be able or it'll give us the opportunity to really analyze our budget versus actual at a new level that we've never done before. 00;32;32;07 - 00;32;57;25 So we're pretty excited about that. And then also meeting more regularly with our department heads to be able to have them reflect on how the month went, but then also make any changes in the future, planning for their new hires and any vendor expenses they have. And really, you know, having a well thought out budget and meeting that budget in 2025 is really our biggest priority. 00;32;57;28 - 00;33;22;22 Well, that's huge because, I mean, we keep writing about it, but the role of finance and accounting is becoming so strategy driven, so much about partnering across the rest of the business instead of kind of, you know, reporting after the fact to everyone. It's like working with them and collaborating during the process. Yeah, yeah. And seeing what new contracts are in the pipeline. 00;33;22;22 - 00;34;00;09 How are we going to take those contracts and pull certain levers to be able to maximize them? Yeah, there's a lot to kind of account marrying together, accounting and finance. Are there any challenges that you are worried about or anticipating? Yeah, I think the making sure that as an accounting department we remain inserted into each of the other operating units of the business and that we're working closely with the finance team and kind of ears to the ground with what's going on and when and being able to influence and do that at a much earlier time period. 00;34;00;09 - 00;34;36;21 So I am I am anticipating that to be a new challenge for us. But yeah, we're excited to work on that. And actually, my same bank reconciliation manager who used to do that, this is his new job instead. So we'll hopefully report back on how it goes with his new role. I love it. As advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, RPA, all that proliferate, do you have any plans to upskill or reskill your existing workforce in the next year and how are you anticipating going about it? 00;34;36;28 - 00;35;07;20 Yeah, so Megan, this answer just makes my heart sing. So we are using our offshore Philippines team to use AI. So our offshore team is going through all of the contracts for us and they're using an AI tool, actually the same AI tool Numero. They're using that tool to go through all of the key contracts that we have and extract the key terms of the contracts. 00;35;07;23 - 00;35;44;07 That is a very typical, you know, staff one accountant role, right? That's what I did as a staff one accountant, and that was my whole job. So now it's been done by a computer. So cool. And it's being reviewed by, by somebody who's offshore and that I mean, it just really makes my heart sing because we're taking this lower-level work and giving more interesting work to the people who are onshore because now they're looking at these contracts and doing things in a way that that they wouldn't have the opportunity to do. 00;35;44;07 - 00;36;05;06 It's often hard to review your own work, right? So now we're getting new skill. We're just going to upskill the people that we have. I think our business right now, we're mainly focused on the current contracts that we have and then expanding our patient population within those contracts. So we're not necessarily taking on new physician practices. 00;36;05;06 - 00;36;28;06 So I think our accounting department will stay steady, but that is the thing we always like to keep on top of our finance folks to see how are we growing the business and how should we grow our accounting department as well. From a broader technology perspective, do you have any goals going into the next year? Yeah, I think just the great financial reporting. 00;36;28;06 - 00;37;01;16 And then we also have Salesforce as a system, and I was super excited to see Evan announce that Salesforce integrations are going to be made a lot easier. So from a tech stack perspective, we are going to start getting the information from Salesforce into NetSuite. And we're yeah, we're pretty excited about that because there's a lot of work that we do with onboarding our customers and that customer onboarding happens in Salesforce, but then it should become part of the customer record that's in NetSuite. 00;37;01;16 - 00;37;30;16 And right now, that's a manual process for us. So having Salesforce integrated would be, would be a really nice to have. Does Vytalize House as a whole company have any overarching objectives going into 2025? Yeah, so very much pure and stable growth. We are really focused on keeping the current physicians that we have and, and as I mentioned, the patients that we're serving or the Medicare patients. 00;37;30;16 - 00;37;56;01 Right. So if you imagine the doctor physician that you go to is your primary, maybe that primary care physician has 2000 patients and 500 of them are Medicare patients. Right. So those 500 lives, that's what's included in our count, right? That 260,000 that I mentioned before. So what we're trying to do next is get access to the other patients. 00;37;56;01 - 00;38;19;19 Right. That would look like contracts with Blue Shield or contracts with Aetna and other payers to be able to influence care over those lives as well. So I'll call that organic growth because we already have those relationships with the PCPs in place. But what we're wanting are contracts and relationships with the other payers, so that that's 2025 for us. 00;38;19;19 - 00;38;39;13 It sounds so exciting. I know. I feel like this business was so hard for me to understand and like the 10th time someone explained it to me, I got it. So I'm sure you guys are getting it in more than more than ten Innovation items. But yeah, it is a really exciting business here. We're thrilled to be a part of it. 00;38;39;17 - 00;39;12;14 Wrapping up here, just you have such a fascinating story coming in, like coming in and working for this high growth company. Is there any final thoughts or takeaways to leave our listeners with? Yeah, and one thing I do on my personal life is that I keep a gratitude journal and it helps me have a really positive mindset and having a positive mindset leaves me open for learning and growth of my personal development. 00;39;12;16 - 00;39;39;26 So I think that's one thing that's just really helped me to stay on top of my game of staying positive and kind of a can-do attitude. You know, I'm certainly not that way all the time. And sometimes my team shakes and says, Just pull back together. But I do really think that, you know, kind of being grateful for where we're at, how well we've done shapes us to have some positivity going into our next chapter for finals. 00;39;40;00 - 00;39;59;02 I love it. What a good note to end on. So being grateful really keeps you open for learning more. Jess, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. And again, I really am grateful for the opportunity. All right. Back to my journal today. Thank you so much, Megan. 00;39;59;06 - 00;40;26;21 Yeah, thank you. That brings us to the end of another great episode. It's such a great opportunity to get the perspective directly from a high-growth company and from someone like Jess, who has been there and facilitated so much of it. I think it was especially rewarding to hear how she personally was starting to implement AI in the accounting department to increase efficiency as the company expands. 00;40;26;23 - 00;40;47;10 Huge thanks to Jess for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with us. And as always, a big thanks to our wonderful editing team over at Oracle and to all of you for tuning in. If you want more episodes just like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating and review until next time. 00;40;47;13 - 00;40;59;08 You just listen to the NetSuite Podcast. 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