There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Isaac Heller: Hey, everyone, this is Isaac. I'm CEO at Trulia. And today on AI, accounting, intelligence. We'll be talking with real people about real things related to AI and the impact on the accounting industry. Stay tuned. All right, everyone, welcome to Accounting Intelligence, our podcast.

Isaac Heller: I'm Isaac Heller, CEO, [00:00:30] founder of Trulia. And I'm really excited today because I've got a friend, a new friend, uh, Ina Kogan visiting us to talk with us today. Ina, you want to say hi? Just introduce yourself really quickly.

Inna Kogan: Yeah, sure. Hi. I'm ina. Currently, I'm, uh, part of, uh, accounting team at Amazon, and I drive finance, uh, transformation. And, um. Yeah, super excited to be here to share my [00:01:00] story and some tips for people who are passionate about finance, accounting and innovation.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. Well, I'm really excited today. Um, you know, Ian and I were talking earlier about how much we both love podcasts. And of course, Accounting Intelligence is a podcast, another podcast. And people ask me, you know, who's going to listen to another podcast? I actually asked that of myself, like, who wants to to to have another [00:01:30] podcast or even a podcast about accounting. But Ina, it's interesting people actually listen to this because, well, there's two reasons. I don't know which one is the most true, but there's two reasons. One is because they get CPE credit, and two is because I think we have conversations with really interesting people, with real life stories about, you know, an experiences about what it's like to be an accountant. So really excited for everyone today. I'll just give [00:02:00] a little bit of a preview. Um, Ina, I, uh, I started seeing you online on LinkedIn, and I thought that what you were posting about, how you were innovating at your job and as a, as an accounting professional was really interesting and innovative, especially using AI and how you were trying new prompts and stuff. And so we became friendly and caught up and, and had some, some mutual interests. Um, I think that for people today, what's what's great about you is, [00:02:30] is you now work at one of the biggest technology companies in the world, but are also able to maintain that innovative accounting, you know, business oriented flavor at that company. So this this innovation comes in all ways. It's entrepreneurship. It's entrepreneurship. You know, at big companies it's big for non Big Four all that stuff. So that's a little preview for today. But before we get to all that you know you've got an amazing story I believe you're in London these days. Is that right? [00:03:00] Yes. Okay. I won't I won't blow your cover too much more. But tell us a little bit about how you got to London and, uh, into this accounting world.

Inna Kogan: Yeah, absolutely. And I changed the roles and, uh, countries. Uh, so, yeah, let me talk a little bit about it and how my career evolved. So I started very traditionally in audit and in Big Four and was super focused on details and technical accounting [00:03:30] to to the point that one of my clients called me a walking IFRS book, and I took it, took it as a compliment at the time. And, uh, after a while in audit, I was looking for other opportunities. I enjoyed technical accounting, enjoy being um. And at the time I moved as part of audit work, I also got a chance to move to London, and it kind of opened a completely different world for me and I was looking for a new opportunities. [00:04:00] I enjoyed being this. Um, go to person technical accountant. So I joined this newly formed advisory team at Deloitte. When I joined, there were just literally 2 or 3 people with, uh, yeah, really small team, but growing very fast with big vision, big ambition. So it was kind of an internal startup and it was super exciting. I think that had a big influence [00:04:30] on my career and my mindset, because I also learned how to build things from scratch, how to grow the business, what it's like to build client relationships, how to build your propositions, and how to even figure out different ways of working. So that was really exciting time to be part of that team and growth.

Inna Kogan: And um, as the business was growing and, uh, the, the, [00:05:00] the complexity and the size of the projects, I started using BI tools and automation to just cope with that new scale and complexity and workload. And at that point, it kind of hit me that how powerful automation can be, especially in that growth and fast paced environment. And that eventually led me to to Amazon because I thought, okay, [00:05:30] I it's great to be an accountant. I want to be a good accountant. But I also want to understand how systems work, how accounting function works in a big, uh, big company. And obviously, Amazon was a great place to learn how modern tech focused finance and accounting team can operate. And, uh, yeah, it was also amazing Then experience, and it became my day job to think how to use various technologies [00:06:00] and tools to get numbers accurate numbers fast at that crazy Amazon scale. So kind of learned a lot about automation, about different systems and tools, and also how to how to build teams that innovate, how to create the right environment and how to also lead teams through significant change and, uh, and growth. Yeah. So that's pretty much, uh, kind of short to my [00:06:30] story. Shifting from technical accounting to actually building accounting function and systems and teams behind it. And yeah, something I'm very passionate about.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. Well it's you know, it's it's funny to condense so much time and so much work into, you know, a few minutes, uh, but so is, so is, uh, is is our career trajectories and stuff. I think it would be fun to [00:07:00] kind of unpack and go deeper into some of those areas. Right. We've got London, we've got Deloitte, we've got Amazon, we've got big projects, we've got all types of things. Maybe one place to start is you said you moved to London. Where did you can you share, where did you move from or how did you get to London? Before? Where were you.

Inna Kogan: Before? I'm from, uh, from Russia. So I started in Deloitte in Moscow. It was very, very long time ago. It was very different, uh, time. [00:07:30] And, um, uh, Deloitte in Moscow got acquired by UK office and uh, uh, UK office opened up opportunities for, for secondment and um, yeah. I thought uh, and that's one of the advantages of working for a big international companies that you can go and work in different places and experience completely different environment. Yeah. And obviously yeah, that was a great opportunity.

Isaac Heller: That's [00:08:00] amazing because I, I feel like there are people out there that are listening or thinking about their career. Look, the truth is, you know, I'm sitting in New York right now. You're sitting in London. I think it's every in the everywhere in the world, always in forever. There's anxiety about what people want to do when they grow up. You know, I'm, you know, I'm 40 now. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. But, you know, you can imagine someone who's maybe in college or high school or at the end of university [00:08:30] or maybe earlier in their career. Right. There's a lot of people who want to figure out how to get to London. Some of them want to figure out how to get out of London. Some of them want to figure out how to get to Deloitte. Some of them want to figure out how to get out of Deloitte. Everyone's at a different path. Do you do you feel like Deloitte and the accounting industry was kind of your ticket to maybe, you know, maybe you wanted to go to London. I don't know, some people want to go to Moscow. Right. Um, but like, [00:09:00] was was Deloitte the path for you? And then I would also ask, do you think it still has that path or if things changed, you know, um, over time with accounting firms?

Inna Kogan: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I was always thinking about it and was thinking that Deloitte was always bigger than just a job for me because it changed my life in, in a way, and opened so many doors and so many opportunities. And sometimes we underestimate it. And, um, yeah. [00:09:30] And I still think it is relevant. And when you join a big company like Deloitte, I think the biggest advantage is that you have immediate access to absolutely insane network of people. And this is something I wish I understood early in my career. And um, with obviously remote working, I think it's becoming a little bit harder. But as we all going back to the office and the way we work is [00:10:00] changing, I definitely would say if you join a big company like Deloitte or any other big four, another accounting firm, take advantage of that, uh, network because you can learn so much from different people. And, um, eventually you can pivot your career and, um, change things that you're doing. It doesn't really matter where you start. Uh, those companies provide a lot of opportunities to [00:10:30] do different things and move to different places. So absolutely would recommend taking advantage of that.

Isaac Heller: Interesting. I'm going to I'm going to think a little bit more of that because I like to, uh, take advantage of, of kind of those early days. I think it's interesting because you also mentioned remote work. Things have changed a lot in the past five, ten years. And and also even I think with AI there's going to be it makes remote work easier. You know, [00:11:00] in certain ways. But I just remember when I was kind of starting my career, we ate lunch with our colleagues like we didn't even in London, they have Deliveroo in New York, they have DoorDash, you know, like we didn't even have it come to us. Like I would go with a colleague, we would have our little badges and we would go across the street for I'm from Texas, so like Texas barbecue or something like that. And, um, you know, I wonder if that culture [00:11:30] is, is is still around, um, or there's a little bit left. And so my question to you and maybe to myself would be how what are what are some suggestions of how people can maintain those connections there at Deloitte. Like what what should they do. Should they go to lunch. Should they type, you know, reach out on Microsoft Teams. Happy hours, I don't know. Where do you where do you start?

Inna Kogan: Yeah, I would definitely recommend taking any opportunity that allow you for [00:12:00] in-person, uh, interaction because yeah, I'm not honestly, I'm not a huge fan of remote working. I think it's good to have flexibility. And yeah, with technology we can work from everywhere. But that personal connection is so important in the work that you're doing and, uh, building those long term relationships. So definitely if you just starting your career, I would definitely recommend coming to to the office sitting [00:12:30] uh, when I was at Deloitte and we were building that small advisory team, I remember how we and we often so we were advising clients on different kind of transactions. So often we will work with lawyers, tax bankers, whatever However our clients were going through, we were there to support them through those difficult and complicated transactions. So we were working with very wide range of, um, of stakeholders. And I remember we used [00:13:00] to just go and sit in different departments. I will sit with tax or corporate finance, uh, or legal team just to, you know, even to hear the conversations, to understand how people work and think. And eventually you build those informal, you know, have those informal conversations. So all these small things, they made a huge, um, that definitely made a huge difference. And, um, I, I think now we just need to be more intentional [00:13:30] about it. And if I'm starting work in a new company, for example, when I started, when I started working at Amazon, it was in the middle of a pandemic, and I found it really hard to do it remotely. So I was coming to the office Almost every every day because I could meet, um, some people who were there just to and feel the culture and how people work and what are the norms are. And yeah, I think those personal [00:14:00] interactions are super important.

Isaac Heller: I think that's awesome. Um, and, you know, I always say when I, you know, when I started, truly and I mean, we're, you know, we're trying to use AI to help empower accounting teams. And, um, you know, I worked on an accounting team. I was on the corporate side. I never worked on the audit side. But I think that when you go on this entrepreneurial journey and also if you're if you're building [00:14:30] a project at Amazon or Google or whatever it is, you really have to know your customers, right? Who you're working with. And, you know, people think, oh, I know we had a zoom or I know, I know we're I know Bobby. Yeah, we've talked on Zoom a few times, but I always say, like when I. When I came up, I knew where where the accounting team sat. I knew what their desks looked like. I knew which what their kids pictures were or whatever it [00:15:00] is. Um, and I always joked, I know what they like to order to drink. You know, like, I know, you know. And you, you understand the personality of someone through your, your one on one interaction with what they like to order, to eat, what they like to drink, what their family.

Isaac Heller: And you don't see those in, in the kind of remote world as much. So that's one. And that's just an exciting thing about living. And then you mentioned culture. Um, I, I feel like, [00:15:30] you know, I'm a, I'm a Texan suburban kid. And so when I started to work for a global company, it was like the first time I ever met someone from Bangalore or, you know, Kyiv or Montevideo, And that's really that was really fun for me. And I felt like it. It broadened my mind and helped me build empathy, you know, and even even when you you hear about the news or global politics or whatever, you can have more empathy and relate to [00:16:00] things more the more you know. Um, and so I think that that's really interesting. So, you know, just maybe that's the feel good side of things. I don't know how much it helps you, but Deloitte and these Amazon, those are amazing companies to have those networks. Have you found that um do you speak Russian?

Inna Kogan: Yeah.

Isaac Heller: Okay. Got it. And you, you still speak regularly? Yeah.

Inna Kogan: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Isaac Heller: Okay.

Inna Kogan: My native language.

Isaac Heller: So native language. Okay. So do you. Did you [00:16:30] find that, um, speaking Russian was applicable in Deloitte? Like did you work with maybe more energy companies? Is it applicable at Amazon? Has it helped you on the professional side or it's mostly just been, you know, another language. You know.

Inna Kogan: To be honest, not that much. I never. Yeah. Um, I never focused on, um. Yeah. Russian companies. It's good to have that network. Sometimes you do meet people, uh, who speak Russian, and. Yeah, it's kind of nice to have that secret, [00:17:00] secret language with someone, but.

Isaac Heller: Uh. Placebo. Placebo?

Inna Kogan: Placebo. Yeah.

Isaac Heller: That's all I got. That's all I got. My, you know, my my friend, my friend was from Saint Petersburg, not Moscow. But I learned a few things along the way. So. Very nice. You didn't. You didn't use it much.

Inna Kogan: I didn't use it that much in, in my work. But, uh, just having that experience of learning different languages and and and working in different cultures, [00:17:30] definitely, I think helps helps you because you see how different people think, uh, sometimes differently. And we often take something for granted. We work this way and this is how it is. But actually your colleague somewhere else can be working completely differently or thinking about something completely differently. So yeah, it really builds your empathy and understanding that there is just no one one way. Uh, so yeah, that experience of changing [00:18:00] countries is very important. And yeah, if you have an opportunity to go take a secondment, even for a year or two, that will completely change the way you think because, um, yeah, even how you see the world, the world from different places is so different, right?

Isaac Heller: Amazing. So I gotta ask and then we'll go back to some accounting stuff. What is one difference that you can think of in Russian finance culture or even Russian culture and British finance culture? Like [00:18:30] what's one thing that, you know, up means down, you know, or something like that.

Inna Kogan: Oh my God, that's a that's a tough one. Uh, it was really long time ago when I moved.

Isaac Heller: I mean, I can tell you. Yeah, yeah. When, when I work with. I find that when I work with, um, certain, uh, when I work with certain European countries, the closer they are to the beach, um, the longer it is to, to to turn around a task. So, [00:19:00] you know, I'll be like, oh, let's, let's, you know, my I have a client in Barcelona, you know, like, let's, let's schedule a call about this tomorrow. What about in two weeks, you know, so I always find that funny. We're we're in America, you know, even London a little bit. It's like, no, no, no. So what? Is there something that comes to mind? You can you can skip the question if you want.

Inna Kogan: Yeah. Yeah. No it's true. The pace is you know, when I started in Moscow, it was like, I don't know, 15 years ago. And, uh, um, it was such a different [00:19:30] time. Deloitte probably was one of the first companies that started, uh, in Moscow, and they were developing the business. So a lot of my role I was an auditor, but a lot of my role was about educating, um, and trying to bridge that Western standards with um, with the reality in, in Russia. So when I moved to London, it was a completely different, completely different job. And yeah, the pace was very different. You know, you have to do it [00:20:00] in a couple of weeks while, you know, in Russia that could have taken multiple months, sometimes years to get, uh, you know, finance and accounting books to that standard, uh, Western standard, standard. So, yeah, it was completely different role when I switched countries.

Isaac Heller: Yeah, definitely. I think also we take for granted, um, people in America, people in UK, people in Europe sometimes are much closer culturally. I spent a [00:20:30] year in southern China, close to Hong Kong, close to Shenzhen. And that was a much different experience, uh, in terms of the, the professional side, but I think at the very least, like for me, it stretched my mind to realize that that the world has many corners and, uh, and so you really I don't know, just don't don't assume that everyone works the same way in UK. They're a little bit better. I feel like it's more international. But [00:21:00] in Texas, where I'm from, you know, everyone's like, we just learned English and and, you know, some people don't even get passports till later, so. Okay. So good. So Deloitte is kind of that that great opportunity to open the eyes and open your world. You said something that was interesting. You said, um, a good place to learn other languages. Okay. And I thought of like maybe at Deloitte like your some sort of big project you did or big initiative you did. [00:21:30] I mean, tell it, tell us a little bit more about one of these big by initiatives or things you did that you were really proud of. Um, did you use different languages, like coding languages or systems. Um, you know, just an exciting project that you did when you were there.

Inna Kogan: Yeah, absolutely. One of, uh, probably, yeah. Projects I can talk about is, um, yeah, that by modeling tool that, uh, that I build. So I was working a lot with, uh, companies [00:22:00] that were going through transactions like M&A, IPO or restructurings and, uh, what was helping them to plan those transactions. And usually what, what you need to do is to kind of model different scenarios and understand how your balance sheet and consolidated accounts will look like. And sometimes, as our projects were growing, we started with some small transactions, small structures, but then we went [00:22:30] into working with some of the biggest companies, some of the biggest transactions where you literally have to Model hundreds of scenarios on a daily basis for groups of also hundreds of companies. So at some point I realized I can't do it manually anymore. I was like literally sitting at night, you know, this classical account accountant, picture crunching numbers on Excel and just pulling my head and thinking there must be a [00:23:00] better way of doing it. And, uh, I, um, collaborated with someone at the time, um, we had, uh, by new also by team that was established in our group, which I which was a very smart move from, from the leadership. And that opened a lot of different opportunities. So I just talked to the FBI person and say, hey, I have this problem.

Inna Kogan: There must be a better way of doing it. And we just started [00:23:30] experimenting with the different, um, uh, we just used a simple BI tool And, um, that's what I often tell a lot of people who are trying to to innovate. You don't need to go and boil the ocean and build something super complicated using some, some very complicated technology. You have simple BI tools like, I don't know, power BI or macros, even simple as that, or Alteryx Tableau. Just use one of those tools and [00:24:00] build something that is simple and proof that is working. So yeah, we work together, build like a small, um, sort of prototype and then started developing it and uh, eventually, uh, I used this tool for a very big, uh, transaction, which it would have been impossible to do it manually. And that really opened the door to a different kind of projects and different kind of, uh, [00:24:30] opportunities and, um, different sort of level of service that we can offer, offer the clients. And yeah, after that we were thinking, okay, how to build it in a more, you know, structured, systematic, systematic way so that yeah, that was really kind of interesting experience of building something for, for the first, uh, time.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. Um, yeah. People, you know, when, when you have I feel like if you get an opportunity, you anyone [00:25:00] I'm saying if anyone gets an opportunity, you know, you're thrown on a transaction, you're doing, uh, IPO prep, audit readiness. Maybe internally, you're thrown into a big project. Um, sometimes you could think, oh, I just I'm going to have to read all these contracts or I'm gonna have to build all these models. But if you have the headspace and the time, it's just always a good opportunity to see what tools internally there are that you have access to. I mean, you know, companies, a company, the scale of Deloitte and certainly [00:25:30] the big companies I've worked at have all these licenses of software tools. And you'd be surprised how how close to your fingertips it is. So I think that's I think that's really great. So you talked about, uh, B.I. And let's move a little bit from B.I to AI, right. The the hottest topic today, how we started to to kind of chat. When was the first time you either heard about AI [00:26:00] in accounting or maybe more broadly heard about AI played with AI? Can you remember, you know, some of those early times where you got interested in it?

Inna Kogan: Yeah, yeah, basically when ChatGPT came out, yeah, I obviously heard about machine learning and we used machine learning in some of the automations, um, at, uh, Amazon. But it's very different to that AI experience that we, we have uh, now. So I did experiment with machine learning previously [00:26:30] and working with, uh, Engineers um, on, uh, different models and use cases. But, uh, yeah, the user experience is so different to, um, to the AI tools that we have right now. So yeah, probably was the first time when, uh, yeah, ChatGPT came out and I was just experimenting with chatbot and trying to write some simple emails and yeah, obviously it was absolutely amazing when you can [00:27:00] get something sensible out of it. And, um, yeah. And it developed so quickly. Right. We started with just writing some simple things to, to do in, um, a lot of actual, you know, day to day work using, uh, using AI, which is. Yeah, which is incredible how, how quickly it all developed.

Isaac Heller: That's amazing. Yeah. Chatgpt writing emails. I mean, you know, in my, in [00:27:30] my experience, um, it was it was 2019. And actually, thanks to Amazon, I was inspired. I, um, I had access through an AWS instance to Textract, which is one of the AWS tools that does document reading and entity recognition, kind of some OCR and NLP. And it was in 2019 AWS had [00:28:00] just released Textract, and actually Google Cloud released their version of it. And I started playing on AWS. Textract. And the use case at the time that they were showing was for medical records. So being able to look at a patient document and find the the kind of the dates and the names and really they're called entities, right? Name paint, stuff like that. And I had just, um, spent several years [00:28:30] At a public software company and then private software company doing rev rec 606, you know. And then, um, leases and the rev rec was like a lot of contracts and a lot of workbooks and the leases was a lot of contracts and a lot of workbooks. So I do owe it to Amazon and AWS for inspiring me on Textract. So that was 2019. Now, um, for those I mean, a lot of people know the history of Trillian [00:29:00] now, but the first use case was, could we take a lease document and then automate the subledger and so you could go all the way from that document to the journal entry? And, um, and that was like really exciting for me because I'd been doing this stuff.

Isaac Heller: I'd been reading these documents, I'd be building these spreadsheets and stuff. And so that was that was really exciting. That was 2019 and then 2020, 2021, I started going to these accounting conferences and audit conferences. We work with a lot [00:29:30] of auditors now as well. And I talked about AI, and I showed the use cases and there was a lot of it was either pushback or what we call in Texas. Crickets, right. Which is which is silence. Um, and I just I felt like I was just talking out in the open like nobody was really listening or understanding. And so, you know, there was COVID. So it was a little but I was doing webinars. I was talking a lot about AI and [00:30:00] accounting, AI in accounting, 2020, 2021, 20 2022. And our our company was growing, but it wasn't until the end of 2022. It was about October, November ChatGPT came out.

Inna Kogan: Yes. And that probably was the moment, right?

Isaac Heller: Correct. And so someone like Ina, you're you're actually very tech, uh, forward. But like your average, I would say your average accountant, lawyer. Certain people, they're more conservative. [00:30:30] And it wasn't until they started using it in their everyday life when they started getting more comfortable. So then in 2023 and 2024, boardrooms were saying, how are you using AI? And then, of course, it got down to the finance and accounting team so that that it's kind of fun to jump in in 2019 in a certain way, but actually watch the journey, not just the technology, but the mindset and the mentality of AI. And I always wonder, [00:31:00] um, you know, when you were first, uh, playing with ChatGPT, with emails and maybe within a year or two you're experimenting with it in your finance, um, you know, practices. Were you ever worried about AI or scared of AI or distrusting of AI as an accountant? As an accounting professional.

Inna Kogan: I want to say that, uh, I kind of was worried, but it's, uh, uh, [00:31:30] it's one of the problems that we need to to solve. Right. Because in accounting profession, the trust and the accuracy is super important. And, uh, we need to find, uh, ways to maintain, uh, use AI at scale, but also maintain that level of trust and accuracy. And I think a lot of people are experimenting with that. There are different ways to, to solve it. But personal experience, I find that, um, it definitely [00:32:00] helped me increase my productivity. And there are a lot more, a lot more things that I can do. For example, write simple code or, you know, write documents so quickly, or even some technical accounting analysis. You can just, you know, you can do much quicker.

Isaac Heller: Like what? You don't have to say what you're doing necessarily, but like, what kind of technical accounting analysis is a good use case for AI?

Inna Kogan: I mean, any technical accounting analysis, right. Previously, you have to go through [00:32:30] through the book and find the right paragraph now. But again, if you know technical accounting you can use AI. And uh, um, you will be able to recognize when it gives you wrong answers or some wrong paragraphs, but it will give you you will get to the answer much, much quickly. Right? And it doesn't matter even which question it is. Uh, and also, you know, it's much quicker to like, put together a standard, you know, paper, uh, that [00:33:00] we love to write in, in accounting, they're usually written in a very standard way. So again, something that.

Isaac Heller: Like a memo.

Inna Kogan: Yeah. Exactly. Like an accounting memo. Right. So much easier, you know, now you can just write it in a couple of couple of hours and edit and and it's ready. Previously I don't know, take a couple of days to do. Um, but so it definitely helps in that my personal productivity However, I think it's a different problem to solve, how to do it [00:33:30] at scale, and how to make sure that the person who is using AI is able to recognize when it's not giving you the right output, that is able to correct it and give it the right context and, uh, and evaluate the result. And there are different ways of, uh, solving it. I think a lot of companies are experimenting. I know you're also experimenting, uh, with that. So that is a that is an interesting problem to, to solve. I don't think we we there yet.

Isaac Heller: Yeah, [00:34:00] I think I think you're right. Um, and it's almost, it's almost like we're we're in an, uh, what I would call a correction or an overcorrection in the AI hype cycle, where there was a lot of excitement. There still is a lot of excitement. But, you know, there was a study by MIT recently that only 5% of enterprise gen AI projects succeed, 5% succeed. So there's there's something about AI right now [00:34:30] where there's a lot of pilots, um, but not necessarily a lot of, um, you know, full, full projects. And, um, okay, so that's exciting. You know, that's interesting. Um, when we, you know, at Trillian, like, lease accounting was really successful for us because in general, lease accounting might be a small team or even person of technical accountants. And so, you know, they were using documents or spreadsheets [00:35:00] or a system. But when they take Trillian, it's a small, focused team. And that's much easier to train on board. And the AI, it doesn't go to other teams. So you can control what's what's in and what's out. As a technical accountant, when we started working with auditors, now we have a very fast growing side of the business where auditors like a Deloitte or or other. You know, firms actually a lot in London recently are [00:35:30] deploying truly and like to roll it out for testing and financial statement validation and stuff like that.

Isaac Heller: But even though the AI is better for audit, it's harder for adoption because there's 100 auditors, right? Or 500 senior managers. And so just to your point, like AI, when you're using ChatGPT to compose an email or ask a question about Buckingham Palace, it's one thing, but when you're trying [00:36:00] to roll it out to a hundred people to create a baseline or a benchmark, it's really, really hard and people don't talk about enough. And maybe part of the reason was we got all excited about this magic wand called AI, and we thought it could just solve everything, but it actually needs to be bundled in some sort of user experience. So we've found that a lot too. To, um, maybe, like, on that note, what are some exciting projects or initiatives [00:36:30] that either you've you've done at Amazon or are thinking about doing? Obviously, things you can share, you can share, nothing you can't share. And how like, how have you solved the challenge for rolling out your ideas at scale at a big company or and especially in a global remote company? Probably.

Inna Kogan: Yeah. So starting with the first part of that question, yeah, I am experimenting a lot with in my kind of daily, daily [00:37:00] work with, uh, with the different tools and different, um, use cases. What I'm really passionate about is, um, uh, we have a lot of, uh, with the level of automation that we have. We have a lot of data in accounting. Right. And that is a reliable, clean data. And, uh, I feel there is an opportunity for accountants to leverage AI to better tell the story and extract [00:37:30] better insights from from that data, and kind of go beyond compliance and, uh, provide better insights to the to the business for decision making or driving improvements and, uh, and helping with, with the business growth. So that is something that um, yeah, probably not going to go into specifics, but that's something, something that I'm really interested in thinking, okay, how you can build that analytics that can, um, give more [00:38:00] insights and value to different parts of the business, outside accounting and finance, um, as well. So that's one of the areas also experimenting a little bit with like contract reviews and um, and um, which is a big pain pain Paying for it, I think, uh, and, uh, still. Yeah. Um, what we talked about, uh, it's, um, kind of big [00:38:30] problem to figure out how that workflow can, uh, be applicable across so many different businesses and, uh, and use cases and be reliable and, uh, and sustainable.

Inna Kogan: So, yeah, that's definitely an interesting use case and a and interesting problem. Um, and over overall, I think with um, at this point, a lot of companies are realizing that, uh, we can't just continue working as we used to work before. And [00:39:00] a lot of companies are actually challenging and encouraging their teams to go and experiment. So it's probably the best time to to do it. And, um, I would say, yeah, if you want to innovate, uh, or try something in a, in a big company, just the best way is to just start small with some problem. Everyday problem that you have. I wouldn't try to invent something. You are already inside the big company, you know. What are the big points are? Or maybe your client's big [00:39:30] point pain points. If you are in Big Four and consulting business, and then try to solve it on a small uh, with some small, um, prototype and prove that it works. And once you can prove that something is working, then it helps to shift the mindset. And usually you get other people interested, and then it helps to, uh, to develop it and to make it bigger and scale it. And, uh, [00:40:00] yeah, you will it always will then develop into something, something else. So yeah, it's always just starting small and proving that, um, yeah, some something is, uh, is working.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. I love that so. Well, first of all, it truly in our, our we have four core values. The first is think big. Um, but sometimes I say start small. Think big. Think big, start small. Right. So. So we always think about these grand ideas. [00:40:30] Um, but if you, if you sit there thinking too much or too big or too long, you won't get started. So I love I love start small. Maybe let's, let's wrap up with just one more quick, uh, topic. Um, you know, you've on LinkedIn, uh, you talk about, um, some of the ways you're innovating or some of the ideas that you have around AI. And a lot of times AI in accounting. What what inspired you to speak up, um, about this, is it something [00:41:00] that you enjoy? Is it something you think the the world needs? Uh, do you encourage other people to, uh, do that as well online?

Inna Kogan: Yeah, I would definitely recommend other people because I think we are in this phase of, um, there is so much change, So much uncertainty, right? And no one no one has the answers. And I think it is a way for people to just share experience and point of view and [00:41:30] ultimately help each other to navigate all of that is happening. At least that that is the sense that I'm getting with, you know, uh, from a lot of people because everyone is just trying to navigate this new reality. And the more we share our experience and, uh, what we're trying to do, I think it just helps. Um, it just helps the, the, the community. And yeah, for me personally, it helps me to think through things when [00:42:00] I write about something. So I try to just every couple of weeks think about something that I recently learned or something interesting that happened in this couple of weeks and just write about it. And I think it helps me to kind of Process it better and think about the next, uh, the next, uh, thing. So yeah, overall it's it's for me, it's like a thinking mechanism and, and also something that, uh, I would encourage other people to [00:42:30] do because the more we share with each other, the easier it is, uh, to, to navigate the, uh, this new reality.

Isaac Heller: I love that, and also for, for anyone listening, you know, on LinkedIn, I think you can find n I n n a space k o g a n. If you enjoy hearing some of those tidbits, I hope it's okay. I give you a shout out. Um.

Inna Kogan: Thank you.

Isaac Heller: No. It's good. One of the things you said recently was you talked about, um, accounting [00:43:00] kind of as a window to the business. You you talked about how often accounting knows before other people. And I think that's a really good, um, inspiration, because as you as you get all this disruptive technology, it is going to change things. But then you can look at accounting through a new lens, which is, you know, look the the corporate controller, the accounting team is one of the most, if not the most trusted partners in the organization to the CFO and ultimately to the [00:43:30] CEO. And accounting covers the whole business. So if you're doing AI and sales, you only know sales or customer service, you only know service call centers. But accounting the AI can be applied as a, you know, across the analysis of the whole business. So in theory, the more you can innovate in looking at the whole business, the more you can grow your organization and your your skills and stuff like that [00:44:00] in a way that other teams don't have. So I love that you talk about that. Just finish us on one thought or idea or inspiration for the group who's listening out there.

Inna Kogan: Yeah, absolutely. Since we were talking a lot about innovation within big companies. Yeah. Just want to encourage everyone to just, um, yeah, look at your daily work and see what, uh, what your biggest challenges and pain points and, um, just [00:44:30] try to use some simple tools and, um, uh, to start, um, experimenting and, uh. Yeah. And see where, where it takes you. It's a very exciting time right now. Things are moving very fast, and, uh, yeah, it's probably the best time to, uh, to. Yeah, to start experimenting and, uh, trying something new.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. Well, you heard it here from Ina, and, uh, you know, this was a great conversation. I'm glad we got to talk again. Um, [00:45:00] thank you so much for joining us on accounting intelligence, and maybe we'll chat again soon.

Inna Kogan: Thank you. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.