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What do you do as the newly hired CFO when you find that your finance department is highly centralized, and without the technology solutions needed to support the company and its clients along the front lines? Join Jay Roberts as he explains how he realigned AvantEdge’s financial systems to strengthen its position as a top 10 leader in the healthcare solutions space.

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“Organizations must have a passion for being disciplined, particularly in and around the accounting area. We know that accounting is tedious work and it requires a fair amount of repetition. That discipline is really important.”

The following is an edited abstract from CFO Thought Leader’s podcast featuring Jay Roberts, CFO, AdvantEdge, and Jack Sweeney, co-host of CFO Thought Leader. CFOTL: What was your background that helped you prepare for your current position? Roberts: I started in corporate finance in about 1988 or so. And at that time, you may remember that there were some pretty significant challenges with savings and loans, and the banking environment was a little bit challenging. And as a result of that, I did a lot of advisory-type work with companies that were being challenged by their senior lenders. And many times, these companies had their fair share of trouble, maybe it was positioning from a strategic perspective. But it did give me a great opportunity early on to learn how to think strategically, number one, and to be prepared and really able to make very hard decisions. That meant reducing cost in a pretty significant way, and sometimes that affected people. And those are difficult decisions to make from time to time. But certainly, as a CFO and as I’ve learned over the years, making hard decisions ultimately brings important value to companies that allow them to be able to grow and prosper. CFOTL: When you stepped into your current role, did you have a sort of a philosophy of finance or the kind of the job that you wanted to create?