What Does The Finance Team Do?
Our 2 member strong Finance team is responsible for managing MatchCraft’s cash flow. The team takes care of accounting and financial analysis & modeling.
In recent times, members of the Finance team rolled up their sleeves & worked hard to ensure that MatchCraft was able to retain all its employees by making budget cuts elsewhere. Safe to say, we are all fans!
We spoke with Scott Beber, our Head of Finance, to get greater insight into the team. Keep reading to learn more about our in-house finance gurus.
Getting To Know Them
- Scott says he wandered back in the same zip code as the one he lived in as a high schooler.
- We know he’s a finance pro because, for 6+ years, he taught finance at both Cal State LA & the Pepperdine University based in Malibu, CA.
- Scott also practiced Kung-Fu for 6 years.
- And as a kid, he was the first one on his block to have a computer.
What They Love About Their Roles
- Bettering Processes –Â Scott enjoys using his programming skills to better financial processes.
- Reporting –Â Reporting good news to their peers and the executive team, is something the team enjoys & looks forward to.
- Co-Workers –Â The team members really like working with each other & with the rest of the team at MatchCraft!
Top ChallengesÂ
Our Finance team is very efficient but they too face some challenges in their everyday work.
- Accounting –Â The person in-charge of our accounting has been a MatchCrafter for almost 20 years now!! She is a treasure trove of institutional knowledge. So, as one can imagine, she is a critical piece of the MatchCraft puzzle and thus, we all depend heavily on her. (Sometimes maybe a little too much.)
- COVID-19 – Scott joined the company just a couple of months prior to the shutdown and thus, he had a very limited training window, and resources, to get up to speed with the company’s financial needs and strategies. However, he did a fantastic job of working with our People+Culture & Executive teams to come up with cost-saving strategies to reduce company overhead without laying anyone off. For that, we are all very thankful!
If Not In Finance Then What
- Scott thinks he may have studied history or linguistics.
- He could also have been a programmer.
Why Finance?
Scott, who is very quantitative in nature, discovered his love for finance while at UC Berkley – it just made a lot of sense to him. A master at Excel, Scott is naturally attuned to looking at numbers and data.
Evolution of Finance
When asked how the role of finance has changed over the years, Scott told us that finance is overall a very ancient and unchanged art, and the function of finance within a company hasn’t evolved much over the years. What has evolved though is the FinTech sector & the software packages for accounting, modeling & reporting.
Also, reporting has become more granular. The specificity with which one can drill down and the kind of metrics that can be reported has gotten better over time.
“We are kind of like plumbers; we are the mop-up crew. We do the same job and keep everything plumbing & flowing – keep information transparent & clear for everybody. And make sure there are no problems,” said Scott.