CFO Chats with Edison Chu, CFO of Sunnies Studios

You started as an IT analyst. What made you change your career to go into finance?

I was a graduate of accountancy. So I am a public accountant by trade. However, when I came in, the role was kind of like a combination of IT and accounting. We call that in accounting the management information system. So I thought they saw some potential there. That’s why they put me into that role, because I kind of have this way of piecing together puzzles, and then I kind of have this way of connecting the dots. I’m not just happy with, like, okay, this is your work. I do it perfectly. I want to see what this button does.

I’d like to see how it all interconnects. If I make this a journal entry or if I change the setting, who would react within the organisation? So that was my, that’s how I started, and in the first couple of years and later on, I think P&G realised that I’m a finance person. So, they shot me into the FP&A role. I started by understanding cost drivers within the project management or IT office of P&G. I was with P&G back then in Petron Mega Plaza, the one in Buendia.

What made you fall in love with finance or why did you start studying finance?

Falling in love with finance, it’s more of a happy coincidence. Accounting was not my first choice when I graduated from college. My first choice was more chemical engineering. It has a nice ring to it. You’re a chemical engineer. So it’s purely based on that. But when I discussed that with my dad, coming from a Filipino Chinese family, he wasn’t very supportive of it because he doesn’t see how it would play out in the real world. It’s more about the practicality of that kind of an endeavour.

Given what they know, I think they tried to nudge me into things that are more from their vantage point, more practical. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I think it turned out perfectly for me. I realised that I am able to understand concepts in accounting that others have had trouble understanding. In my first year, first semester, I encountered this professor who is very well known to be a terror. Her name is Marichu Fornolles. I still owe a lot of my background in accounting to her. So I graduated from the University of San Carlos in 2007.

There are about seven blocks, eight blocks of 40 to 50 students, and then I was with her class, and I remembered her asking the question about how you would define accounting? It was my first class, first major subject in my first week in college, and I think I was the only one who answered something around it’s not really a science but more like an art in terms of trying to get to the right result numbers. I didn’t know what the heck accounting was during that time, so I was just saying that for the sake of sounding smart.

She loved that definition, how I described it, knowing that I had practically just a little bit of foundational knowledge of what an income is, what an expense is. So, I just had foundational knowledge during that time. She was happy with that. That was the first compliment I got stepping into the realm of tertiary education. So I guess that kind of inspired me. I thought that this would be a good use of my talents.

And yes, I did particularly well back in college, which warranted me graduating with Latin honours. That incident, that particular experience, really shaped how I viewed accounting from then on forward. The second compliment that she gave was that there was an exam where I flunked significantly. I bombed the exam. We were asked to calculate payroll. It’s part of accounting 101. And for some odd reason, I calculated 26 working days where the problem stated clearly that it’s a 5-day work week.

I counted 26 days. I do not know what happened there. So obviously, if you have a daily wage and you multiplied it by 26, everything’s wrong, right? So I flunked that; I really bombed that one. What she gave me as something to uplift my spirits was, I don’t think you’re cut out to be the person who’s going to be doing the bean counting or the accounting work.

She was more so trying to allude to that I think of things differently. And if I nurture, if I just don’t flunk the basics, the detail-oriented work, she sees that I might be able to achieve a more leadership position in finance and accounting. I didn’t even know the concept of CFO back then. I kind of hold that as one of my core memories in college.

What are some of the most significant challenges that you’ve encountered?

The landscape in accounting, not just talking about the industry that I’m in right now, has always been in a state of fluctuation. When I started work, ERP was a very big buzzword, and then it became processor-oriented, then automation, and then data, and then right now we are in the AI phase of things. I guess as a finance person, I would really advise whoever is reading this or listening to this that you need to keep an open mind.

Don’t close off certain closely held beliefs because that would be challenged, and it will continue to be challenged. It doesn’t mean that you have to ride the wave in each and every single development, but do your best to try to understand what the use case of this is. When ChatGPT came out, I dabbled in it; I saw its potential, but we quickly ran into the problem of it hallucinating facts. And then after that, give it a couple of months, a new model came out. It became more refined.

And then a couple of quarters in, we started hearing about the concept of agentic AI, which is really the crux of software automation. The AI would decide on certain parameters based on your instruction that this is the right way of doing things without you even prompting it.

And even before that, it was all about data. Big data, small data, predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics, descriptive analytics. Everybody was high on data until they hit the brick wall of, yeah, how can we make good use of this data set? Is it even worthwhile investing a lot of money into preparing these databases if we can’t even understand what we’re trying to look for?

So that hype cycle has waned over the years, but it has renewed its presence, or it’s rearing its influence once again, because you cannot have a good AI agent or you cannot have a good AI practice if you don’t have a clean set of data to begin with. It will go back to ERP or to the databases that the people refused to do in the past because, yeah, it’s ugly, it’s clunky, I don’t like to input data because it’s not a good use of my time.

Why do I have to make a purchase order when I can just ask the person to, like, pay the vendor already? So, I always laugh and giggle, and the sarcastic side of me would always say that because we didn’t have the discipline to do this in the past, here we are trying to chase down innovations when, in fact, we haven’t gotten our basics right. The finance practice has always been forward-thinking, but at the same time, we have to remind ourselves that we can only do a forward-thinking exercise if we have our facts correct, and the facts will always be the history and will always be detail-oriented.

I simply refuse to believe that a good CFO does not need to come from a finance background. That person would have to spend the time to learn the basics of a debit and a credit because how can you talk to folks within the finance community if you don’t know those basic things?

What new trends or opportunities in finance should businesses be focusing on right now?

I would not regurgitate AI; I would not regurgitate data, but I would really emphasise learning. I would really emphasise this thing called problem-solving. It’s a skill that has been used by a lot of the big four management consulting groups, the McKinseys, the BCGs, Bain & Company. They’re using that to try to understand what the problem is and try to understand how to solve it. These things get lost in translation whenever we are posed with a problem because often than not, it’s really the symptom that we’re trying to fix.

The other one would be continuous learning. Problem-solving and learning should go hand in hand. When I started dabbling in business intelligence, I didn’t even know how to operate Microsoft Power BI. The learning came in when I found that, oh, you can learn quite a lot on YouTube back in 2015. A lot of people are willing, and more like me would share general knowledge, and they would share very specific examples, and they would happily talk or give these ideas out to whoever would listen.

So learning becomes paramount. It need not be in the 8 hours or 9 hours that you’re in the office, but if you are genuinely interested in learning, you can find places where you can learn. Metro Manila is always notorious for traffic, so if you can get 15 minutes out of that listening to something that might work for you, and if you are fortunate to have an undisturbed route going home or going to the office, probably read a couple of things.

That’s how you stay competitive as a finance person or finance and accounting person in this age of an ever-changing landscape and innovations that come in fast and go out just as fast.

What do you think is the biggest financial mistake that other companies make?

I think there is this notion in this day and age that we equate speed with progress. It was Mark Zuckerberg who said that you go fast and break things. One of the things that I’m not happy listening to would be, “Oh, we are very fast in doing this.” Yeah, but are you doing it correctly? That’s my question. “Yeah, we don’t need to do it correctly. We just need to get it done.”

All right, fine. And then what happens if this happens? What happens if things pile on because you don’t plan your next steps? If the work needs about, let’s say, three months to complete, you don’t spend the next three hours just trying to think about whether you’ve considered all of those things.

If you are in a hyper-agile organisation that wants things yesterday, you don’t spend a couple of minutes just thinking through the problem or discussing the problem or even articulating the problem, hence the problem-solving. Then you end up with a solution that just relieves the pain, not the cause of the problem. It kind of builds up. It’s kind of like adding band-aid after band-aid, scar tissue after scar tissue.

It becomes very inflexible after multiple layers of scarring. People mistake speed for progress. I would encourage a finance team, even management, or even whoever is listening to or reading this, to take a few moments to understand really what we’re trying to fix. Sometimes the problem we’re trying to solve is merely the symptom, and that’s fine. In order for you to think clearly, you have to relieve some of the symptoms first. When you do that, that’s the time you can really fix what’s going on.

How do you think the finance sector will be in three to five years from now?

I would be lying to say if I know what will happen in the next three months. But I think there’s going to be more AI developments. Agentic AI would probably become the norm in two or three years’ time. It would start to show its head here in the Philippines.

Probably give it three years, four years. And I think people will now start to appreciate how valuable clean and organised data is. I would be happy to predict that in the next three to five years, because AI will hit a major road bump if organisations cannot make use of it because the organisation’s data sets are all over the place.

Now, it’s good that the large language model can understand and can parse through all of our documents in a snap of a finger. But then if you start correlating it with reasoning on why the performance of the business is this way, why are we diluting our equity structure this way? If you’re not able to feed that into the system in organised rows and columns, then I don’t think any developments in AI will hit a roadblock or at least a major speed bump.

What trends do you think will have the biggest impact on financial strategy and decision-making?

I think as more people use the tools that they have, they would be able to free up time. What I can also see happening quickly is that people will not know how to use that freed-up time. So, how do you become more human, I guess, is the next question. As a human being, you are not bound by processes and logic, and we even argue that humans are more creative than machines, which I tend not to agree with. How do you now add value to the organisation when, in fact, the machines can actually do it faster for you? How do you like govern or manage them?

That particular skill becomes important. Like, how do you make sure that these bots don’t run amok? How do you put in the guardrails, or how do you essentially safeguard those things so they don’t screw up the business or the analysis? What I can advise is that if there’s a new development, go through the study, go through the research or the article. Imagine your line of work with that in mind and how you can add more value if some of your work will be taken over by this automation or this AI thing.

How is the regulatory environment changing, and how are finance leaders navigating it?

I try to get experts involved. I try to get people who know more than me and get their opinion, pick their brain. I try not to really go around the regulations, but more like I try to understand how much it is to comply with this regulation as a business operator myself. I try to understand: is it something worth complying with if it doesn’t get me to jail? Is it something worth complying with, or is it far better not to comply and just pay the penalties, as long as the business will not end up getting closed?

It’s more around that. The regulations seek to address a particular problem. But if the cost of complying with it is significantly more expensive than the cost of just paying the penalties, there lies a legitimate business question now: Do we just not comply? I hope that the business community would play an active part in shaping these regulations and that the government also don’t forget that by catering to the business community, you may be forgetting about the folks that are working for these businesses. It’s kind of like balancing those things.

What do you consider to be the most critical skill that any finance leader should have today?

Asking the hard questions. You may not be liked for that. You might be the most despised person in the team, but asking those difficult questions, and depending on the way that you get your answers, if there’s a genuine interest in trying to understand the problem, then you might end up being the person that is courageous enough to ask these questions. You might be hailed as a hero, or you might be seen as the villain for questioning something coming from the top or from a person who holds influence.

My advice is to get comfortable in asking the difficult questions and always remember that we ask the questions not because we want to embarrass anyone, but because if no one will ask the question, then who will? We’re not paid to be liked; we’re paid to be factual.

What is one question all finance leaders today should be asking themselves?

How much of my time is spent firefighting versus how much of my time is spent trying to understand: What am I firefighting for? In the midst of solving problems, ask the question: Are you solving the symptom or are you solving the problem really? Take the time to step back and reflect on it.

How do you approach mentoring and developing the next generation of finance leaders?

I do a lot of coaching. On the technical side of things, I always believe that it can be taught. I show it to them; I let them be as to how they would approach it. I try to develop their skill in terms of asking the questions: What are we trying to solve for? What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to fix?

Once we have those questions articulated, I ask them, okay, can you spend the next four to five hours doing this? And then whether you’re finished or not, can we take a look so I can nudge them in the right direction? I kind of favour that kind of an approach in project management, in FP&A, in business analytics, where we tend to spend a lot of time perfecting the solution before we even ask, are we doing it right?

The other one would be, I’m in disagreement about feedback where your manager sits down with you and says, “Edison, you’re not doing this right, you’re okay in this part, but I need you to fix this.” We are focused on the weaknesses. I try now to flip it differently. I try to focus on saying that you are doing this correctly; I need more of this. You are thinking of this in the right manner; I need you to think more about this particular thing.

It’s trying to get them to recognise their skill where they are good at and make something big out of it rather than spend the time fixing something that I know that they are never going to be good at. The return on the effort is something that I’m very conscious of.

Rather than fixing what’s wrong, I just make sure that what is wrong is not very debilitating, or if possible, I send another individual who is also very good at what this other person’s weakness is so that they look out for each other. I kind of treat them more like a puzzle or as chess pieces.

I simply refuse to crucify people publicly. If I see something that’s wrong, I do it as quickly as possible and as objectively as possible. I don’t wait for the formal one-on-one to say the things that I saw a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. If I miss my chance in the next hour or so, then I will simply not give that feedback at all.

What advice would you give to a first-timer to get the most value out of their Ortus Club experience?

Just ask the question. There are a lot of things that you can learn. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are there to contribute your knowledge. If you think you’re the most junior person, then just ask the question. Be genuinely interested in what it is that they are trying to say, and you’ll be surprised by how much you can learn without even knowing that you’re already learning.

That is what I experienced when I first joined about three years ago. Just be curious as to how they’re doing it and listen to them. You would be asked questions and just generally answer the first thing that comes to your mind. If you don’t know, just say you don’t know, but you were thinking of this differently, something like that.