From Partnerships to Productivity: How Hitachi Digital Proves Soft Skills Still Win in Treasury’s AI Era

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast, where each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week’s show is a special one. I got to meet with Kathy Fields, the global treasurer for Hitachi Digital, and I spoke to her live on stage at the A FP conference in Boston.

Mike Richards: Just last week? Yes, last week. Crumbs. It was amazing to talk to Kathy. Uh, we talked about her career journey, some of the ways that she manages her team remotely across the world. Lovely lady, great session. We will have an extended session at some stage. I’ll get her to join me live on stage. She doesn’t know it again, but we will do.

Mike Richards: She was just lovely. Great conversation. You’ll get some great value. It’s a short and sweet one this week. It’s about half an hour. So listen, listen in. Uh, you get your CTP credits as well, so don’t forget to take part in that at the end of the show, but say each and every week, let’s get on with the show.

Mike Richards: Good morning, Boston Ton. Come on. Morning, you’re away. Thank you very much. So let’s do some of the admin stuff, first of all. So you’re gonna have an amazing session with Kathy here. She didn’t, luckily didn’t fall off the stage, which is the one thing we didn’t want her to do. So we’re lucky. But Kathy Fields is joining us.

Mike Richards: She’ll explain who she is, her role and everything. What we’re gonna do this morning is we’re just gonna talk through Kathy’s career journey. She’s going to teach you guys about how to become a treasurer and an organization like Hitachi, but I’ll let Kathy explain first of all your role, who you are to the audience, and then we’ll go back to your history.

Mike Richards: Okay?

Cathy Fields, VP Treasurer, Hitachi Digital: Okay. I’m Kathy Fields. I’m the VP treasurer for the Hitachi Digital Group of companies. Our apparent is Hitachi Limited in Japan. We manage treasury for a group of companies that are owned by Hitachi Digital. We created this company, Hitachi Digital a couple years ago by moving all of the corporate services groups, tax, treasury, legal, HR facilities, internal audit.

Cathy Fields: Into Hitachi Digital, as well as all of the traditional shared service structures. So Hitachi Digital is truly a shared service organization. We support right now, 4, 3, 3 operating companies, soon to be four. And we are doing this with no additional headcount. As you can all appreciate.

Mike Richards: So when you and I had our pre-chat, you, you and I talked about how you first started in treasury.

Cathy Fields: Yeah.

Mike Richards: And it wasn’t an actual first start in treasury. You explained how you do it with some of the girls. You do community staff, you talked to various schools. How did you first start?

Cathy Fields: Yeah. Um. What Mike’s talking about is there’s a women’s organization that my mother is part of, has been for several years in Southern California that sponsors a STEM program for eighth grade girls.

Cathy Fields: In the surrounding school districts, and about 20 years ago, they put together this program that brings women into a local university and we bus these girls in and they have an opportunity to meet about 40 different women in different career and any type of career you can possibly imagine, we’ve had FBI agents.

Cathy Fields: My daughter’s actually participating now too. She’s in interior design. We have had nurses, we’ve had geologists, you name it. And these girls have an opportunity to hear our story of how we came to be where we are today. So I will share my story with you growing up. My passion in life was sports. And so I thought, okay, I need to find a career that’s gonna keep me in that sporting environment.

Cathy Fields: So I thought, you know what? I have so many educators in my family, I’m gonna be a PE teacher. Why not my aunt’s a PE teacher, great mentor. So went to school, went to Michigan State, go Spartans. And first couple years. It’s all science. It’s all analytics. It’s all science. You’re basically the same program as pre-med students.

Cathy Fields: Third year is when you get into teaching and you actually have to go in front of children and. The first semester I did okay. I was dealing with three and four year olds with gymnastics. That was fantastic. They just want attention. They wanna be loved. You keep them busy, you’re doing great. Second semester, they gave me seventh and eighth graders for ice skating.

Cathy Fields: I said, I can’t do this. I am not made. I’m not cut out to be a teacher, but I still loved sports. So I changed career paths and went more down the scientific aspect of sports. Ended up getting a degree in exercise physiology. So what do you do with a degree in exercise physiology? You manage a health club for a couple of years.

Cathy Fields: It was a great club though because it involved a lot of local athletes. There were physical therapists on staff and I realized then that I wanted to do more so when I went back to school, ’cause I wanted to be a sports medicine doctor now. And so I went back to try to get a second bachelor’s in biology, get ready for the MCATs.

Cathy Fields: Ended up getting married, had my daughter. Within a year I was a single mom, so my whole career path stood up on its head and I had to stop and think, is this gonna be fair to my daughter if I continue to pursue this career? And so I. Immediately changed paths, walked into a temp agency and said, give me a job.

Cathy Fields: And I landed at Allergan Pharmaceuticals in the AR department, which is tangent to the credit department, which is tangent to the Treasury Department. In the very short period of time, I realized the power of cash and I could see how cash is really the blood that flows through the company to make the company work and be successful.

Cathy Fields: And it just clicked in me. I’m like, this is where I’m supposed to be. I actually had a friend who was at Western Digital. I’m from Southern California by the Wayne Case. I didn’t tell you. I. I had a friend who was working at Western Digital. They had an opening in their AR department, so I went in, interviewed, hired on the spot.

Cathy Fields: I was with Western Digital for 25 years. I started as an accounts receivable clerk, worked my way up into the credit organization. I did domestic credit, then international credit, and then from there timing was perfect. The assistant treasurer was moving on. So I worked very closely with her to make sure that I was positioned properly to take over her role because for me, that was the most natural fit because the one thing that I loved, credit helped me really learn about the company, how everything works, because everything we do as a company.

Cathy Fields: Touches how cash flows through the company. And so you learn all of your important key stakeholders. It just, it was just a natural flow. So treasury was just the most natural flow for me, and I managed the treasury organization for the last 15 years. I was with the company

Mike Richards: they got as the a treasurer.

Mike Richards: You also, you stressed to me as well the importance of study because that’s one of the things you did as well. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, oh yeah. Can you a bit more about that?

Cathy Fields: That’s true. When I realized that I had to change my career path, as soon as I joined Western Digital, I pursued my MBA in international business.

Cathy Fields: So as a single mom working full-time, went to school at nights and weekends, and within two years had my MBA. So again, I just, I knew that this is where I needed to be. So education was a, we tell the eighth grade girls every time we talk to them. Education’s probably the most important thing you can do in your life because with a good, solid education, you can do anything you want.

Cathy Fields: Oh, I had to practice when I was preaching.

Mike Richards: And you said to me again that the light bulb switched on for you. When you realized forecasting accuracy, they just made you light up. Why is that such a passion for you? It’s,

Cathy Fields: it’s, for me, it was simple math for. You can’t spend more than you get. And so if you take things down to very simplistic levels and understanding how the cash flows through the company, you see very quickly the metrics that you need to be paying attention to and how decisions that are made within the company affect how that cash is flowing through the company.

Cathy Fields: And that’s where again, you see very quickly what drives a lot of the forecasting where you can have that influence. And it just, again, for me it was, it just made sense.

Mike Richards: And then how did you get into treasury? How did you find out about the treasury role or what?

Cathy Fields: I love networking and I love making sure that I’m connected to people, that I’m my stakeholders.

Cathy Fields: I have to know who my stakeholders are because those are my partners. Having those relationships is so important because you depend on each other, especially when you’re in a large organization. You have to know who you can go to if you have questions or issues, and I always make myself available as well.

Cathy Fields: That’s another key thing if someone’s usually coming to me asking me questions if I don’t know the answer. I will get the answer for them because 99% of the time I probably know where the answer sits. So again, I just make sure that I was really embedded into the organization, knew who the key players were, and.

Cathy Fields: They knew who I was. That was the other thing too.

Mike Richards: No, you say that so though, but how did they know how you were I know you, you are really good Marke and I’m

Cathy Fields: really tall.

Mike Richards: I know. And, and she’s quite scary lady. Believe me, on the call, on Zoom, I was quite scared. But joking aside, you said about how you marketed for yourself.

Mike Richards: And I’ve joked with these guys as well that you know, they’re some people, some of you guys are really good at marketing for yourselves. And the nicest way, some of you stink and you need to work on it. And this is an example of how you work on it. So explain how you got outta that.

Cathy Fields: And again, it’s about saying yes, it’s really about saying yes even to outside vendors.

Cathy Fields: I had a very large bank syndication when I was with Western Digital, and there were banks that I knew I could never do business with, but I would never turn down a meeting because every conversation, I learned something from everyone that I talked to. So my philosophies has always been just say yes and make time.

Cathy Fields: Make time to, to meet people, make time to hear what they have to say. I actually have an interesting story I forgot to share with you, but there was a gentleman. I didn’t know this at the time, but he was very new to his position and I made the time to, to see him and let him come in and share his message with me.

Cathy Fields: Again, I learned something from him. Unfortunately, I could not use his product at the time, but again, I was very grateful that he shared the information with. Two years later, I ran into him and he came up to me and said, thank you. He said, you helped me get the courage that I needed to be able to move forward in this job and to be successful.

Cathy Fields: So you never know how you’re gonna impact someone else either. So I take that very seriously and I, my messages just always say yes. Like take a risk, like how I got into Hitachi. I actually took a risk taking this job. I was not hired in as the VP treasurer. I was hired in. I went from a senior director position to a senior manager role.

Cathy Fields: So I took a risk because I saw an opportunity here that was gonna allow me to make a massive impact in a very short period of time. Taking all of these skills that I have learned over the years and bring them to this company to help them succeed, and it has paid off in spades. I’ve had opportunities here I never would’ve had anywhere else.

Mike Richards: You’ve also talked about building these strong bank relationships, but if there’s, this is a room full of bankers and some of them maybe even in yours, how do you, if you know you can’t use their services, how do you facilitate that? Or these guys in the room might be thinking, hang on, we’ve got nothing to give that bank, we can’t use them yet.

Cathy Fields: Yeah.

Mike Richards: How do you do that?

Cathy Fields: Again? Say yes to the meeting. Be very transparent though I am very honest and they know that they can count on me to be honest with them, and a lot of times I have bankers that will just come in and bounce ideas off of me now because they know that I will be honest and very transparent if I think that the product is something that makes sense.

Cathy Fields: And could be valuable to other people in the treasury environment. I would let them know if I think it needs to be changed or I have an opinion on it, I will share it with them. So I think that’s the one thing they know that they can count on from me is honesty and transparency. And I will always say yes.

Mike Richards: And going back to your team, I’m running a you, you’ve got a global team, but it’s small, very small and perfectly fine. But explain to us, if you will, how do you make it work across all the different time zones and locations without losing your mind?

Cathy Fields: I make time for my team members. I talk to my direct reports for at least an hour every week.

Cathy Fields: Individually. I also have a full staff meeting every single Monday so that we start the week together and we talk about everything that’s going on in the company. Anything that’s critical, anything that they need to know, we make sure. That we’ve shared critical information within the group because there’s a lot of crossover.

Cathy Fields: I, not only do I handle treasury, I also handle global credit and insurance. And there’s a lot of things that crossover in those three disciplines. So again, we, we communicate every week. I actually meet with my direct minus ones every other week. I give them time as well. Every person on my staff is unique and I need to understand what motivates them, what’s important to them, how can I help them be successful at what they do?

Cathy Fields: Because the way that I look at it as the leader, I have to make sure that I have given them the resources, the skills, I’ve given them an opportunity to take risks, which I strongly recommend. To be able to pursue their careers. That’s my job because if they’re not successful, I can’t be successful. And that’s just the way that I look at.

Cathy Fields: That’s always been my philosophy. Not everybody agrees with me, but it works really well. I’ve have developed really strong teams over the years. I’m still very close to the team that I build at Western Digital. We still stay in touch with each other. The team that I have now, my assistant treasurer just celebrated his 10 year anniversary on Sunday, so we’ve worked together for 10 years now.

Cathy Fields: The majority of my team, we’ve been together for eight years, and that’s really hard to find in Silicon Valley. I will tell you. But we worked really well together as a team.

Mike Richards: Yeah. Our podcast is sponsored by Tradeweb. Tradeweb are an independent platform trusted by thousands of treasury professionals worldwide to manage their short-term investments.

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Mike Richards: Find out much, much more. Now let’s get back to the episode. And you and I, we were both speaking in Budapest, uh, EuroFinance. You were particularly focusing on ai. Mm-hmm. Um, and it’s on everyone’s lips, if you like. How do you filter through the hype? How do you deal with it?

Cathy Fields: That’s a great question because we’ve had so many

Cathy Fields: these hot buttons. These hot words like you, we’ve been hearing about. Okay, blockchain for how many years now? It’s over 10 years, and we’re finally seeing solutions for that. AI, I think is absolutely moving a lot faster. But I’m not seeing any, what I would say, that magic pill, that magic button, it’s not quite there yet.

Cathy Fields: As far as broader treasury functions, I think as tools to improve your individual productivity, absolutely. There are things out there that we can start taking advantage of. One thing that I encourage my team to do is they need to get in, they need to use copilot. They need to do something that at least two or three times a week that helps them either create a PowerPoint.

Cathy Fields: Improve a message in an email, improve some type of a document, review a document they need to start embedding that into their daily process so that they get comfortable with it. Because I do see that absolutely being a huge opportunity for us as individuals to improve our productivity as far as the tools for us to do our job.

Cathy Fields: I think we’re. In the path, but we’re not quite there yet.

Mike Richards: The development. Yes. And you talked also about banks embedding the AI tools as well. And

Cathy Fields: I, I always leverage banks. I have always pushed banks to be better and to provide those tools. If you think about it, they have all of our data. They have all of our payment data, they have all of our receipt data.

Cathy Fields: They know more about us than we probably do, and getting them to give us access to that data has been a huge effort on my part over the last five to 10 years. I will tell you about 20, 25 years ago, I put a challenge out to all of my bankers. And said, the one bank that can come up with a solution that allows me to manage my company with one bank account per currency will get my business.

Cathy Fields: And it’s taking us a long time. I think we’ve made strides in that. But that means talking to regulators, the banks have to start working together. They have to be the ones to help advocate on our behalf. So that as a someone that works in the multinational, you have those tools available to you. Business can flow easier and it’s a huge ask, but they’re the ones that are positioned to be able to do that, not us.

Cathy Fields: So you really, I’ve always leveraged my banking partners to the best of my ability.

Mike Richards: And you, let’s just go back to your team ethos, if you like, in management. I know you do your weekly one-to-ones, you get to know what drives each person. Talk us through that a little bit more again, for the audience.

Cathy Fields: Yeah.

Cathy Fields: We’re still remote. I don’t know if a lot of companies can say that, but as part of COVID, we. Liquidated. I would say probably 60 to 70% of our office space. So we don’t even have offices for people to go to anymore, so it’s not like we can mandate people back to the office. So we’re still remote. So again, the connection with the team is so important and staying close to them.

Cathy Fields: And I think my team over the years, they value that because they know that I trust them. They know that I know they’re gonna get their job done If there’s any issues that come up. I have, most of my staff has younger children, school age children, and they love that ability to be able to do what they need to with their kids, take them to school, pick them up.

Cathy Fields: And they’re still getting their jobs done. So again, that, that level of trust and empowerment that I give them, it comes back to me in spades. It really does because their performance, they, they do what I ask them to do. And it’s been great.

Mike Richards: So I’m gonna come out and get some questions from you guys in the audience in a moment.

Mike Richards: But whilst I’m doing that as a, you also mentor younger treasury professionals. Yep. And through the STEM program and everything else, what advice are you given to those guys and maybe some of their people in the audience today that earlier on in their treasury career as well? Buy something with them.

Cathy Fields: Learn as much as you can. Educate yourself. Again, be open to everything that’s out there. Talk to people. Say yes, expose yourself. There’s so many different things out there and there’s so many different things you can do in treasury. You don’t have to. There’s so many opportunities, but you just need the exposure.

Cathy Fields: Get yourself out.

Mike Richards: Oh,

Cathy Fields: and learn,

Mike Richards: right? Let’s go out to the audience without falling off the stage. Never looks good, right? So come on, you’ve got a global treasurer here. Let’s get some hands up and wants, ask Kathy a question. Come on, anyone. Wake up. You. There you go.

N/A: Hey Gabby. Um, can you talk about leveraging that you need with a bank outside of the bank?

N/A: Competing them against each other if you’re just going after a single one.

Cathy Fields: Oh, I actually, after 2008, I will probably never put all my eggs in one basket from a banking perspective. So we have a very diverse strategy with our banking partners. It’s more of a regional strategy. But again, we’ve picked banking partners that could do business for us anywhere in the world if we needed to move things around.

Cathy Fields: But yeah, 2008 was a bit of a learning lesson, I think, for all of us. But yeah, it’s, I do divers, I do diversify. Yeah. And

Mike Richards: I saw another question there.

N/A: Hello? Hello, are you Good morning. I would like to know what kind of hard skills and soft skills you’re looking for in your direct reports. What’s that hard skills and soft skills they’re looking for in your, oh, that’s a great question.

Cathy Fields: The funny thing is, I usually, when I’m interviewing people, and again, my, my knock on wood, my team has not turned in a really long, today

Mike Richards: what time?

Cathy Fields: But I would say it’s really the soft skills that I look at. More example, the last person that I added to my team, he’s a math major, knows nothing about treasury, nothing about economics.

Cathy Fields: I can teach those things, but he had the analytical skills and the problem solving skills. And that ambition to learn. And so those are the things that I probably look at more than anything. I can teach people treasury, but there are certain things I can’t teach communication skills as much. There’s just an inherent amount.

Cathy Fields: Of natural personality that I look for. Um, yeah, but that’s probably soft skills are what I look at more than anything. But I thought that. His math background would also come in handy because he, he’s also an IT kind of person as most people in his generation are today. And that’s one thing that I didn’t really have in it.

Cathy Fields: And I have been able, we’ve now designated him as our internal IT support person because we all go to him now if we have questions. So, but that was just a happy byproduct.

Mike Richards: A couple more questions. You’ve got time over. No problem.

N/A: Good morning. My name is Mark, senior Treasury Analyst. My question revolves around what you mentioned about saying yes, but being open and transparent.

N/A: It seems a lot of individuals who reach out to me, their goal is to make a sale, pay, check out our product. Okay. Now to your point, say yes, I’d love to speak with you, but we are not interested right now. So can you expand on how to approach that? So I don’t, for lack of a better term, antagonize those skaters personal away, but they also know you are not going to sell me anything.

N/A: Thank you. Yeah.

Cathy Fields: When I typically do, if there’s a vendor that I think at some point might come in handy, I have a few of them. I’ll set up reoccurring calls with them, like we’ll meet every six months just to do a quick check in to see if anything’s changed. If nothing’s changed, I’ll talk to you again in six months.

Cathy Fields: But that way I stay up on their technology. I stay up, up to date on whatever it is that they’re developing, and they’re aware of exactly where I’m at with respect to the projects that we’re working on or the opportunities that we might have together. So again. You have to be open. You have to be willing to hear what people have to say because you just never know.

Cathy Fields: You never know what’s around the corner. You never know that next person that walks through the door could have that magic pill that you’ve been looking for, and you wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t said yes. So that’s just, that’s my philosophy on life as well. You have to be open and willing to learn.

Cathy Fields: And see what the world has to offer. That’s how we grow as individuals.

Mike Richards: So we got a good closing question for you and I and a minute, but I’m just gonna throw in another one. What’s your favorite thing about being in the Global Treasurer?

Cathy Fields: The people I get to meet. I think that to me has been, I’ve had so many amazing opportunities.

Cathy Fields: Like I said, if I hadn’t said yes to this opportunity, even though I knew I was taking a risk. My parent company, I was the only non-Japanese person asked to participate in. The implementation project for a global treasury management system, they sent me to Singapore for two years. And so again, I would not have had that opportunity if I had not said yes to this particular role.

Cathy Fields: So again, you just never know and you have to be willing to take those risks. Be willing to say yes. And smile. Life’s short. Enjoy it. Um, you gotta smile. Um,

Mike Richards: so you and I on our original call talked, but we both talked about being treasury geeks. Oh. I’m a huge

Cathy Fields: treasury geek. We love it.

Mike Richards: What’s the one thing that you still, you know, to close today that you still geek out on about treasury?

Cathy Fields: I think treasury’s the best thing in the world because if again. Money moves the company. We manage the blood of the company. Without us, nothing happens. And I like that. Maybe not control freak, not just a treasury geek.

Mike Richards: She is, yeah. She’s taught me how to sit here. Not to cross my legs in the hands, but, but big thank you to Kathy.

Mike Richards: Put your hands together.

N/A: Thank you

Mike Richards: very much. Yeah,

N/A: thanks.

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