Shared Services Only Work If The People Do | Ben Rabinowitz | Transformation Room

Satish Peddeda — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Ben Rabinovitz has spent his career inside the finance functions of some of retail's biggest names, from Deloitte to Ralph Lauren to Michael Kors and Capri Holdings, and now leads finance at a fast growing jewellery brand going through its own transformation. On this episode of Transformation Room he sits down with Satish Peddada to unpack what actually makes a shared services model succeed or fail, and it isn't the org chart.

The conversation moves from the mechanics of standing up shared services across siloed brands to the harder question underneath it all, how you bring people along when change threatens to make their role feel unstable. Ben and Satish also get into where AI genuinely changes finance work, and where it just speeds up the same old mistakes if nobody is checking the inputs.

Why cost savings are a byproduct of shared services, not the goal
Designing the organisation and its interim states before assigning people to roles
Treating an outsourced or offshore finance team exactly like your own team
Why daily communication is the single biggest lever against failed transformations
Where AI genuinely speeds up finance work, and where human review still has to sit
The three dashboards Ben would put in front of a CFO every morning

Guest: Ben Rabinovitz, [title to be confirmed], Ring Concierge
Guest LinkedIn: [to be added once verified]

If you're leading a finance transformation and want to talk through where your team stands, get in touch with Satish and the Transformation Room team.

I hope you enjoy this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
-Satish and the Transformation Room podcast team

Satish Peddada’s LinkedIn: in.linkedin.com/in/satishpeddada
Strategy Stack Consulting website: http://www.strategystackconsulting.com

Listen on:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7zpkLmxi1aMiTlztE018Vx
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shared-services-only-work-if-the-people-do-with/id6825833911?i=1000797635396
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/253b5a84-fdf0-4243-b212-67fc442d6b8b

The Transformation Room is a business podcast hosted by Satish Peddada, founder and CEO of Strategy Stack Consulting. The show features conversations with senior finance and operations leaders about real business transformations, including shared services builds, M&A integrations, ERP implementations, and AI adoption in finance.
Satish Peddada previously led finance and shared services transformations at Ralph Lauren and Capri Holdings, including the integration work following the Versace acquisition. He now runs Strategy Stack Consulting, which advises companies on finance transformation and shared services strategy.
Each episode answers a specific question relevant to finance and operations leaders: what actually happens when a company tries to modernise its finance function, merge systems after an acquisition, or bring AI into processes that used to run on spreadsheets. Guests are current or former CFOs, finance executives, and operations leaders who have run these transformations directly, not consultants theorising from the outside.

Topics covered across the series include:

What makes shared services transformations succeed or fail
How to integrate finance systems after a merger or acquisition
Where AI genuinely improves finance work, and where human oversight still matters
How to manage organisational change and communication during a transformation
What CFOs should track daily, including sales, KPIs, and cash flow

This show is built for CFOs, finance leaders, and operations executives who are either in the middle of a transformation or preparing for one, and who want direct, experience-based answers rather than a generic framework or a sales pitch.

#transformationroom #financeleadership #cfo #financetransformation #sharedservices #mergersandacquisitions #erpimplementation #financeoperations #businesstransformation #leadershippodcast #corporatefinance #systemsintegration #aiinfinance #cfoinsights #operationalexcellence

The Governance Framework That Lets AI Scale | Amy P. Alost | Transformation Room

Satish Peddeda — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the first episode of The Transormation Room Podcast!

Satish Peddada, founder of Strategy Stack Consulting, is joined by Amy P. Alost, a career CFO who has led large-scale transformation programmes across multiple companies, to unpick why so many AI and technology rollouts fail to move the needle. Amy traces her path from family offices and Arthur Andersen’s tax and change-enablement teams into running point on global transformations, and argues that failure almost never comes down to the technology itself. It comes down to leaders handing off critical decisions, workflows that get bent around old habits instead of redesigned, and the unwritten knowledge sitting with specialists that nobody thought to capture before they automated the process.

The conversation moves from the data and permissions problems that quietly stall projects, to the warning signs of change fatigue when too many transformations run at once, to the blind spots leaders carry into the room: shadow processes, unexplained customer exceptions, and the quiet employees whose silence is often a bigger red flag than loud pushback. Amy closes with a simple piece of advice for anyone running one of these programmes: slow down to go fast, measure the baseline properly, and treat the change management work as equal in importance to the technical build.

Why hitting every project milestone doesn’t mean a transformation is creating value
The hidden, undocumented processes that derail AI rollouts after go-live
Why delegated decisions from senior leaders are an early warning sign
How running too many transformations at once leads to change fatigue
Why quiet, non-participating stakeholders are often the bigger risk
The data permissions and access problems that quietly stop projects moving forward
Why controls and governance are what let a transformation scale

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe to the Transformation Room podcast for more conversations on leading business transformation.

Connect with Amy P. Alost here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amypalost

I hope you enjoy this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
-Satish and the Transformation Room podcast team

Satish Peddada’s LinkedIn: in.linkedin.com/in/satishpeddada
Strategy Stack Consulting website: http://www.strategystackconsulting.com

Topics covered across the series include:
What makes shared services transformations succeed or fail
How to integrate finance systems after a merger or acquisition
Where AI genuinely improves finance work, and where human oversight still matters
How to manage organisational change and communication during a transformation
What CFOs should track daily, including sales, KPIs, and cash flow