Sara Grafals of Speedway Motorsports Embraces Automation

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MICHAEL PRAEGER

Welcome to The Power of Change, the podcast that delves into the intersection of leadership and technology in the finance world. I’m your host, Michael Praeger, the CEO and co-founder of AvidXchange. In each episode, I dive into the leadership topics and industry trends with business leaders, partners, and customers who embrace the power of change. 

Welcome to the Power of Change podcast here with Michael Praeger. And we have a special guest. Super exciting that we have Sara Grafals here today in studio. Sarah, longtime AvidXchange customer, but she is a Senior Vice President of Regional Finance at the Speedway Motorsports. Many of you probably are interested to know a former motorcycle rider, but she’s been a leader with Speedway Motorsports since June of 2020 and has a strong history of working in events and the entertainment industry. 

She previously worked at Sonoma Raceway for 23 years. So skilled in budgeting, risk management administration, team building, and public speaking. Also, very passionate about process improvement, transformational automation, and optimizing financial operations for her organization, which is the catalyst for why she’s here today, joining me in the Power of Change podcast. 

So what have been some of the benefits of Sara and kind of the work that she’s done with her team? Well, Speedway Motorsports now included in the annual budgeting process about $300,000 in savings over the process of automating their accounts payable and payment process and really kind of shortening the month-end accrual process down to a day and a half to roughly 30 minutes. 

They’re now saving over 200 hours annually in the month-end accrual process for Speedway Motorsports. So, a big impact in some of the transformational changes she’s done just in this one area of their business in terms of accounts payable automation.  

You’ve been here both around AvidXchange and our work here for a number of years, maybe explain to us a little bit about your passion for motorsports, finance, the role that you’re in today, and how you got into the role that you’re in.  

2:20  
SARA GRAFALS

I became an accountant because my dad was an accounting professor, so I knew debits and credits by the time I could speak probably. Had no initial passion for accounting, but it was easy. It came easy. And honestly, my thought process when I went to school was the last person that’s going to get fired in a bankruptcy is going to be the accountant. They’re going to be the last ones to go. So, it was job security.  

Passion-wise, we rode motorcycles. We rode motorcycles for a long time. We got married a long time ago. I’m not going to say. Didn’t have kids for the first 13 years of our marriage and spent a lot of time just riding. We moved West. Road pacific coast highway. Road up and down Highway One. Went to work for a .com industry in California. 

And things changed. My husband’s job moved, so we needed to move and went to a headhunter and he’s like, what do you want to do? And I’m like, anything to do with motorcycles would be great. So all of a sudden I get a phone call from somebody in Charlotte saying, I need to talk to you about a job. 

And I was like, no, no, not moving to the East Coast. We’re moving to the East Bay of California. I’m not moving out there. And he said, no, no, no, we’ve got a job opening with what at the time was Sears Point Raceway. Um, which interestingly enough, we had already bought tickets to the motorcycle race that was coming up in May at the racetrack. So all the bells and whistles started going off and it was like, this is going to be the perfect marriage of what I do really well and what I have a passion for in my lifetime.  

3:48  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

So now that we’ve learned a little bit about becoming a finance leader, maybe share a little bit about the focus that you have and this continuous focus on transformation and making your team be as efficient as possible. At what point in your career did you really start thinking about, okay, we have to think about doing things a better way or a different way, you know, based on the technologies that are now available. 

4:13  
SARA GRAFALS

Right now with Speedway, we have 11 different racetracks and several sister companies, and we’ve always kind of operated as independent entities. COVID actually helped us along in that process and allowed us to take a look at our company, do some streamlining. And just prior to COVID was when we were looking at the accounts payable process. So that we implemented the accounts payable process with AvidXchange in March of 2020. Right before COVID hit and it was the perfect transition. And this was actually our big push into automation and streamlining things was the relationship with AvidXchange. So that’s been the catalyst for several other things that we’ve done within the company. The timing on it really worked well. And it’s been an opportunity for us to show to the rest of the company that we can work across the company as one company, even though we’re all in different locations. And that was probably the biggest mindset change that we had being 11 different locations was getting people to think outside the box, so to speak and be able to think broadly and broad term and at consolidation at the same time. 

5:17  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

I didn’t realize that AvidXchange was actually the catalyst for some of your pathway of automation and transformation. So, you know, after AvidXchange and to kind of accounts payable, maybe what are some examples of other things you’ve done around the same kind of automation or transformation theme? 

5:34  
SARA GRAFALS

The big one that we’ve just completed was on our payroll side of things where you use ADP, but we implemented a system UKG, which has really helped automate our timekeeping system. It’s automated the output for putting into the journal entry. And it’s also automated our onboarding system because we were heavy paper onboarding, heavy paper onboarding. So now all of our onboarding is automated. It’s taken our payroll process, what had somebody working three, four days a week on just payroll down to one to two days.  

6:08  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

You know, when you think about the impact of a business and efficiency, again, you know, driving cost productions as well as kind of efficiency benefits. Those are great stories to hear. 

What were the operations like – that accounts payable process like – kind of pre-AvidXchange? And then what is it like today? And maybe do a little bit compare and contrast.  

6:30 
SARA GRAFALS

I can show you a big compare and contrast. So when I had my first child, everything, everything was paper, everything was paper. So it was invoices, it was checks, it was POs, 100 percent paper. And I had to sign everything. I had to touch everything, had to touch every piece of paper. So when I was home with my first child, I would literally get a bucket of mail dropped or a bucket of work dropped off at my door and I would flip through every piece of that every time and somebody would pick it back up and take it back to work.  

The contrast to that is when we flipped to AvidXchange in 2020 and I was moving from California to North Carolina, we had just come back from buying our house here and the person that was supposed to be taking over for me in Sonoma. gave me her two-week notice. So I’m on the road already. I’m in moving at quarter end, June 30th. We’re moving to North Carolina and I’m literally in the middle of Wyoming approving payments, getting checks out the door and not having to worry about somebody dropping the payments off. We didn’t miss a beat because we went from that paper to the non-paper in that time.  

7:32  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

Well, that’s well said. And, uh, certainly I think that was a pretty kind of graphical, you know, kind of compare and contrast in terms of just the impact of automated accounts payable for a company, a motorsports company, like the Speedway. 

Okay. So let’s talk about you and how your success in some of these projects elevated you as a leader, either how you’re viewed from your peers or even kind of leadership at the Speedway Sports related to now that you have some success in some of these automation projects. What do your peers think of the work that you’ve done?  

8:09 
SARA GRAFALS

My goal is to help everybody else do their job better. And so the way that I can support them and make sure that I’m problem-solving for them, I think everybody within the finance department and even outside of the finance department feels like they can call me if they have a question on something. 

The thing that I bring to the table at the corporate office is I’m the only person that has worked at the corporate office that was ever quote in the field. So the operational day to day knowledge of what goes on at the racetracks, I can lend to the operation at the corporate office and be able to say, this is what’s going to work. This is what’s not going to work and help troubleshoot. So, I think the biggest thing people would say is that I’m available and I’m here to make their, I mean I am available 24 seven for somebody. That’s, that’s my biggest is to make everybody else’s life easier.  

8:56  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

And bring innovation along with it.  

Okay. Let’s talk, you know, change it a little bit to kind of more of the personal side. What I’ve realized, whether it be with myself or other leaders that I talk to on our Power of Change podcast is that somewhere along the way from being in your case a staff type of accountant to become a finance leader, there was usually kind of a role model or a mentor that had a big impact and kind of thinking about, you know, what a grown-up Sara would look like. I’m curious, was there a person like that who filled that role for you?  

9:34  
SARA GRAFALS

Probably not. Honestly, I don’t know if I had a role model as much as just various number of role models throughout my career. Probably just mentors in each job that I had, that I learned from. Learned good and bad from – things that kind of like parenting. It’s like you learn what you want to do, what you don’t want to do. And you learn that from your managers that you have along the way. So I’ve had managers that I’m not going to do that, but I’ve taken little bits and pieces from managers that I’ve had along the way and just tried to internalize that. 

I’m big on constructive criticism. So I look all along the way, I’ve always asked my employees to give me candid, honest, discreet feedback. And I’ve always tried to take that and really grow from that is probably the biggest thing.  

10:21  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

Well there’s a lot of nuggets of wisdom in that. I’m going to pick on one of them that you talked about, and that’s like, you know, you learn a little bit by parenting. Well, man, my experience with parenting is there’s a lot of value in routines that you have and rhythms that you have with your kids. But I’m kind of curious for you, what’s some of maybe a personal routine or something that you do, whether it be every week or every day to kind of get ready for the week or the day ahead? 

10:48  
SARA GRAFALS

Usually, I’ve spent about 30 minutes in bed, just thinking through the calendar for the day. What’s going on. Say a little prayer, a little Bible time. And then really just start check marking what’s going to be the priority for the day. The day never goes like it’s supposed to. And as long as I feel like I’ve gotten something accomplished and I can check off at least one thing off of my list for the day, then it’s been good. But being able to be flexible and be able to roll with the day makes a big difference. 

11:14 
MICHAEL PRAEGER

This has been awesome, in terms of like, you know, not only learning about the impact that automation has had on Sara’s organization, but also the impact related to personally and how she’s navigated her career to be such an innovation leader for her business. 

And so with that, I think there’s a lot of nuggets related to understanding your business process related to, how do you go about the steps of automating it? Uh, to some of the things about how you support your teammates and really be inclusive and bring your teammates along in this journey that Sara did a great job of articulating. 

And so I think as it relates to viewers that want to know more we have Sara’s story that’s on the AvidXchange website, avidxchange.com. And I just want to thank Sarahfor being on today’s show and sharing her experiences and some nuggets of wisdom with us. So thank you, Sara. 

12:21  
SARA GRAFALS

Thank you very much for having me.  

12:23  
MICHAEL PRAEGER

Thanks for listening to The Power of Change presented by AvidXchange. If you like what you’ve heard, subscribe to our channel and leave a five-star review. While you’re waiting for the next episode, head on over to avidxchange.com for our latest research reports and business insights. And if you’re interested in learning more about accounts payable automation from AvidXchange, click the link in our show notes to connect with our experts. Thanks again for listening to The Power of Change. We’ll see you next time.