National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15. UCLA Anderson, in conjunction with the Anderson Latino Management Association and the UCLA campus, recognizes the significant contributions to society among our Latino and Hispanic students, alumni, staff and faculty. Visit [email protected] to enjoy their stories.
By Paul Feinberg
Integrated Behavioral Health self-describes as a company that specializes in behavioral health plan administration, employee assistance programs, psychological disability management and work-life services. The company works with Fortune 1000 employers, business coalitions, insurance companies, union health plans, HMOs and PPOs.
As corporate controller, Juan Salcedo (’83) is the top finance professional at the company. “I handle monthly reporting, banking and analyzing acquisitions,” he said via phone from the company’s headquarters in Costa Mesa. He also oversees all of the accounting and finance departments.
Salcedo, who did his undergraduate work at Stanford, didn’t enroll at what was then UCLA’s Graduate School of Management with a goal of becoming a corporate controller. His primary objective was to educate himself as to how businesses are run, with a vague notion that someday he’d like to head his own company. While at UCLA, he recognized that his strengths ran more toward finance and analytics as opposed to marketing. He focused on accounting during his last year at Anderson and ended up taking a position with a Big Eight accounting firm.
Big Data, Big Changes
Of course, anyone working in finance and accounting since the mid-1980s has seen incalculable changes in the field. Salcedo cites the advances in technology from mainframes to PCs, as well as other technological advances that have impacted his work, as obvious examples. “You still need to analyze data,” he says. “But now the data is coming to you a lot faster and it comes out in so many different ways. (As technology evolves) you’re getting the equivalent of an undergraduate or master’s degree every five years. It’s always changing, you cannot stand still.”
To the layperson, accounting is not always viewed as the sexier side of business. Salcedo recognizes that there are those who don’t go beyond the bottom line when it comes to understanding a company’s finances and he knows what he does is not for everyone. But from his perspective, it’s those on the finance side who get to tell a company’s story.
Leading by the Numbers
“Without the foundation of the accounting, you can’t build on anything else,” Salcedo says. “Some people would just like to review numbers from the top and some folks will want to look at (the accounting) in detail. I like to know it from start to finish.
“If you understand the mechanics of the company through the numbers, you’re able to explain things to folks. If you can do that, you can teach people and you’re going to be viewed as a leader within your organization. That’s why I enjoy it, just being able to explain the business by the numbers really makes people want to work with you,” he says.
Although it’s been more than three decades, Salcedo says his time at UCLA still resonates with him. “UCLA was an enjoyable learning experience. Not only did it open my eyes to the business world, I made a lot of good friends; and the only thing that keeps me from being more in contact with them is time.”
Forward amid Flux
With the United States’ health care systems constantly in the news and potentially in flux because of the vagaries of national politics, one can’t help but wonder what impact that has on people like Salcedo.
“We work more on the mental health side of the business, so we’re not as impacted by Obamacare (versus) Trumpcare as others in the medical profession,” he says, though his work does involve dealing with an unknown future. “For us, there are constant changes, the suppliers of the services are constantly changing. There’s consolidation. You asked about uncertainty. My company has acquired four companies. We’ve had four offers to buy us. That changes how we do business. The current health care bills don’t have an impact on us, but there are other macro issues going on,” Salcedo says. “Our revenue continues to grow every year. My job is a little bit more challenging every year.”
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Posted by: Hossein | 10/26/2017 at 02:13 AM
Hi Paul, Nice article. thanks for the info...
Posted by: Rik Flaxman | 10/19/2017 at 02:19 AM