CFO THOUGHT LEADER

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689: Be the Bridge | Terry Coelho, CFO, BioDelivery Sciences International (BDSI) Apr 07, 2021

Show notes

Within 4 months of her 2019 arrival inside BDSI’s CFO office, Terry Coelho had spearheaded a product acquisition and managed a successful equity raise—two finance milestones that would produce generous sales tailwinds for the specialty pharmaceutical firm.

BDSI would experience 100% net sales growth in 2019, followed by 40% net sales growth in 2020. Such sales momentum recently led BDSI to issue a press release praising its “new commercial team” and at the same time announcing that Coelho’s CFO title would now include the designation “executive vice president.”

For Coelho, a seasoned finance executive who spent more than a decade serving in a variety of senior positions inside Novartis and Sealed Air Corp., the call to leadership at BDSI afforded her a wide berth from which deliver results that are now arguably visible to all.

Still, even this success chapter must compete for our attention when we hear about a promotion that she received from candy and pet food giant Mars Incorporated early in her career. At the time, when Coelho was in her early 30s she was asked by John Mars (currently chairman) to relocate to South America and build a plant to start up Mars’s confectionery business in Brazil.

“When the plant concept was coming about, John Mars said to me, ‘You can do this job,’ and I kind of looked at him and thought to myself, ‘Why not?,’” says Coelho, who had first gotten her FP&A acumen noticed inside the corporate planning function of Mars’s McLean, Virginia, headquarters.

Years later, as she prepared to return to the U.S., the Brazilian team presented her with a photo of the former cow pasture that the Mars plant was then occupying. After a number of expansions, the factory and Brazilian business operations under Coelho’s leadership had grown to provide jobs to 200 people.

“I don’t think that most companies would have given someone with my experience—at that point in my career—that kind of an opportunity. It has really shaped whom I’ve become. I have a breadth of experience from having run an entire business, and when you build it, you know it even better,” explains Coelho, who, after returning to the U.S., would hold a number of strategic finance positions, including CFO of Mars Direct, a newly formed direct-to-consumer business unit that would establish itself as one of the company’s future growth engines. –Jack Sweeney

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688: Ready for Takeoff | Kevin Ingram, CFO, FM Global Apr 04, 2021

Show notes

Back in 2014, when FM Global wanted to entice finance executive Kevin Ingram to move back to the US from England, the UK finance director was offered a position no one at the company had ever heard of before.

“My CEO came to me and said, ‘It’s called sr. vice president of corporate services and that means nothing to anybody, but I love that because that means I can put anything I want there and no one can tell me it doesn’t belong.’" explains Ingram, who says the newly created role would grow to include business analytics, business risk consulting, capital management , risk management as well as other areas.

Still, the corporate services title to the outside world was arguably somewhat vague and perhaps not what a top executive may have in mind after 25 years with the same company.

Says Ingram: “I was never looking to leave. It was really just a question of when the opportunity was going to present itself and if it didn’t present itself what else would I do instead.”

Two years later when Ingram stepped into FM Global’s CFO office his promotion no doubt further validated the corporate services position as well as his willingness to add an extra rung to his career climb.

In the corporate scheme of things, the management of org charts sometimes requires CEOs to summon the instincts of air traffic controllers—who’ll never hesitate to institute a holding pattern in order to make certain that everyone is ready for takeoff. –Jack Sweeney

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687: The Room Where It Happened | Ken Kaufman, CFO, Community Dental Partners Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

Each Wednesday morning, as the CEO prodded his team for business projections and troubleshooting ideas, the midsize company’s top managers would huddle around a white board inside a glass-enclosed office.

For 20-something Ken Kaufman, the management huddle was a silent spectacle—except for the occasional bouts of laughter that burst out from behind the glass.

“The managers would always leave with this positive energy and always have new guidance for how the business could move forward,” explains Kaufman, who says that for him, over time the meeting became not just a source of weekly intrigue but also a career destination.

Years later, Kaufman recalls, when he was invited to join the huddle at another middle market company, the gathering generated little energy and was far less productive than what he had expected.

“I finally made it into the room, and then we spent the entire time arguing over why certain numbers were wrong,” remembers Kaufman, who—now with a business degree in hand—then began to dig into the company’s financial statements. Subsequently, he was able to introduce some business modeling approaches that allowed managers to better understand the company’s pain points when it came to growth.

“I ended up sliding into the CFO role and ultimately brought the company into job costing and creating visibility that allowed managers to make decisions to build the business,” reports Kaufman, who adds that within only a few months the finance leader proceeded to ask him to take over the CFO role. –Jack Sweeney

686: Making “Why Not?” Your Career Door Opener | Hamza Benamar, CFO, Kyriba Mar 28, 2021

Show notes

Long before growing numbers of digital nomads freely roamed the planet, Hamza Benamar had achieved a borderless professional life inside the world of internal audit.

“I went through a phase in my career when I was not even planning the next year—I was too busy getting my work noticed and getting proposals to go somewhere else,” explains Benamar, who recalls that the question “Why not?” became the familiar response with which he greeted each new opportunity.

Having grown up in multilingual Morocco, Benamar found that crossing international borders came naturally to him, which gave him an edge when SAP came looking for young professionals to serve a growing roster of clients interested in scaling their processes globally.

“I knew that I was actually going to be able to learn from these marquee companies and discover how to design, implement, and run the processes of A/R, A/P, and general ledger,” remembers Benamar, who joined SAP’s Houston operation in 1999 before in short order garnering Platinum frequent flyer status with Continental Airlines.

Next, he joined biotechnology rising star Amgen, which was seeking to quickly expand its internal audit function around the world as the company opened a new chapter of global growth.

“I went overseas, built up the audit team, got noticed by the CFO, and moved to Switzerland to be his right-hand controller, and things just continued to evolve from there,” comments Benamar, who remain with Amgen for 5 years before joining the Geneva office of SunGard.

At SunGard, Benamar continued to greet new opportunities with his familiar “Why not?” attitude and soon found himself relocating first to Paris, where he would oversee the integration of a recent acquisition, and then to Hong Kong, where he was tasked with reengineering the finance function to align better with its greater Asia-Pacific operations.

After 12 years in Europe and Asia, Benamar felt another “Why not?” pulling him to return to the U.S., where last year—after stint in healthcare finance consulting—he entered the CFO office of treasury software and solutions provider Kyriba. –Jack Sweeney

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Greetings From the Post-Covid World - A Workplace Champions Episode Mar 26, 2021

Show notes

Featuring the CFOs: Tom Berquist, CFO, TIBCO, Terry Coelho,CFO BioDelivery Sciences , Kevin Ingram,CFO, FM Global, Robert Linder, CFO, Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar

685: When Opportunity Knocks | Rebecca Mahadeva, CFO, Greater Than One Mar 24, 2021

Show notes

For Rebecca Mahadeva, the late 1990s audit of a minor league baseball team was the type of rare career assignment that never failed to intrigue both accountants and non accountants alike.

At the time, Mahadeva had been serving a variety of technology audit clients as a young associate for Coopers & Lybrand when she added to her docket a major league baseball team otherwise known as the New York Mets.

“The Mets controller at the time engaged me to do a site visit and some compliance work on the financials of a single A team up in Canada known as the St Catherine’s Stompers,” explains Mahadeva, who says her visit’s findings were used to help bolster confidence behind the purchase price the Mets owners had divvied up for the single A team.

Following the close of the deal, St. Catherine’s Stompers relocated to Brooklyn, and was subsequently renamed The Brooklyn Cyclones . The newly rebranded Cyclones became the first professional baseball team to play in the borough of Brooklyn since the Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1958.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but this engagement was really my job interview,” observes Mahadeva, who says that ess than a year later she received a Mets job offer from the same controller. Mahadeva joined the Mets organization as an assistant controller and would spend more than a decade inside its finance function, often taking on assignments to improve operational efficiencies in different areas.

“Baseball is a very hard industry to leave—people seldom do—but there were no growth opportunities for me,” comments Mahadeva, who next accepted a controller position in a professional services firm specializing in marketing communications and healthcare—a realm that has continued to bring Mahadeva new and more senior roles.

Today, as CFO of marketing agency Greater Than One, Mahadeva believes that professional services present a challenge to finance leadership unlike that presented by other sectors.

Says Mahadeva: “The CFO of an agency must find the delicate balance between the output of our employees and the hours that are required to pursue new business opportunities.”

Of course, no matter what balance maybe achieved, few challenges will ever match the deal that brought baseball back to Brooklyn. – Jack Sweeney

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684: Completing the Job at Hand | Paul Ottolini, CFO, Russell Reynolds Mar 21, 2021

Show notes

When Paul Ottolini is asked to share a personal trait—one that a family member might divulge to us— the seasoned finance leader tells us that he likes to cut his own lawn and that he is known for being “cheap.”

Still, Ottolini makes clear to us that it’s more the satisfaction of completing a job and not the cost savings that regularly fuels his pursuit of manual tasks.

“I’m smiling when I spread 10 yards of mulch,” says Ottolini, whose words perhaps provide a clue to his past as well as to a work life cadence with which one suspects that he has rarely if ever fallen out of step during his more than three decades of career-building.

The son of a chemist employed by General Motors Corp., Ottolini graduated from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) after completing a co-op undergraduate degree that permitted students to pay for their education by alternating 3 months of classes with 3 months of work inside General Motors.

Upon graduation, Ottolini joined GM, where he worked 2 years as a software engineer before heading to business school at Harvard. With an MBA in hand, Ottolini next joined Deloitte Consulting, where for 6 years he piled up frequent flyer miles as a client-facing consultant—before a surprise return to GM.

“I had wanted to get off the road, and while with GM I knew that it probably was going to take 15 years to match what Deloitte had offered me in 6, I felt that coming from a GM family, I wanted to go back,” recalls Ottolini, who notes that at the time, he was introduced to the GM opportunity by a recruiter from Russell Reynolds Associates, the executive search firm whose CFO office he now occupies.

And just as GM and later Russell Reynolds would make repeat appearances in Ottolini’s professional life, so too did Deloitte, to which Ottolini returned in the early 2000s to serve in a succession of finance leadership roles that ultimately allowed him to place both feet on the CFO path. - Jack Sweeney

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683: When It’s Time to Sit in the Driver’s Seat | Stéphane Berthier, CFO, Uniphore Mar 17, 2021

Show notes

When Stéphane Berthier joined Uniphore of Palo Alto, CA, as CFO this past January, the move no doubt raised more than a few Silicon Valley eyebrows.

For more than two decades, Berthier had served a list of prestigious Bay Area tech companies as a top audit partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers, where his impressive tenure had originally been kicked off by his relocation from France to better serve one of the firm’s most coveted Silicon Valley clients: Hewlett-Packard.

During the next two decades, Berthier would become inducted into Silicon Valley’s coterie of familiar advisors and consultants known to provide sound advice to IPO-minded technology start-ups as well as software firms struggling to replace “on premise” customer revenue with new cloud-driven funds.

“I stayed 20 years and loved every aspect of client service—this was a tough decision for me, but I think that it was the right time,” says Berthier, who describes Uniphore as being uniquely positioned to pursue the fast-growing tech opportunities in conversational AI.

Asked what his priorities are when it comes to the CFO role, Berthier doesn’t hesitate to tell us what he believes distinguishes great CFOs from good ones.

“From the accumulated knowledge gained from my experience in dealing with CFOs, I would say that a great CFO is someone who not just can report the numbers but also knows how to influence them,” he observes.

He continues: “It’s like landing a plane on time: People expect that, but what sets an airline apart is the customer experience. For CFOs, it’s insight into how to influence the numbers.”

Certainly, the notion that Berthier was vacating his esteemed industry practice to become one of the very CFOs he had for so long served came as a surprise to both past and present CFO clients. For some, Berthier’s January appointment begged the question of why the CFO advisor’s aspirations had not surfaced sooner.

Says Berthier: “There had been other opportunities to leave along the way, but I finally realized that I needed to be in the driver’s seat—so it just became a matter of finding the right company.” –Jack Sweeney

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682: Achieving a Flywheel to Create Long Term Value | John Collins, CFO, LivePerson Mar 14, 2021

Show notes

When CFO John Collins is asked how his background in data modeling and strategy is influencing the role that finance plays inside LivePerson, the artificial intelligence (AI) software firm that he first joined 2 years ago, he draws our attention to the mountains of data accumulating alongside most businesses today.

“Given the volume of data that exists and that the tools to transform it into information have not evolved very much, my taking over the CFO seat and building out this team under me is putting us on a path to better achieve more data efficiency,” explains Collins, while referring to the team that he’s dubbed “DMD,” or Data Models and Decisions.

“Data is essentially an input into a model. The model may be rather simple and rules-based or it may involve more sophisticated machine learning, but the models manipulate and organize that data to produce useful information,” continues Collins.

Still, what sets Collins’s data aspirations apart from those of his more traditional CFO peers is not the act of transforming additional data into information, but what he refers to as the Flywheel Effect, through which the system for digesting the information over time “gets smarter” and begins to create “automations” for different transactional activities while reducing uncertainty and maximizing the returns around decision-making.

“That’s the essence of the flywheel that gets generated, through the vision that we have for the CFO and the modern tool set underneath him or her,” says Collins, who characterizes the proper operation of the accounting and reporting processes as “tables stakes” inside a broadening finance function.

“For me, the past should be accounted for perfectly, but where I would like to focus is on being a strategic partner and the creation of long-term value,” comments Collins, who considers the Flywheel Effect as a primary contributor to long-term value creation.

Says Collins: “From my perspective, it’s pretty clear that we’re digitizing the world at an accelerated pace, which has had implications not just for traditional products and services but also for traditional jobs and corporate functions.” –Jack Sweeney

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681: Not Settling for Business as Usual | Christian Geyer, CFO, ActiveNav Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

As Christian Geyer sees it, the path to the CFO office can begin just about anywhere.

For him, anywhere happened to be the accounts payable department of a DC-area construction company. Having built numerous government facilities across the region, the company hired Geyer—along with three other “payables specialists”—to manage the process of paying for the expansive list of building materials that the company was constantly acquiring to use in the construction of its buildings.

“I knew that if I stayed in step with the department’s typical rhythm, I would never go anywhere,” explains Geyer, who reports that shortly after his arrival, he converted what had been a 40-hours-a-week job into a 60 to 80 hours one.

“I looked at the purchase order process as well as the payment approval process, and I tried to whittle these down to figure out where the bottlenecks were in order to make us more efficient,” recalls Geyer, who quickly began eliminating snags within the process while at the same time introducing new approaches that ultimately cut the number of required man-hours per week from 160 to 10.

According to Geyer, the newly streamlined A/P processes helped to save the company $300,000 annually.

Still, what did he get out of it?

“This allowed me to free up my time and focus it elsewhere,” remembers Geyer, who adds that he soon became involved with the company’s accounts receivable and payroll processes, as well as its general ledger and audit support.

Says Geyer: “Too often you see people sitting in a job and doing the same mundane thing day in and day out. You have to challenge yourself and don’t settle.”

Next, Geyer joined a not-for-profit organization where he accepted a non-management position despite having a resumé populated with management experience.

“I took a step back in title, knowing that I could go in there and change that organization,” remarks Geyer, who notes that he reduced the organization’s reporting cycle from 6 months to 1 week—a feat that drew people’s attention and promptly got him promoted. –Jack Sweeney

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