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CFO – Cathy Brown - Coggle Diagram
CFO – Cathy Brown
OVERVIEW
- Cathy reports directly to the CEO, Jon
- Key player in ABS & likely Jon’s heir - been with the company for 15 years
- Cathy is considered to be an expert in mergers and acquisitions and has been the driver of ABSs acquisition strategy
- The company faces an EXISTENTIAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, primarily due to DRAMATIC YoY REVENUE SHORTFALL that is SQUEEZING CAPITAL, MARGINS & the COMPANY'S OPERATIONAL ABILITY TO RESPOND.
- Strategically, she feels technology will be critical to the future of ABS having seen the significant limitations that OUTDATED LANDSCAPE, MANUAL METHODS and ANTIQUATED PROCESSES have created for the business, and she will play a significant part in the creation of their future strategy
- IT reports to her and, as a strong and pragmatic leader, she favors business execution over politics
- Her “trust but verify” approach is behind hiring “supervision” for the CIO: Craig Stires. Lee is aware of this.
- Seeing her possible future, and the leadership void left by Jon, she is proactively developing the “group” structure on top of the old ABS hierarchy, which she intends to break up.
BACKGROUND
- University Degree in Business Administration
- Started career at Ernst & Young, progressed to Senior Manager position
- Joined ABS and quickly ascended to CFO role
- Involved in reporting project when SAP ERP was implemented
PERSONALITY
- Result-driven and very analytical
- Decisions are based on thinking and thorough investigation
- Seeks & values the opinions of others on her team, but retains final say on all spend decisions given the financial state of the company
INTERVIEW ATTITUDE
- Attitude towards SAP: NEUTRAL, however she sees the value in business continuity and leveraging existing assets
- Power: Significant power, Financial Decision Maker, controls all unbudgeted spend decisions
- Emotional state: Fiscally Cautious but loves the M&A game, calm-assertive
SITUATION
- Responsible for HR, Finance & Controls, Operations & IT
- Closely involved in the implementation of ERP, but the project went over budget, which damaged her professional reputation and is a slight black mark against SAP
- She knows that there were partner/implementation issues throughout that project
- NOTE: Hint at this history to allow the SAP Sales team to attempt to uncover and assess impact
- Responsible for managing the company through a 30% drop in the last 8 years, with continued market uncertainty further compounding critical business problems associated with significant technology/infrastructure gaps and mismanagement across their global operations
- Has had to make hard choices in order to make the least damaging but necessary cuts to all cost, and where unavoidable, profit centers in an effort to maintain operating and net margins in the wake of their dramatic revenue shortfall, even to IT and HR where she sees control paths to restoring profitability
- Cathy knows every investment must be justified and she is inclined to maximize past SAP investments vs. recreating the wheel and all the costs associated with that effort
- Not only is ABS looking for a significant reduction in hardware costs (leasing, licensing and support), but they also want a 40% reduction in maintenance costs
- Cathy is under considerable pressure to succeed and has the confidence of the board, for now
- Cathy’s has 882 full-time employees in Finance & 540 full-time employees in HR.
- She needs a 40% cost reduction in HR that must balance the CEO’s initiative to implement an enterprise-wide HCM system
- Cathy is friends with Michael Mant, the account manager at IBM. They play golf together in their spare time
- Overall, ABS has:
- 8.082b € in revenue
- 5.657b € in operating costs
- 2.425b € in profits annually
Deferring to Tom
- to provide a plan to address near and intermediate term revenue growth
Deferring to Lee (CIO)
- to address the EDI issue that is putting strategic customer relationships in jeopardy
Cathy is not naïve about Tom's & Lee's ability to solve these problems and will completely take over control if necessary
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Role player note
Cathy is not unlike most CFO’s in this economy who have taken direct control over IT in order to manage this cost center, and the CIO, who has rarely enjoyed Board level confidence in terms of being perceived as strategic to the business
She is embracing technology and has a vision, however, is not technical herself but sees the operating efficiencies that properly aligned and deployed technology bring to the business
While she has been slightly burned by technology she sees it as more predictable and profitable than people when implemented properly
She is acutely aware of the high operating costs associated with FTE’s and seeks to have more control over both human capital and the revenue driving aspects of the business
She is ambitious and wants the CEO role and sees the opportunity to put the company back on its revenue track
While she would not admit this out loud she is emotionally attached to the acquisitions that she had so much to do with and does not want to see the company divest any of its operations, least of all the companies that have been acquired under her watch
While she personally likes Tom, she is not convinced that his visceral approach to the business is a fit for the future that she wants to build, this crisis will be his test
She has little patience for politics and sees Lee in a make or break position. She will defer heavily to Craig’s opinion in terms of how capable he is to assess IT solutions with respect to their impact on the business.
What she is not sharing with her leaders is that she is willing to make significant IT investments as a “one step back in order to make two steps forward” if she believes that the business impact exceeds the costs within a reasonable amount of time. She is a realist when it comes to the systemic nature of this problem and will commit funds if the return is compelling and financially justified. This is her chance to show the board what she can do visa vis the current CEO
When playing the role of Cathy - Push the sales teams to transcend the technology and SPEAK THE BUSINESS VALUE that SAP has brought to similar businesses in similar situations. Amateurs compete with each other, professionals compete with themselves.
PROBLEM 1 - fragmented & outdated technology infrastructure crippling revenue
- While Cathy is deferring to her Sales/Marketing, IT, HR & Operations leaders to manage their own KPIs, she is aware of the “elephant in the room” problems associated with the company’s fragmented and outdated technology infrastructure that is crippling revenue
- Given that she is the ultimate financial decision maker, any revenue related solutions are going to be high on her priority list (see LoBs leaders profiles for details on specific problem).
PROBLEM 2 - REPORTING
- Insight into the business is critical to Cathy and the other leaders’ ability to respond quickly to the changing needs of the market and the business and make more effective and profitable decisions
- Currently, there are just a few people in charge of reporting. They can’t fulfill all requirements from the business in time
- Furthermore, due to the fragmented data landscape, creating reports is extremely time-consuming.
IMPACT
- Leadership has to wait too long to get requested information, which negatively affects decision making process
- Valuable/Expensive staff must work overtime
- The finance department had to source two additional resources from to deliver the required monthly reports (at a cost of approximately 1,200 Euro each day).
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PROBLEM 3 - Unreliable XLS Planning & Budgeting
- Planning & budgeting is unreliable & requires lots of manual XLS work
IMPACT
- Ineffective and incorrect decisions are being made because data is not accurate or too late (no ‘real time’ capabilities)
- High costs for an external accountant to generate the annual report on risk and compliance. Currently the reports take 60 days to be released to Cathy to review, her target is to have it in 30 days (50% reduction in time)
Goals and Desires / Need Pay OffsIf ABS has a central solution for planning and budgeting:
- With the elimination of homemade spreadsheets, accurate data and better decision-making in uncertain markets will significantly help operations
- There will be a decrease in accounting costs, along with a strengthening of operational processes
Goals and Desires / Need Pay Offs
- If ABS has a central solution for planning and budgeting
- With the elimination of homemade spreadsheets, accurate data and better decision-making in uncertain markets will significantly help operations
- There will be a decrease in accounting costs, along with a strengthening of operational processes
PROBLEM 4 - HR Costs too HIGH
The costs of HR are too high. Due to past acquisitions, the HR processes and IT systems are fragmented and the number of HR employees is disproportionate. Cathy believes that this can be solved with technology rather than expensive FTE’s.
IMPACT
- High cost level of HR impacts profitability
- Low employee satisfaction due to low service level of HR
Goals and Desires / Need Pay OffsWhen ABS has an HR self-service solution for employees and managers:
- HR headcount can be reduced and profitability will increase
- Employee satisfaction will increase
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