Unum Finance Chief Stresses Importance of Advocating for Digital Transformation
Unum Team,
an coverage corporation outlined in the Fortune 500, introduced in new reporting engineering and other resources to reduce the quantity of time its finance staff spend on data entry and consolidating transactions.
Unum,
which has a small far more than 500 folks in its finance firm, is doing the job towards slashing the time allotted for manual processing duties to 20%, down from around 50% at this time.
Main Monetary Officer
Steve Zabel
talks about how the Chattanooga, Tenn.-centered corporation obtained rid of spreadsheets, what he would like career candidates to provide and why finance chiefs play an essential function in selling automation initiatives. This is the fifth section of a collection that focuses on how CFOs and other executives digitize their finance operations. Edited excerpts comply with.
WSJ: What are the key ways you took as a corporation to modernize your finance function?
Mr. Zabel: The initially phase we took was all over some of our actuarial money movement models. We use these to do pricing and forecasting and definitely every thing around [financial performance]. We begun that back in 2013 and we have now cycled by way of all of our solutions and got [them] on a constant platform. Then, in 2017, we carried out two issues which had been genuinely practical. We introduced in a new common ledger and we put in a [configurable reporting technology]. We do all of our financial reporting off of that.
What that allowed us to do is at the corporate degree get rid of all the consolidation, all the spreadsheets. Move two has been to now glance at the accounting procedures that we have and start to apply much more certain automation know-how.
WSJ: What are your important goals?
Mr. Zabel: There’s a couple factors, [including] the top quality of the do the job that our men and women are carrying out. It is them [having to] devote fewer time compiling information and facts for the objective of developing journal entries and also compiling facts just to do fundamental reporting. So shifting them from that sort of function to much more assessment and doing the job with our solution traces. It is a really competitive atmosphere for talent. What ever we can do to make it a extra gratifying knowledge for staff members is heading to support us in the extensive operate.
WSJ: Is there an estimate how a great deal time your workers help you save with these new technologies?
Mr. Zabel: I have a great deal of purposeful areas beneath me and some of them are additional concentrated on the real monetary reporting and journal entries than some of the other people. On normal, those people spots most likely expended 70% to 80% of their time just receiving the transactions finished and then getting the info back out of the ledger to be in a position to analyze [them]. We have now moved that more in the direction of 50/50. What we’d like to do is fully flip that [to] exactly where they only expend perhaps 20% of their time in fact processing transactions.
WSJ: How are you serving to them do that?
Mr. Zabel: How we’re approaching it is we’ve brought in these applications and we’ve started off to exhibit [our employees] what the equipment are, but also give them case reports of how they’ve been used.
WSJ: What is remaining to be performed in advance of you hit the 20% concentrate on?
Mr. Zabel: There is a number of spots that we even now have to have to operate on. One is knowledge. Any time you begin a digital transformation, it all starts with the info you have. Some of our details is in truly excellent shape. [For] some of it, we even now have some operate to do. So I feel there is some foundational locations wherever the details requirements to be in a much better sort, but then it is just producing the bandwidth for our teams to educate them selves on the applications and make the capacity for them to be ready to use them.
WSJ: What is your head depend in finance, and do you anticipate it to shrink as you automate even further?
Mr. Zabel: We have just above 500 individuals ideal now in the finance organization, out of a whole employee base of over 10,000. What we’re genuinely attempting to do with driving efficiencies is not so substantially acquire head depend out, it’s extra about redeploying all those assets to resolving far more organization problems for our enterprise partners. I have no strategies to decrease head count inside of the business. I would rather commit individuals methods and redeploy them to assistance the company grow in distinctive methods.
WSJ: What are you searching for when you evaluate prospective candidates?
Mr. Zabel: It’s very critical that we have folks that have a great technical foundation. We have a large amount of formally experienced accountants and actuaries within just the organization. We also have folks that have a true facts science background. Going ahead, what we’ll need much more of are men and women that can translate enterprise procedures into [automation opportunities]. [For] a large amount of the tools that are obtainable today you never definitely have to be that tech enabled in your formal qualifications. They’re extremely configurable.
WSJ: How would you explain your position as CFO in this?
Mr. Zabel: You undoubtedly have to be an advocate for it. Getting the chance every time you can to spotlight and accept when we have these “ring the bell” times in which persons have used technological know-how to make improvements to their business procedures is actually significant. I imagine the other point is just staying plugged into what we’re executing with our digital approach much more broadly. I’m tied at the hip with the individual that runs our [information technology] department and also our digital modify agenda.
Produce to Nina Trentmann at [email protected]
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