Controllers Council recently held a roundtable panel discussion entitled, How Growing Organizations Build Finance and Accounting Operations, presented by BILL.
Panelists included Gregg D’Eon, VP Controller at LTK, eCommerce for creators and influencers, and Alicia Allen, Chief Accounting Officer and AVP Finance at Pinnacol Assurance, a workers comp insurance carrier.
Following are key takeaways to this discussion. If you are interested in learning more, view the full roundtable panel video archive video here.
In your current or prior roles, how did you manage talent to scale?
Gregg: It all starts, in my opinion, with an honest evaluation of your people, your processes, and your technology. When you go through each of those elements, do you have the right people doing the right things? Are we doing things the most efficient way? Is there a technology that we can implement to help us achieve scale? It becomes really clear what you need to scale. In my prior role, and even in my current role, most of the things that we investigate, and we challenge is, do we really need to put another person in front of this task?
Alicia: Pinnacol is an established company for so many years, and our core business hasn’t dramatically changed. So, I think when I think about our philosophy on scaling, it’s focusing on continuous growth and development within our team so we’re not just finding a need and then hiring for that need, but we’re really involved in proactively challenging our team members beyond their immediate job descriptions. So, trained to find opportunities, for instance, a staff accountant to lead a process improvement project or take ownership of a new reporting area that they haven’t done before so when we do have something that we need to address, then we have prepared them for future advancements. We also create new positions to promote people and that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re back filling their old positions. We’re flexible in what our structure can look like.
Then, I think technology is changing this a lot, but we maintain a constant focus on our efficiencies. We are regularly identifying opportunities for automation and evaluating what we can stop doing, therefore, we can free up capacity for our team to do more strategic initiatives and develop new skills.
Which F&A functions are hired in-house, contracted, or outsourced?
Gregg: I would say first and foremost is technical accounting. There’s a lot of teams that will eventually go on and hire a technical accounting and SEC reporting arm. And that’s kind of what we did at my prior role. But as you’re seeing a company grow, it’s probably one of the first places where you start to contract out with the EYs of the world and Deloittes of the world. So just make sure that you have your technical accounting documentation and positions ready for the next year’s audit.
Another area I’ve seen too is around accounts payable and accounts receivable. In my prior role, we had a dedicated team that was based out of Bulgaria that would essentially just be responsible for making sure that things got processed timely. I think it’s something that happens quickly. And usually the business case starts with, “hey, let’s hire this and outsource this. Let’s make sure that we get everything in a good spot.” And then you realize, okay, if we insource this, how much money would we save and how do we set that up?
Alicia: I think when we think about outsourcing, we focus on where efficiency and scale are key. So, we leverage external partners for certain things like payment processing. Pinnacol is workers comp insurance, so we have a lot of injured workers and medical providers that we need to pay. We have less so on the accounts payable like vendor management piece. So that has been something we’ve kept in-house, but there’s more technology tools to help with that. We’ve been slowly migrating to those types of things, but when we outsource, we’re looking for where we can get mass amounts of data processed efficiently.
For contracting, I’d say this is an area where we do leverage for things like internal audit, tax preparation, and then we utilize individual contractors on a temporary basis when we need to supplement the team during extended leaves or bring in specific knowledge.
What are some of the pros and cons of hiring internally, contracting, or outsourcing?
Outsourcing:
Pros:
- Alleviate some internal workloads by shifting some of those responsibilities that you then don’t have to hire internally.
- Can be cost effective for certain functions
- Specialized knowledge and infrastructure that you might not have in your organization.
Cons:
- Less control over the processes and sometimes leads to reduced transparency
Contracting:
Pros:
- Specialized knowledge and you should leverage it
Cons:
- Cost prohibitive
- You must stay within the scope to make sure they’re really delivering the desired outcomes
- Mot having a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish and all your expectations that are coming out of a particular product or project.
Hire/Internal:
Pros:
- More invested in the company, the culture and the long-term results
- Provide opportunities for talent development and certainly can be more cost effective in some areas
- Allows you that greater degree of control and transparency and really helps foster the ownership of the tasks that they’re doing
- Can be a motivating factor
Cons:
- More expensive if there is a recruiting process or onboarding process
- Sometimes, there is a learning curve
- “Do we have time to invest in someone right now?”
How is the shortage of CPA and accountants affecting your staffing decisions?
Gregg: From what I’ve seen is you’re seeing less CPA applicants applying to jobs. So, what does that really mean? It means that it’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but you’re going to have to adjust your expectations of what you want in that role. If it’s a highly technical role that requires a CPA, you may need to be a little bit more patient. But you may want to get creative in what you want to accomplish, how you want to leverage external parties, or how you want to adjust your job descriptions to accommodate for the CPA shortage. But CPA candidates get a little bit more than non-CPA candidates.
Alicia: First, we don’t have a lot of turnover at Pinnacol as we tend to have a good reputation in Colorado and offer a flexible work environment. But I do think we’re looking for a different set of skills than I would have looked for earlier in my career, because we’re really leaning into AI and what technology can do for us. We’re trying to just recognize that there’s an evolving landscape and really trying to look for the competencies in people and not just their designations. It’s also looking for people that have a curiosity to learn new things and have a skillset that isn’t just your basic CPA in accounting as we’ve always thought of it.
What role does technology play in talent management, and/or decision making?
To view this question and learn more about building your F&A operations, view the complete webcast here.
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