Unum Finance Chief Stresses Relevance of Advocating for Electronic Transformation

Main Fiscal Officer

Steve Zabel

talks about how the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based firm got rid of spreadsheets, what he would like task candidates to deliver and why finance chiefs participate in an vital purpose in marketing automation efforts. This is the fifth element of a sequence that focuses on how CFOs and other executives digitize their finance functions. Edited excerpts adhere to.

WSJ: What are the key actions you took as a organization to modernize your finance perform?

Mr. Zabel: The first step we took was all-around some of our actuarial funds movement models. We employ these to do pricing and forecasting and seriously anything around [financial performance]. We commenced that back in 2013 and we’ve now cycled by way of all of our solutions and got [them] on a steady system. Then, in 2017, we executed two factors which had been seriously practical. We introduced in a new common ledger and we set in a [configurable reporting technology]. We do all of our money reporting off of that.

What that permitted us to do is at the corporate level get rid of all the consolidation, all the spreadsheets. Stage two has been to now search at the accounting processes that we have and start to use extra particular automation engineering.

WSJ: What are your important objectives?

Mr. Zabel: There is a handful of matters, [including] the top quality of the get the job done that our people today are doing. It is them [having to] invest much less time compiling data for the reason of producing journal entries and also compiling details just to do primary reporting. So shifting them from that kind of do the job to much more evaluation and doing the job with our products traces. It is a quite aggressive setting for expertise. Whichever we can do to make it a far more satisfying encounter for staff is going to assist us in the extended run.

WSJ: Is there an estimate how a great deal time your staff conserve with these new technologies?

Mr. Zabel: I have a large amount of purposeful locations underneath me and some of them are extra targeted on the precise fiscal reporting and journal entries than some of the other individuals. On common, people regions likely put in 70% to 80% of their time just obtaining the transactions performed and then receiving the data back out of the ledger to be in a position to review [them]. We’ve now moved that additional toward 50/50. What we’d like to do is wholly flip that [to] in which they only invest it’s possible 20% of their time actually processing transactions.

WSJ: How are you aiding them do that?

Mr. Zabel: How we’re approaching it is we have brought in these applications and we have begun to demonstrate [our employees] what the instruments are, but also give them situation experiments of how they’ve been utilized.

WSJ: What is left to be carried out prior to you strike the 20% focus on?

Mr. Zabel: There’s a handful of locations that we continue to require to function on. Just one is facts. Any time you start a digital transformation, it all starts with the knowledge you have. Some of our data is in genuinely fantastic condition. [For] some of it, we continue to have some work to do. So I believe there’s some foundational parts the place the details demands to be in a better variety, but then it is just generating the bandwidth for our groups to educate them selves on the tools and generate the potential for them to be ready to utilize them.

WSJ: What is your head depend in finance, and do you expect it to shrink as you automate more?

Mr. Zabel: We have just in excess of 500 people today ideal now in the finance firm, out of a whole employee foundation of more than 10,000. What we’re actually attempting to do with driving efficiencies is not so substantially take head rely out, it is additional about redeploying those people resources to resolving a lot more company concerns for our small business associates. I have no options to lessen head depend within the group. I would instead shell out individuals sources and redeploy them to support the business grow in unique strategies.

WSJ: What are you seeking for when you assess likely candidates?

Mr. Zabel: It’s quite significant that we have individuals that have a fantastic complex foundation. We have a great deal of formally trained accountants and actuaries in just the firm. We also have people that have a correct knowledge science qualifications. Going ahead, what we’ll require a lot more of are people today that can translate company processes into [automation opportunities]. [For] a good deal of the applications that are accessible these days you never definitely have to be that tech enabled in your formal track record. They are incredibly configurable.

WSJ: How would you describe your position as CFO in this?

Mr. Zabel: You definitely have to be an advocate for it. Using the chance when you can to emphasize and admit when we have these “ring the bell” moments where people today have used engineering to enhance their organization processes is truly critical. I consider the other point is just staying plugged into what we’re executing with our digital system additional broadly. I’m tied at the hip with the particular person that runs our [information technology] office and also our digital adjust agenda.

Write to Nina Trentmann at [email protected]