Unum Finance Chief Stresses Importance of Advocating for Digital Transformation

Main Financial Officer

Steve Zabel

talks about how the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based corporation acquired rid of spreadsheets, what he wants career candidates to bring and why finance chiefs enjoy an critical purpose in promoting automation attempts. This is the fifth aspect of a series that focuses on how CFOs and other executives digitize their finance functions. Edited excerpts comply with.

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

Mr. Zabel: The initial action we took was about some of our actuarial hard cash move models. We make the most of individuals to do pricing and forecasting and really all the things around [financial performance]. We started off that back in 2013 and we’ve now cycled by all of our products and acquired [them] on a regular platform. Then, in 2017, we implemented two items which were seriously beneficial. We brought in a new general ledger and we place in a [configurable reporting technology]. We do all of our fiscal reporting off of that.

What that permitted us to do is at the company level get rid of all the consolidation, all the spreadsheets. Move two has been to now seem at the accounting procedures that we have and start out to utilize more unique automation technological innovation.

WSJ: What are your critical objectives?

Mr. Zabel: There’s a few points, [including] the top quality of the function that our folks are doing. It is them [having to] spend much less time compiling information and facts for the purpose of producing journal entries and also compiling information just to do fundamental reporting. So shifting them from that form of operate to extra evaluation and functioning with our products strains. It is a pretty competitive setting for expertise. No matter what we can do to make it a additional gratifying working experience for staff is likely to assist us in the very long operate.

WSJ: Is there an estimate how a lot time your staff members help you save with these new systems?

Mr. Zabel: I have a ton of practical areas beneath me and some of them are much more centered on the actual fiscal reporting and journal entries than some of the some others. On normal, these parts most likely used 70% to 80% of their time just acquiring the transactions finished and then finding the facts again out of the ledger to be capable to review [them]. We have now moved that additional toward 50/50. What we’d like to do is wholly flip that [to] where by they only commit maybe 20% of their time really processing transactions.

WSJ: How are you assisting them do that?

Mr. Zabel: How we’re approaching it is we’ve brought in these applications and we have started to clearly show [our employees] what the resources are, but also give them scenario scientific studies of how they’ve been utilized.

WSJ: What’s remaining to be carried out right before you hit the 20% target?

Mr. Zabel: There is a handful of parts that we nevertheless have to have to work on. Just one is info. Any time you start off a digital transformation, it all starts with the details you have. Some of our details is in genuinely great form. [For] some of it, we however have some perform to do. So I consider there is some foundational spots in which the info desires to be in a greater kind, but then it’s just developing the bandwidth for our groups to educate them selves on the instruments and generate the ability for them to be equipped to apply them.

WSJ: What is your head rely in finance, and do you count on it to shrink as you automate additional?

Mr. Zabel: We have just in excess of 500 folks suitable now in the finance group, out of a whole staff base of about 10,000. What we’re seriously making an attempt to do with driving efficiencies is not so substantially consider head rely out, it is more about redeploying those sources to resolving additional business enterprise issues for our enterprise associates. I have no options to reduce head depend within the firm. I would fairly spend all those means and redeploy them to help the organization develop in different strategies.

WSJ: What are you seeking for when you evaluate probable candidates?

Mr. Zabel: It is quite crucial that we have individuals that have a superior complex basis. We have a lot of formally educated accountants and actuaries within the business. We also have people that have a genuine facts science history. Likely forward, what we’ll need a lot more of are persons that can translate company processes into [automation opportunities]. [For] a large amount of the instruments that are out there these days you don’t seriously have to be that tech enabled in your formal track record. They are extremely configurable.

WSJ: How would you explain your purpose as CFO in this?

Mr. Zabel: You unquestionably have to be an advocate for it. Getting the option anytime you can to highlight and accept when we have individuals “ring the bell” moments the place men and women have used technological know-how to improve their small business processes is really crucial. I consider the other thing is just keeping plugged into what we’re accomplishing with our electronic strategy extra broadly. I’m tied at the hip with the individual that operates our [information technology] division and also our electronic adjust agenda.

Generate to Nina Trentmann at [email protected]