Unum Finance Chief Stresses Importance of Advocating for Digital Transformation

Main Economic Officer

Steve Zabel

talks about how the Chattanooga, Tenn.-primarily based organization bought rid of spreadsheets, what he needs work candidates to bring and why finance chiefs participate in an critical function in marketing automation endeavours. This is the fifth section of a series that focuses on how CFOs and other executives digitize their finance functions. Edited excerpts abide by.

WSJ: What are the important steps you took as a corporation to modernize your finance purpose?

Mr. Zabel: The 1st action we took was about some of our actuarial money movement products. We utilize those to do pricing and forecasting and definitely almost everything about [financial performance]. We started off that back in 2013 and we have now cycled by way of all of our solutions and bought [them] on a regular system. Then, in 2017, we applied two issues which have been definitely useful. We introduced in a new standard ledger and we set in a [configurable reporting technology]. We do all of our money reporting off of that.

What that allowed us to do is at the corporate stage get rid of all the consolidation, all the spreadsheets. Step two has been to now glance at the accounting processes that we have and start off to implement more unique automation know-how.

WSJ: What are your key goals?

Mr. Zabel: There is a number of factors, [including] the top quality of the get the job done that our individuals are carrying out. It is them [having to] commit a lot less time compiling info for the function of building journal entries and also compiling information and facts just to do standard reporting. So shifting them from that type of operate to a lot more assessment and working with our product or service strains. It is a pretty competitive environment for expertise. What ever we can do to make it a additional fulfilling encounter for personnel is heading to support us in the lengthy operate.

WSJ: Is there an estimate how considerably time your workforce help save with these new systems?

Mr. Zabel: I have a great deal of useful parts underneath me and some of them are more targeted on the genuine money reporting and journal entries than some of the other individuals. On regular, individuals regions possibly used 70% to 80% of their time just acquiring the transactions done and then receiving the data again out of the ledger to be ready to review [them]. We’ve now moved that much more in direction of 50/50. What we’d like to do is wholly flip that [to] where by they only spend maybe 20% of their time actually processing transactions.

WSJ: How are you encouraging them do that?

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

WSJ: What’s still left to be completed prior to you strike the 20% target?

Mr. Zabel: There’s a handful of locations that we even now will need to perform on. 1 is knowledge. Any time you begin a digital transformation, it all commences with the information you have. Some of our info is in definitely superior shape. [For] some of it, we nevertheless have some do the job to do. So I think there is some foundational places where the data requirements to be in a better variety, but then it’s just producing the bandwidth for our teams to teach on their own on the resources and make the capability for them to be equipped to implement them.

WSJ: What is your head count in finance, and do you anticipate it to shrink as you automate even more?

Mr. Zabel: We have just over 500 people appropriate now in the finance firm, out of a whole employee base of in excess of 10,000. What we’re definitely hoping to do with driving efficiencies is not so much get head rely out, it is additional about redeploying individuals resources to solving much more company issues for our enterprise companions. I have no designs to reduce head count within the organization. I would rather invest all those resources and redeploy them to support the organization grow in different approaches.

WSJ: What are you on the lookout for when you evaluate opportunity candidates?

Mr. Zabel: It’s really significant that we have people that have a excellent specialized basis. We have a lot of formally experienced accountants and actuaries in the firm. We also have folks that have a true details science background. Heading ahead, what we’ll require extra of are persons that can translate organization processes into [automation opportunities]. [For] a good deal of the equipment that are out there these days you never really have to be that tech enabled in your official history. They are pretty configurable.

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

Mr. Zabel: You certainly have to be an advocate for it. Having the option each time you can to emphasize and acknowledge when we have those “ring the bell” moments exactly where people today have utilized know-how to make improvements to their enterprise procedures is really essential. I imagine the other point is just being plugged into what we’re performing with our electronic tactic far more broadly. I’m tied at the hip with the particular person that operates our [information technology] section and also our digital transform agenda.

Produce to Nina Trentmann at [email protected]