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A CFO Success Story: Naresh Bansal, CFO of Actiance

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Naresh Bansal - CFO of Actiance
Naresh Bansal – CFO of Actiance

The following is from an interview with Naresh Bansal. Naresh became CFO of Actiance in May 2016. Previously, Naresh served as Vice President, Finance of ZScaler, as announced in CFO Moves. This interview was edited for clarity.

Samuel: What attracted you to Actiance?

Naresh: For the last 4 – 5 years, I was at a company called Zscaler that has done extremely well. I helped the company grow from a company of less than 200 people to a company of well over 800 people. But what really piqued my interest was there is such phenomenal opportunity for similar growth at Actiance. And after talking to the executive team and board members, and realizing how committed they were. It really helped solidify my interest in the company, and I decided that I do want to be part of this success story. The product which they had developed is so completely ahead of the technology curve, in the potential that it offers. It has a great executive team as well as great backers.

  • Quick Takes from Naresh Bansal on…
    The new CFO

    The role of the CFO has evolved so much, we cannot do just finance; we have to make sure that we understand and are partnering with all the other parts of the organization – like marketing, sales, engineering, pretty much every part of the organization. You need to understand that they are part of the business, and to be a partner of that.

    Dealing with rapid growth

    You need to make sure there are defined processes around that growth. Especially when you’re growing at such a fast pace – it becomes even more important that we have all the processes in place. You need to make sure that you’re thinking ahead of the curve.

    Developing your team

    Give them more responsibility. People want to be challenged. If you have people who are hungry to get more, they won’t be satisfied unless they are constantly being challenged. If people are given additional responsibility and accountability, they will rise to it.

    Learning from others

    Be very open – if your counterpart has a better idea, be open to adopting their idea. Be collaborative. It’s not about people imposing their will on the next.

    Networking is key

    You have to be constantly staying in touch with your network. It could be anyone. It could be the auditor that you work with, your external vendor that you work with. We all need to make a very conscience effort – this has to become second nature.

Samuel: Each career move that you’ve made has been good for you. What does this opportunity have for you, in your ability to deliver and accomplish, that some of the other maybe didn’t?

Naresh: I feel that the opportunity at Actiance is unique. When I look at the market opportunity, they have the top ten of the ten top banks as their customers. And it’s the ability of the company to monetize those customers. That was a very compelling reason.

For me, having been the head of finance for my last company, this was a phenomenal opportunity to step into the more official CFO role of the company and help them grown substantially, to drive the strategy, drive the approach.

This company is at the intersection of big data, social media and compliance. And all of these three markets are all growing at a phenomenal pace. This is reacting to great opportunities, in a much more regulated environment.

Samuel: What are some of the new challenges that face you in this new adventure at Actiance?

Naresh: There are 2 kinds of software companies. There are companies that have been born in the cloud. There are some companies that have been around for a while and are transitioning to the cloud. Actiance has both of those aspects. Actiance has been in a transition where they have been moving from a perpetual software licensing model to a cloud model. And this is really what I brought to the table – that past experience of having been in those fast growing SaaS companies. Bringing that mindset in terms of how you look at metrics, which metrics to look at, how operationally should we be looking at, whether we should be looking at the pricing strategy, looking at the compensation strategy for the sales teams, looking at it across the board, looking at how the planning needs to be done, etc. In SaaS companies, it’s a very different approach to all of these things.

The second aspect is the rapid-growth the company was experiencing. How do you make sure there are defined processes around that growth? Especially when you’re growing at such a fast pace – it becomes even more important that we have all the right processes in place. And if we don’t have all those processes in place, then we’re putting them in place. We’re putting all the systems, the controls, the whole environment. When you’re a small company, you do what you do. But as you’re growing, you have to make sure that you’re thinking ahead of the curve, and that you have all of the right systems, the right processes. And looking at where the team has the experience and the tools to help build us to the next level.

Samuel: Do you feel have enough of the right team members necessary to accomplish what you need?

Naresh: It’s like anything else – as the company grows, there are different talents of people that we need to look at. As of today, when I entered the organization, there is the absolutely the right amount of people that we need. The people here are phenomenally dedicated. We do have the right team. But as the company grows, we need to make sure we have the correct leaders in all the areas.

Samuel: What are some of the top CFO challenges that face growth companies – like yours – today?

Naresh: Every company is different. Every industry is different. And every stage of growth is different. If you’re dealing with a very fast rate – how do you balance all of the requirements and all of the resources? Finance is one of the areas that you should be able to help with that. But what other things can you look at? How can I help the sales team deliver their growth objectives? How can I make sure as the CFO, I’m the enabler of that growth and not the impediment? It needs to be a good balance where you are growing at a very good rate, but at the same time making sure you keep your burn to a minimum. And where you are adding value to your investment along the way. To me, that’s the main challenge – how do you grow at a fast rate? And making sure that you’re very disciplined about your capital allocation.

Samuel: As a leader. How do you develop other leaders?

Naresh: There is the hiring of people who are very smart – even if they haven’t done everything, but that they smart and have a lot of potential. The other aspect to being a leader is to give your team a lot of guidance and mentoring and tutoring along the way, to be in a position that you’re able to guide other people, and to groom these folks to become the future leaders.

And the third element is giving them more responsibility. People want to be challenged. If you have the right people who are hungry to get more, they won’t be satisfied unless they are constantly being challenged. To me, if people are given additional responsibility and accountability, people will grow. The problem then is – how can I grow? If I have a strong team, that going to help me grow? Will it help my role, help me to do more things, help me to partner with other parts of the business in a more effective manner. To me it’s all about hiring the right people. Helping and grooming them by providing them coaching, and by giving them more responsibility along the way.

Samuel: Other than the CEO, who do you feel is the most important business partner for the head of finance in any organization?

Naresh: Well, the CEO is the most important. But when I look across the table, everyone who is on the executive team is a critical component of that. Also marketing and sales are among the most important people. If you’re looking only at the numbers, everything smells great, everything looks great. So you need to ask yourself – how can I partner with the sales team to make them into a high performance organization, making sure they have the right quotas, making sure they have the right compensation structures in place. On the flip side, it’s sort of making sure we’re setting the targets in the right way. And by providing the correct incentives for the marketing leadership so they can effectively deliver. Supporting these guys with a large enough budget allocation so they can have the right tools in order to deliver these numbers. So it’s a very important partnership with sales and marketing.

Similarly, for cloud operations and engineering, it’s about making sure we’re growing in all the appropriate areas – that we have enough engineering talent, that we’re bringing in more and more, and that we’re doing it cost effectively. Whether it’s putting all the data centers we have in different parts of the world, making sure we have the right contacts in place, so we can help the company scale as we grow. And since we are growing, we need to be looking at expanding in different geographies, and building multiple data centers.

Samuel: What’s your style to get the other senior-level executives to work together with you?

Naresh: We are very fortunate in that it is very collaborative – we all feel and believe we are going in the same direction. How do we make this company a big success? Everyone is looking for the ideas. And similarly, I’m very open to ideas – if my counterpart has a better idea, I’m very open to adopting their idea. Or if I have an idea, they are very open to adopting my ideas. It’s very collaborative. It’s not about people imposing their will on the next. Because, in the end of the day, it’s about how to create value for everybody.

Samuel: What advice would you give to finance professionals who want to grow into the CFO chair?

Naresh: The role of the CFO has evolved so much, we cannot do just finance; we have to make sure that we understand and are partnering with all the other parts of the organization – like marketing, sales, engineering, to pretty much every part of the organization. You need to be able to understand that they are part of the business, and to be a partner with the rest of the executive team. And not even just the executive team – but all the different parts of the organization, to understand their needs and their requirements. How to work with them in a better way, to collaborate and help grow the company. That’s one aspect.

The external factor is networking. Networking is key. If you know your friends are the board members or the people that you work with, it’s not like you meet them once and they’re going to call you the next day for an opening. Because you only want them to call you when they have an awesome opportunity. Not just any opportunity that they have available. You have to be constantly staying in touch with your network, whether it’s the board member that you’ve worked with in the past, or some of the executives that admire your work and that you played a role in their success. It could be anyone. It could be the auditor that you work with, your external vendor that you work with. Everybody will want to work with somebody that has good success. And can bring success to your organization.

Samuel: You’re preaching to the converted. All finance professionals will agree with that in principal, but they’ll always say – I’m too busy. How is someone like yourself able to give attention to that while being very busy?

Naresh: This is one of those things where I wish I could do a lot more. It’s true, the job that you have at hand is far more important. But at the same time, networking is great. Some of the things that I have done personally is that I’m part of the local CFO group here which is call FEI, and they have the monthly dinner. And I at least try to go, if not every month then at least every other month. It’s a great avenue where they bring in a great speaker and have a dinner meeting, so at least you’re not taking anything away from your day. And then you have the fabulous chance to meet the rest of the leaders of the CFOs, share your ideas, and just be able to network. And even in my day to day job, things come up where I might have some questions, but at least I know I have a network of people who I can call and ask for guidance, and ask – have you ever had the same challenge? And how have you dealt with that challenge of such a scenario. Without sharing anything confidential. People generally want to help each other out. I’ve had people call me, asking for advice, and I actually feel like I’m privileged enough to be able to help out somebody.

Samuel: Anything else you want to share with our readers?

Naresh: I think we all need to make a very conscience effort to network – this has to become second nature. Especially as a CFO. Because, especially in my world, you’re not just managing your company, but your also constantly hiring as well. Networking is the key. And to try to learn and absorb. Every year – what have I added on to my skill sets. What more have I learned? And not just be content and think I’m the one who knows everything.

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Samuel Dergel is a Principal with Dergel Executive Search. He is an executive search consultant, executive coach, blogger, speaker, trainer and author.

This blog originally appeared in Samuel’s CFO Blog

A CHRO Success Story: Skip Schipper, Chief People Officer of Yext

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Skip Schipper - Chief People Officer at Yext
Skip Schipper – Chief People Officer at Yext

The following is from an interview with Brian “Skip” Schipper. As announced in CHRO Moves, Skip became Chief People Officer of Yext in May 2016. Skip joined Yext with over 30 years of human resources experience, including a long stint at Twitter, where he oversaw global Human Resources and strategic people initiatives. Prior to his work at Twitter, he served as Chief People Officer at Groupon, and led human resources at Cisco.

Samuel: What made you decide that Yext was the right next career move for you after Twitter?

Skip: A big part of my decision to join was based on talking to Yext customers. It became immediately obvious that the Yext platform adds tremendous value to the businesses that use it – and not just in marketing, but throughout their organizations. I’m excited about the opportunity to contribute to the growth of Yext, it’s that much better knowing that the Yext platform is having such a positive impact for our customers.

Samuel: Tell us about the challenges that face you in this new adventure at Yext.

Skip: Yext has done an amazing job attracting terrific talent and creating a company that employees love. The challenge is to ensure that we continue to attract great people to Yext and make the employee experience even better while continuing to expand on our core strengths, attract more customers to our platform, and scale. While Yext has many large global clients, we’re only just getting started putting resources in markets outside North America as another growth driver. I’m looking forward to helping to drive our team’s global expansion.

Samuel: What are the top HR challenges that face growth companies today?

Skip: In their formative years, companies are built through the often heroic work of entrepreneurial team members. At Compaq Computer Corp in the mid-1980s, we used to characterize ourselves not as a small company, but rather as a big company in its formative stages. I think of Yext in much the same way.

Building a great company for the long run means building sustainable organizational strength.  That requires moving past a dependency on individual heroism, to building organizational capability. To me, there are two tests for whether the organization has achieved a sustainable level of capability: whether the organization can both form and then execute on strategy and whether we have achieved the resiliency to thrive through the inevitable difficulties that all companies face.

Samuel: How do you develop other leaders?

Skip: The best leaders with whom I have worked are highly intentional about the job of leading others.  Leading requires conscientious allocation of time to understand customer problems, creating a compelling vision of the future and forming the strategy to achieve that vision. And, the best leaders allocate considerable time in communicating to all their constituents. They don’t just lead their immediate teams–they lead and align the whole organization.

Investing in learning and sharing leadership frameworks has a place, but the best way to develop a leader is to broaden her or his accountabilities and expect real results beyond what the leader had previously proven.  Because leadership involves intentional action, it’s important to ensure the developing leader is given intensified support and feedback around whether they are investing enough time with customers and with their teams, and whether the actions taken are leading to others internalizing the vision and strategy, and are thereby able to align their own work to the vision.

Samuel: Who, from your perspective and experience (other than the CEO), is the most important business partner to the head of HR in any organization? How can they work best together?

It’s important that the head of HR be fully integrated into the leadership team of the company.  There is an art to being close and trusted, but it’s critical that the head of HR never compromise his or her integrity and objectivity. The business-facing members of the HR team need the latitude to build the relationships necessary to drive the people and organization agenda of the business units, geographies, or functions they support.  So job one is ensuring those business-facing team members are highly capable and valued.  In effect, they are the HR function to the part of the business they support.

With highly capable HR business partners in place, the CHRO inevitably spends relatively more time with the leaders of other staff functions such as the CFO and GC. I find many of the decisions that directly impact the employee experience requires close alignment and collaboration across the staff disciplines.

Collaboration and coordination requires face time. I’m in favor of having a governance framework in place that puts leaders of support functions around the same table with a regular cadence.  Another approach I have seen work well is to hold periodic combined all-hands meetings across teams such as Finance and Accounting, HR, Legal, PR & Comms, and IT.

Samuel: What advice would you give to HR professionals who want to make it to the Chief People Officer chair?

Over a career, it is important that HR professionals prove they can both be an effective HR generalist (business partner) and lead one or more HR staff roles. These roles draw on often complementary skills and leading the function means having an first-hand experience-grounded appreciation for what it takes to be successful in each.

The analytical rigor, the compliance requirements, and the board exposure that often accompanies a compensation and benefits role are increasingly seen as important if not a necessary prerequisite for leading HR. The time spent leading compensation and benefits at several Fortune 50 companies has been invaluable to me in both heads of HR roles as well as the boards on which I serve.

Having functional expertise in compensation and benefits has also helped to build strong people analytics teams in my previous assignments. Investment in strong analytical capabilities within the HR function has enabled much more rigorous comprehension of people and organization problems, and much greater accuracy and efficiency in architecting low-tax solutions to those challenges. Too much of the work of HR has historically had a questionable ROI due to opinion-driven diagnostics and imprecise problem-solving.

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Samuel Dergel is a Principal with DERGEL Executive Search. He is an executive search consultant, executive coach, blogger, speaker, trainer and author.

2 Types of Knowledge Required for Career Success

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I have a theory that there are 2 elements required for career success:

    • What you know – you are hired and compensated because you have excellent skills and abilities that are in demand and few others have.
    • Who you know – you have an ability to make things happen because people like you and trust you, people are willing to open doors for you and you are able to add value to yourself and others based on this ability.

Most people in the world that are successful use a combination of these two knowledge points. Some are more “What you know”. Some are more “Who you know”. Few are solely one or the other.

What is your knowledge mix for success?

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Samuel Dergel is a Principal with DERGEL Executive Search. He is an executive search consultant, executive coach, blogger, speaker, trainer and author.

This blog originally appeared in Samuel’s CFO Blog

The Value of “Thank You”

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Most parents drill their children to say “thank you” when receiving something from someone. People that meet children judge their parents favorably when the children are polite and say “thank you”.

There is a good chance as a child your parents ‘strongly suggested’ you write Thank You Cards for birthday and other gifts received from relatives and family friends.

In today’s age of instant communications, is saying “Thank You” a lost art?

People say “Thank You” all the time. “ty” is the new “Thank You”. However a text message or email or LinkedIn message is easy, and has less impact. How you say Thank You is important. Taking effort to communicate your thanks is much more effective than saying these two words in passing.

When you want to make a difference and want to be remembered, go out of your way when saying thank you. This applies in a job interview context as well as networking. The cost of a card and a postage stamp is minimal compared to the return you receive on being remembered and staying top of mind.

Stand out from your peers. Buy a set of cards and stamps and keep them on your desk. Use them liberally. Write notes with meaning and value in your own handwriting. I guarantee an excellent return on investment.

When was the last time you sent a Thank You Card?

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Samuel Dergel is a Principal with Dergel Executive Search. He is an executive search consultant, executive coach, blogger, speaker, trainer and author.

This blog originally appeared in Samuel’s CFO Blog

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