CFOs Move Beyond ‘Bean Counting’ to Collaboration, Efficiency

Two decades ago, providing payments to workforce employees and channel members meant signing a check and putting it in the mail. Today, it’s an evolving process that engages recipients through text messages, emails and apps.

“We are constantly trying to figure out how to engage faster, more efficiently, using different modalities and different forms of payments,” Brian Levin, chief financial officer at Onbe, said when interviewed for PYMNTS’ Day in the Life of a Digital-First CFO series.

Levin has over 20 years of payments experience, and Onbe works with brands to create digital payment solutions for customers, workers and ecosystem partners.

Engaging Digitally With Recipients

That isn’t to say checks still aren’t common in many verticals, Levin said. Many property managers, for instance, still send checks when returning security deposits — a hassle for landlords and tenants alike.

Using a platform like Onbe, by contrast, can forge a deeper connection. The landlord can not only disburse the funds more efficiently but also let tenants know automatically when the money will arrive — and even connect them with a moving company.

“That’s where digitization of the payments universe has really evolved over time,” Levin said. “It’s really that engagement, that connectivity from the corporate partner of ours to how they engage with the recipient.”

Using the Finance Organization as a Strength of the Business

The role of the CFO has evolved along with this seismic shift. Where they were once scorekeepers who would close the books, they now engage with the operational side of the business.

By forging deeper connections with other parts of the business, CFOs can leverage the insights from the massive amounts of data their teams accumulate to inform change-the-business strategies.

“It’s engaging with the other peers in the organization to make sure that not only are we giving them the data they need to be more efficient, but how can we collaborate with them to be more efficient?” Levin said.

Staying One Step, Two Steps, Three Steps Ahead

Some of the recent challenges for CFOs relate to remote work, including keeping such workers healthy and productive — as well as dealing with unused real estate.

Levin said that on the day Onbe switched to remote working, he and other leaders met to discuss how to replicate watercooler conversations. They began holding weekly, 30-minute videoconferences between employees and leadership, and Levin noted that this takes what would have been commuting time and turns it into something productive.

“You take the lemons and make lemonade out of it by communicating with them in ways that make them more efficient,” Levin said.

With technology and innovation, you can’t predict what’s coming next, so you do what you can to adapt and build for what’s coming, Levin said. That’s true of finance organizations, too.

“We have to constantly evolve,” Levin said. “It’s not just the way that we interact, it’s how we go to market, it’s how we engage with our clients, and it’s the form factors and modalities and being relevant in the ever-changing landscape and staying one step, two steps, three steps ahead of everybody else — or even ahead of ourselves.”