Voice of the CFO: Finance Leaders Balance Spend With Remote Employees’ Needs

Like many chief financial officers, Matt Wolf, CFO at ChartHop, spends a lot of his time connecting with other people working remotely.

“If you look at my calendar, on a regular basis it’s meeting after meeting after meeting and trying to find ways to better collaborate, better share information and share knowledge,” Wolf told PYMNTS.

That tracks with the goals of ChartHop, a people analytics platform that Wolf said is designed to “help, manage and support what is their most important asset — their people.”

Wolf joined ChartHop in January, bringing more than a decade of financial leadership experience from startups and global organizations. He is tasked with supporting the company’s growth plans and ensuring its 200 employees have the resources they need to succeed.

Putting Appropriate Platforms, Tools in Place

Interviewed for the PYMNTS series “A Day in the Life of a Digital-First CFO,” Wolf said one of the first things he did when he joined the rapidly growing company was to focus on spending, putting visibility into spend and putting appropriate platforms and tools in place.

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These included platforms that allow people to request virtual credit cards, so the company no longer has physical cards. In addition, all the company’s bill pay goes through a single platform.

“It’s really done so that we have both approval chains and things are automated,” Wolf said. “People have visibility, managers can see what their teams are spending, and then the accounting team spends less time coding and more time producing numbers and doing analytics around that.”

Giving Visibility into the Organization

In the current economy, companies focus more on headcount planning, a need served by products like ChartHop that give visibility into an organization. Wolf said he uses the platform daily for the company’s planning purposes, including comp cycles and reviews.

“Obviously, people are looking at all costs right now — as we are — and we’re looking to be a positive force there and give people visibility into their organization,” Wolf said.

Wolf said wages are important for obtaining and retaining employees, but so is the overall employee experience. ChartHop tracks not just compensation but also diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB), employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) and other factors that come into the employee experience.

“Companies have a better view of their customers than they do of their own employees, in some cases,” Wolf said. “So, that’s really what ChartHop looks to do is to give people a very visual look into their company for planning purposes, for engagement purposes and all the things that go around that employee experience.”

The Right Resources

The company is always looking forward and planning its growth, how it funds it, how it supports it, how it supports new customers coming on and how the product evolves to meet new market demands, Wolf said.

“One of my roles as CFO is to make sure that everyone in the company has the resources they need to do their jobs,” Wolf said. “One of those things is making sure they have the right people, making sure they have the right tools, and then tracking performance and all those things that go along with that.”

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