Automation is a key part of newly-appointed Branch CFO Matt Peterson’s plan to help the workforce payments provider get to the next stage of growth, he said.
The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based business has grown its revenue by more than 1,200% over the last three years, and is looking to continue that trajectory by expanding its payment infrastructure and enterprise reach, according to a Feb. 17 press release announcing the CFO appointment.
“If you really want to help a company grow and become an enduring business, you need to be just as agile as the products your company's making in the finance team,” Peterson told CFO Dive in an interview. “So what does that mean? That means we're automating our systems. We're automating as much manual work as possible.”
The speed to scalability jump
Peterson’s career has spanned numerous financial leadership stints at usage-based technology companies, joining Branch after a three-year span in the top financial seat for gifting platform Snappy, according to his LinkedIn profile. Previous roles include serving as SVP, finance for text messaging marketer Attentive, VP of finance for Fastly — where he helped to navigate the company’s 2010 IPO — and as a senior associate, M&A for Union Square Advisors.
He is joining Branch at a time when the workforce payments platform is at a key place to make a crucial jump from “speed to scalability,” he said. Early-stage businesses need to be nimble and adaptable, he said, but as they grow and begin to craft longer-term plans, that mindset needs to necessarily shift to “add some more operational rigor and discipline,” he said.
As such, a huge focus for Peterson coming into the seat is “aligning the financial plan to the product roadmap,” he said, an area where he sees careful, strategic use of automation as playing a crucial role. The company has already laid a “decent foundation” when it comes to its core operating systems, policies and procedures, but Peterson’s goal is to help mature that foundation.
“I’m about 100 days in. I feel like we have the reporting already to a really decent spot,” he said. “Now we're in the process of, ‘we made it exist. Now we need to automate it.’”
Peterson views AI and automation as an amplifying tool, rather than a replacement for skilled employees. For instance, Branch’s finance team is currently at about 10 people, and Peterson sees effectively tapping automation as way that could enhance that team: helping the business to scale without adding to that headcount.
The team has already begun building out tools to do daily journal entries and automated reconciliations, he said. In accounting, the “ultimate goal” of automation is to enable the team to do more strategizing and recommending, leading not just to a faster, but ultimately tighter close, he said.
“Your rules are more accurate, he said. “You can get the books out sooner, get the news to your FP&A team sooner, so you can start planning and adjusting the business as needed.”
Moving beyond ROI
Effectively utilizing automation and AI can also help to upskill the whole of the finance team: freeing up time means a vice president can take on my strategic tasks, filtering down through to the controller and other members of the team, “and now you have your junior staff doing work that they otherwise would never get exposure to because they were too busy doing manual tasks,” Peterson said.
When looking to implement new automated tools, it’s also important for CFOs to keep in mind that return on investment is just one part of the puzzle.
“There's a lot of abstract software out there. It's not about just the tangible ROI; that's table stakes,” Peterson said. “It's, does it fit within my three-year roadmap? Does this software tool scale to x100 million or billion of revenue without me needing to replace it?”
