Convergence of IT and Finance for Better Business Outcomes

Jeffrey Chenevey, Senior Director, IT and Digital Services Leader, Vitamix

Can you talk about your roles and responsibilities in your current organization?

I have worked in the consulting space for 30 years. I was a partner at Accenture, handled many different industry-specific transformation projects, and led some very large-scale outsourcing programs for both commercial and federal agencies. The extensive insights I gained from those consulting work led me to start my own business, where I landed Vitamix as my client. Later I switched to Vitamix and have now assumed the role of a Senior Director, where I manage the company's global IT and digital services.

Can you explain how the IT and digital service space has evolved through the years?

The IT industry has witnessed a lot of change over the years. Earlier, IT support services were a lot more centralized. This means if any department in an organization, including the financial team, had any technical challenge, they had to raise a ticket and wait for their turn to the problem. The process invariably was slow and cumbersome. This also deterred the teams from investing in technology solutions as they had no faster means to solve an IT issue.

Today, organizations have evolved to create fusion teams, which bring people with domain knowledge and IT competencies together in the same team. As a result, the interaction and collaboration between IT and a particular department—in this case, finance—has considerably improved.

The decentralization of the IT department, resulting in the reduced wait time for IT support services, is also helping organizations make significant gains in terms of technology adoption. In light of this, organizations are even hiring domain-specific talent with a technology background to make their teams more self-reliant.

What are some of the challenges you notice prevailing in the market today?

Finding qualified people and retaining them is becoming increasingly challenging. Staffing is one of the biggest concerns in any industry today since the pandemic, and it will not change anytime soon. For instance, our company is based in Northeastern Ohio. We used to look at the candidates in the Ohio Valley for filling new positions. But after the pandemic, we are no longer concentrating on geography-based competition and tapping into the talent base worldwide. Needless to say, this adds extra pressure on us to become more creative in attracting talent.

"Today, organizations have evolved to create fusion teams, which bring people with domain knowledge and IT competencies together in the same team. As a result, the interaction and collaboration between IT and a particular department—in this case, finance—has considerably improved."

This trend is a direct repercussion of businesses' transition to the remote working model. Employees no longer want to stay bound to a location; they want to travel and work at their convenience. The same applies to recruiting new talent as well. So, the very nature of location-based hiring and talent management is taking a swift turn.

Added attention to cybersecurity is its other outcome. Since employees are now working from home or remote locations, the definition of an enterprise's IT perimeter is changing, and cybersecurity solutions need to come up with more ingenious ways to manage endpoint security to protect an enterprise's mission-critical data and assets.

I have spent considerable time in the U.S. Department of Defense, and I leverage that domain knowledge to support my company's cybersecurity best practices. We use leading-edge tools to constantly scan for security vulnerabilities, remediate patches, and be notified in case an unwelcome intruder enters our systems.

Working as an IT and digital service leader at Vitamix, what are some of the projects that you're working on in the IT and digital technology space?

Some companies take a "one cloud" approach for everything. We follow a more multi-cloud approach; to mix and match solutions and services from a cost, stability, and security advantage. Our multi-cloud strategy aligns the best of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure Platform, for instance, and tailors it accordingly to meet our business and customer requirements.

We're also leveraging robotic process automation (RPA) within our business in areas replete with intensive manual processes. In the financial segment, this can either be cumbersome data entry or time-consuming data reconciliation. By integrating RPA into those processes, we are removing some of the serious bottlenecks.

How do you envision the IT and digital technology space?

The first thing I imagine in terms of IT and digital technologies is paying 'by the service' rather than purchasing the entire solution suite. Using an offshore partner can use resources as needed, giving enterprises the much-needed flexibility to set up affordable, scalable networking systems, backup, and storage devices.

We are also considering new ways to use IT services in the future. Our new projects will bear witness to the rise of robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital automation. However, in all our future endeavors, we want our team members to be aligned with our digital goals for smoother change management.

Can you share your advice with the budding professionals in the field?

Firstly, IT optimization is key; it leads to streamlined operations, lowered costs, and increased agility, which becomes especially useful during changing business conditions.

My second piece of advice would be around digital transformation. We should not jump on the bandwagon because of the buzzwords but really understand how specific technologies can dynamically change the way a firm allocates and deploys resources to generate better returns, and then go for it.

For example, mobile technologies, asset automation, and ways to extract data from IoT devices to gain insights can benefit many entry-level businesses. As a budding entrepreneur, you should think from both optimization and transformation perspectives when you’re looking to establish a business. The balance between optimization and transformation is essential for a company to grow sustainably.