Michael O’Grady’s finance strategic moment occurred in 2014 at higher-ed tech company Ellucian. Faced with transitioning from a traditional perpetual license model to a SaaS one, he identified the need for a unified approach across all business functions. Recognizing that the company’s executives had differing visions, he proposed skipping the annual budget process to focus on a 5-year integrated plan. This comprehensive strategy, developed with input from all departments, required significant investment but also was crucial for the company’s transformation. The plan’s success ultimately led to Ellucian’s acquisition by TPG for $3.5 billion, demonstrating the power of cohesive strategic financial planning.
O’Grady’s journey to becoming a finance executive was far from linear. In his early years, he was uncertain about his career path. He had a passion for languages, which led him to work for Berlitz, the global language education company. Fluent in three languages, he found that his experience at Berlitz broadened his perspective and honed his communication skills. Still, something was missing.
Increasingly, O’Grady found himself intrigued by the complexities of business and finance. He decided to pursue further education in the latter, where his analytical mind and problem-solving skills began to shine. His first major career step in finance was at a midsize manufacturing firm. Here, he encountered the realities of budget constraints and resource allocation, learning the critical importance of aligning financial goals with broader company strategies.
O’Grady’s next significant experience was at a rapidly growing tech start-up. The fast-paced environment there and challenges of scaling operations under tight financial controls begat a formative period for him. He learned to think strategically and act decisively, actions that would define his approach going forward.
By the time he joined Ellucian, O’Grady had built a wealth of diverse experiences that had shaped his financial acumen. His ability to integrate different departmental visions into a cohesive financial strategy helped not only to transform Ellucian’s business model but also to self-validate his growing ambitions to become a CFO. –Jack Sweeney jb
CFOTL: Tell us about Permutive … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
O’Grady: We work with 150 or so of the premium publishers in the world: News Corp., with all of its properties; Washington Post; Financial Times; Daily Mail; Telegraph; Guardian; Marie Claire; Conde Nast. Publishers are in a really tough space, which they’ve been in for going on 20 years, thanks to the Internet. There’s this thing called the third-party cookie, which, like navigation on the Internet, is something that ends up basically being intermediated between publishers, who have the most valuable asset in the world—their audiences, not to mention advertisers who want to speak to those audiences.
A lot of technology has gotten in the middle of all of this, as everyone’s taken a 5 cents here, 10 cents there, cut. Today, if a a publisher sells $1 worth of advertising inventory, they’re getting only 20 to 30 cents in their own pocket. However, there are a bunch of people along the chain who are eating this up.
Permutive was built to do two things. Number one, to put publishers back in the driver’s seat, through enabling them to either rebuild or build really powerful direct sales organizations. Number two, the consumer doesn’t want the Internet knowing everything about what they do anymore. So, between the consumer side and the tech side—from Safari at Apple to Chrome and Google—the availability of and access to that tiny little piece of data called the “third-party cookie” is going away.
Today, more than 70% of the Internet is blind to advertisers. Our technology helps publishers to market to their audiences, but in such a way that even the publisher doesn’t know their identity. They just know what you like, and how you behave on their website, and how you engage with their content. They can more effectively say to an advertiser, for example, that they’re one of the leading daily publications in North America, print and online, and that they have a weekend section, a lifestyle section, a men’s fashion page—not to mention 50,000 people, every Saturday morning, who are engaged on this page because of everything else that they do on the website. We know that whether they’re in finance or M&A or business numbers or media in general, they are probably well-read and high-net-worth individuals.
Still, every Saturday, some 50,000 are looking at this fashion column. Don’t you want to advertise right around this? If you’re a fashion brand, this is a very, very powerful, compelling message that we’re able to bring to publishers. We’re working on the other side of this, directly with advertisers, too, saying, “Do you really want to have to go through every one of these transactions sort of on a direct sales basis, or can we can help you to find audiences that are looking for what you’re selling at scale?’ We are in between, helping everyone to talk to each other in a way that is much more effective—without all of the privacy issues that are plaguing the industry. Today, ad tech is broken. We’re fixing it. jb
“Assess your team quickly and make the necessary changes ASAP. Hesitation and fear of disruption will hurt more down the road. Think carefully and be surgical about where and how you spend your time. Find the right balance between being responsive to the business and its focus on the urgent issues of today and spending time with the team, customers, prospects, and others in your market to be prepared for what will be important tomorrow. Read the business context closely and be willing not only to take on more risk but also to be accountable for the outcomes. What got you here—strong execution, good command of the facts, and ability to communicate them—is not everything that you will need to be successful as a CFO. You will need to rely more on the instincts and experience of your peers, and operate more often than not on imperfect data.” –Michael O’Grady, CFO, Permutive