Twenty-seven years ago, while in his late twenties, Mark Partin arrived inside the C-suite largely unprepared for the flood of challenges that would quickly breach his desk. Or so Partin tells us as he recounts the circumstances surrounding the first of five CFO appointments that have thus far punctuated his finance leadership career.
“I can and do love to suffer,” Partin comments, describing the experience as being “over my head” and demanding him to “level up,” or constantly “reach to the next level” to succeed.
For Partin, who had been named CFO of a publicly traded company despite his young age and lack of prior CFO experience, success in the role can be attributed to his unique partnership with the CEO. “He allowed me to have that role, and the Board did, because he was to be my mentor, and he would help me along the way,” explains Partin. Still, there’s no question the CEO got something valuable in return, given Partin’s “level up” mindset and his apparent willingness to work harder than anyone else.
Read MoreThis first CFO role cemented Partin’s belief that the CEO–CFO partnership is the most critical relationship in any company. This CEO, whom Partin describes as a “driver,” was dependent on Partin’s success, reinforcing how essential trust and collaboration are in shaping any firm’s future. This experience influenced Partin’s leadership approach in the four CFO appointments that followed, in which he continued to rely on many important and purposeful strategic partnerships.
Now, after nearly a decade as CFO of BlackLine, Partin tells us that he still believes that “leveling up” and fostering strong CEO relationships have been key drivers of whatever his success may continue to be, guiding his strategic mindset and pragmatic leadership to this day. – Jack Sweeney
“Know your business inside and out, and—most importantly—always, always focus on people.” –Mark Partin, CFO, BlackLine
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CFOTL: Many of us know BlackLine as a cloud software company that helps firms to manage their accounting. Please tell us about your firm, what its offerings are today, and what sets you apart from your competitors …
Partin: We have 4,400 companies around the globe as customers—the biggest in almost every industry, but also a lot of small and midmarkets, many of which have been with us for 10 to 15 years. We have longtime customers who got in a long time ago, realized the value of our offerings, and committed to our products.
Our humble beginnings evolved through trying to help accountants to close their books through account reconciliations, matching transactions, and managing the tasks of far-flung accounting operations. Thus, we persisted—and ended up building our brand promise on helping accountants to close their books faster, with more transparency and integrity.
Read MoreOf course, much of this is getting done in Excel today, at the very least, right? If you’re a CFO right now, you might be questioning how many Excel spreadsheets you’re needing to close your books, not to mention why it is taking 15 days to do so. The best companies are taking 2 to 3 days to do this, with very high levels of accuracy, integrity, and auditor certification.
There has been a great movement toward taking data out of ERPs, putting it into Excel, manipulating Excel to do all of your work, using these spreadsheets as finals on which to close the books, and then throwing everything to finance. What BlackLine has done over the years is to automate all of this and bring so much more to the accounting office.
During the past 4 or 5 years, there has been this big accounting shift in relation to the office of the CFO. It’s funny to sort of say this, but if we think about it, overall, very few things change in the life of the CFO and accountants. We have a long history of risk aversion and building things that work and then not unwinding “whatever” because it’s too tricky to do that. But, recently, we have found that the CFO and the CIO now recognize that they need to work more closely together to drive greater investment in the modernization of financial systems.
Things have changed. Because of COVID, people are more spread out. It’s more about data, and because it’s more about data, there’s more security risk everywhere. This makes it even more important that the CFO work with the rest of the C-suite to make sure that all systems are upgraded. CFOs need to make sure not only that they are moving the data less but also that they are faster and quicker and more in-the-moment in what they are able to do to effect everything involved from financial close to financial reporting, not to mention FP&A.
As you might imagine, over time, we’ve extended our product offerings beyond just those that aid the accountancy sector. We help with managing cash invoice to cash; with enabling the controller’s office to work with customers more efficiently; with converting the cash cycle a lot more quickly—and more, of course.
We bought one company as an investment in improving and profiting from this type of office-efficiency opportunity. Similarly, we acquired another that does intercompany accounting, which is known as an “under-the-bed” problem. Every controller and CFO will know that this refers to how you clean up your “room” as best you can, but in the end, you wind up shoving some things “under the bed.” We help finance pros big and small to deal with this.
During the past few years, regulations and different sorts of ethical accounting guidelines have driven greater reliance on compliance with knowing where and how any profits are being made; which involved legal entities are doing tax planning; and which systems need to be managed in order to best succeed. The thing is, many of these constructs may involve different controllers, different currencies, and different regions of the world. Our intercompany problem-solve or value proposition is that we can help any and all firms of any size to manage their close and eliminate the need to totally unwind everything in their company every year for better accountability and better tax planning. Folks with us know that we have their back regarding all of their back-and-forth trade and other transactions involving their hundred subsidiaries—or none—and that everything with us will be managed in the right way.
jb
BlackLine | www.blackline.com | Woodland Hills, CA