When Emma Seymour arrived at Deputy in early 2022, she became focused on strengthening the company’s financial foundation. In the three years since, Deputy has achieved a historic milestone—reaching unicorn status through strategic partnerships with major customers who not only become clients but also invest capital, thereby opening new distribution channels and co-creating additional value.
Turning back the clock, Seymour tells us her initial focus was “runway optimization”—a disciplined approach to spending and resource allocation that helped the business thrive in uncertain market conditions.
Seymour’s path to the CFO office was paved by a broad advisory background, where she honed her ability to identify “leaky taps” and champion data-driven decisions. At Deputy, she has sought to refine revenue models, implement robust metrics, and guide the firm through a series of pivotal fundraising conversations.
The move to pursue strategic investments from major customers rather than relying solely on venture capital is now expected not only to deepen customer relationships but also to unlock new distribution channels for Deputy’s offerings.
Looking back, Seymour tells us she has consistently applied a “storytelling through numbers” philosophy.
Along the way, she understood that it was incumbent on finance leadership to make sense of raw data within companies—finance leaders must connect figures to overarching strategy in a way that resonates with board members, employees, and investors alike. This dual focus on clarity and collaboration allowed Deputy to pivot quickly when market conditions shifted, without sacrificing the company’s innovation agenda.
“I was always in a seat where I was working across different industries, company sizes, and with that, all the challenges that came… it provided me with such a concentrated view of how leadership in finance can drive growth across such diversity.” – Emma Seymour, CFO, Deputy
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CFOTL: Tell us about Deputy what does this co pany do and what are its offerings today?
Seymour: Deputy is a workforce management platform for hourly workers, and our technology is designed to streamline employee scheduling, time tracking, and communication for businesses… (Overall,) Deputy really helps improve operational efficiency and reduce labor costs (for) the customers we serve. If I was to give you a little bit more color on what that means, we leverage demand forecasting to help businesses schedule the right number of employees at the right time. We match labor to operational needs in real time, and all of this reduces unnecessary staff costs.
If I was to give you maybe a little bit of context around the platform and what it does today, just a few key callouts (include) one of our features called (smart scheduling). This is where we can automate shift creation based on sales data, budgets, and staffing needs. Our compliance tools ensure (that) our customers are adhering to everything compliance-related—break policies, overtime regulations, wage rules. And Deputy, growing up in (Australia), is one of the most complex regulatory environments in terms of wage rules. We have what are called (Awards), which are very long documents telling you how to pay staff at different points in the day and about different overtime… it’s incredibly complex and can’t really be done manually. (So) that is a very strong (motivator) for Deputy in that we’ve grown up in one of the most complex environments—now, as we’re scaling globally, it’s almost simpler when we look at what others are doing, because it’s become unnecessarily complex in Australia.
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