Welcome back to Count Me In,

IMA's podcast about all things affecting
the accounting and finance world.

This is your host Mitch Roshong,

and you are now listening to
episode 159 of our series.

Today's featured guest speaker is
chief financial officer at Synovus,

Jamie Gregory. In this episode,

Jamie talks about strategic initiatives
and leading through change during a

tough economic environment. As an
example, he is a part of Synovus Forward.

Synovus Forward is a revenue generating
and expense saving initiative that began

in late 2019 with the goal of
achieving top quartile performance and

an annual 175 million
pre-tax run rate benefit by

2022, as well as best in class
experience for clients, employees,

and shareholders. Keep listening
to hear more about this initiative,

the role of innovation
and adapting to change.

Jamie, thanks so much for
coming on the podcast today.

We're so glad we could have you on,

and we all know that the last 18
months have been really hard for many,

many businesses. Some shut
down other ones, you know,

have struggled going forward and
companies have to be strategic.

And something I was reading
about is Synovus Forward,

an initiative that your
company, has put forth recently.

And can you tell us a
little bit more about that?

Yeah, absolutely. Adam first,
thanks for having me today.

I look forward to this
discussion. Synovus Forward

has been transformational for us.

It all started back in 2019
when we looked at our long term

plan our multiyear forecast
and thought about how does that

relate to our objectives to
be a top quartile performer.

And so we looked at that,

we looked at where we expected the
industry to be and our peers to be.

And we realized we had a
little bit of a gap there.

And so we took a step
back and looked internally

and we realized that we had
opportunities to be better.

We had ways we could improve, we could,

improve our delivery, to our
customers through enhanced processes.

We could look and then ensure that we
have the right physical infrastructure.

We realized that we had
opportunities to improve,

some of our third party, including,

the partners we choose to help us
deliver Synovus to our clients. But then,

you know, as we progressed,
the world changed on us.

We started Synovus Forward in late
2019, and the first quarter of 2020,

the whole world looked different.
And so we had to reassess.

And so it changed our outlook of what
was required, to be top quartile.

And we pivoted from there, but Synovus
Forward started off as an initiative.

It became a bigger initiative and now
it's becoming just a cultural mindset of

continuous improvement.

So I think that's a great example of, you
know, seeing the economic environment,

seeing the environment around you and
adapting, you know, not just, taking,

taking the initiative as you first saw
it, but adapting as you went along,

are there some major lessons that
you can share since implementing.

Well, you hit the nail on the head. The
first thing is being willing to adapt.

So you have to always be stepping
back, looking at, you know,

the impact in your vision and how does,

what your outlook for the
company, what that outlook is,

how does that relate to your objectives?

And so we're really clear
on what our objectives are.

And so as the outlook evolves,

our tactics to achieve our
objectives have to evolve.

And so that was a piece of it.

And that's what we were
assessing in early 2020.

But other lessons we learned is
that there are win-win scenarios.

If you're willing to really
dig in and look for them,

there are ways that
everybody can be a winner.

When you think about our key stakeholders,
we have, you know, our shareholders,

our team members, and our clients,

and all of these can benefit through
improvement. And so, you know,

that was a big lesson that we've learned.

And the last thing I would say
is you do have to be persistent.

Change can be tough,

but you have to be there to support your
team members and monitor the progress.

And to see the initiatives
through, to the finish line.

Change is definitely tough,

especially when you're looking to kind
of be agile and move and adapt with the

environment and financial and accounting
industries. They're highly regulated,

whether it's it's banking
or taxing, all that stuff,

everything's highly regulated.

How do you continue to be agile
in those types of environments?

Yeah. First and foremost, you have
to have a strong control environment,

just to ensure that as you evolve,

you're evolving from a place of
strength, you know, but agile is,

you know, bringing that
up is a great point. When

you break larger initiatives
into smaller components,

it can actually help enhance your control
environment because you're able to

test as you go along rather than wait
to the end of a large initiative,

to look and ensure that
you're maintaining, sufficient
control environment.

So to me, agile is an important
framework, as you think about, you know,

maintaining and potentially enhancing
your control environment as you go through

these initiatives.

So control environment, internal controls,

how important having
internal controls been,

especially as most of the workforce
went to, working from home.

And then now back in the
office or hybrid environments.

It's absolutely critical. And you look
at ways to enhance the internal controls,

both through your processes,
but also through automation.

and we believe that, you know,
one of the major benefits,

of automation is enhancing
the control environment,

reducing operational risk and
trying to take human error out of

the equation.

That's very important.

So taking human error out a lot of
times involves things like innovation.

We've talked about agile, but now
let's talk about being innovative.

Change is not far behind
and how can leaders,

how can leaders guide their teams
effectively through an innovative process?

Well,

first the first priority is ensuring
you began with the end in mind that

you had a long term vision,
no matter what. So that way,

no matter what short term changes
or what tactical changes happen

during the course of an initiative or
a project that everybody's aligned on

long term vision, so that, you know,

your tactics may change and your
strategies may change and the project may

evolve,

but it's all driving you to the same
endpoint and that's what's critical.

So that the team and anybody
involved internally, externally,

they can see that the progress towards
the end, it remains the same, even if,

how you're getting there may have
changed from when you began the project.

Yeah. So do you have any examples maybe,

of a time where you've led a team through
that innovative change that you can

share with us?

Sure, sure. You know, I want to kind
of go back to the Synovus Forward

as you look at how that evolved.

And so I mentioned that
when we started this,

we had a hundred million objective.

This was to get us to top quartile
and then the world changed.

And the world changed,
you know, when you have,

interest rates declining,

growth slowing uncertainty on capital
liquidity, our outlook evolved with that.

Now one thing that's interesting
about our income statement is,

that we are heavier on interest income,
as a percentage of total revenue,

than some of our peers. And so when you
have that declining rate environment,

it can impact us, a little
bit more than others.

And so when you look at what it takes
to achieve top quartile performance,

it changed. And that's what,

resulted in us elevating our
objective from $100,000,000 to

$175,000,000. And so we pivoted then,

but the team was immediately in line.

The team was immediately understanding
of how it evolved and how our

goals increased because they knew
what the long term objective was.

They knew that we were all, you know,
striving for the top quartile performance.

And so that allowed the
team to lock arms on the new

objective fairly easily. And so that,

that type of mentality of having that
longer term vision really allows for

easier discussions as your strategy
evolves when you're going through,

change like we've experienced
in the last 18 months.

But you not only had it,

you shared it with the whole team so that
everybody could be on the same page so

that when the change did come,

the whole ship moved together as
opposed to moving apart in a sense.

That's right. That's right. And when you,

when you have, increased objectives,

increased targets for improvement,
obviously these initiatives,

can be challenging and they're difficult.
there's a lot that goes into them,

there's a lot of, you know,

give and take between internal
and external partners.

And so just having that long term vision,

having clarity around where we are going,

just allows everybody to be understanding
of any potential sacrifices they may

be making in that process.

Definitely. So as we look into the
crystal ball toward the future,

what should accounting and
finance professionals be
focused on as we navigate to

this new normal within the industry?

Yeah. Yeah. Great, great question.
I mean, for us, you know, we,

we had already been moving towards
an accounting and finance model,

more focused on service analytics
and business insights, you know,

so we can provide real time
decision making capabilities,

but the pandemic really put
that aspiration into overdrive.

It wasn't just enough to provide a one

single forecast scenario.

We had to adapt quickly to the
volatile environment and be agile

enough to prepare multiple
forecast scenarios while, you know,

we're still in the process of enhancing,

our technology to provide real
time information. But the more,

you know, traditional accounting and
financials, are becoming more automated,

and these responsibilities are shifting
towards building enterprise value,

pivoting from information delivery
to analysis and performance

improvement. And so that those are
trends that we're really excited about.

We are also, you know,

spending a lot of time looking
at how self-service centers

could develop for internal business
leaders so that they can gather their own

data for any of their ad hoc requests.

You know, really allowing for a
standardization of reports provided by,

you know,

the finance organization
so that we can maintain

efficiency, consistency, and information.

And then also just increase the
availability to provide value,

add a strategic analysis and advice
because the team is not overwhelmed

with just providing information. So
those are the, you know, as we evolve,

those are what we are focused on,

but we also see opportunities
for us to get better. You know,

we are continually trying to
improve our own education,

our own view on the outlook of, of
the finance partnerships internally,

and to expand our kind of our talent pool.

We believe we have real
opportunities to grow in our impact

on this, on Synovus as a whole, to help
us get better, help us achieve this,

you know, top quartile
performance above peer growth,

all of these strategic initiatives
that will allow us to outperform,

our industry. And so, you know,

we believe that finance is
right at the heartbeat of it,

and we're pretty excited about,

the evolution and the new normal
as we pivot from information,

providing information to being
that strategic partner internally.

This has been Count Me In,

IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

the accounting and finance profession.
If you like what you heard,

and you'd like to be counted in for
more relevant accounting and finance

education, visit IMA's
website at www.imanet.org.