Ep. 159: Jamie Gregory - Strategic Initiative for Cost Saving and Revenue Growth

Contact Jamie Gregory:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-gregory-7030455/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
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.


Adam: (01:05)
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?


Jamie: (01:29)
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.


Adam: (02:58)
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.


Jamie: (03:14)
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


Adam: (04:21)
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?


Jamie: (04:42)
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.


Adam: (05:26)
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.


Jamie: (05:39)
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.


Adam: (06:02)
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?


Jamie: (06:19)
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.


Adam: (07:02)
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?


Jamie: (07:11)
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, resul...