Ep. 155: Jennifer Wolfenbarger - A Complete Look at Business Transformation

Jennifer Wolfenbarger, CMA, Vice President of Finance at Owens
Corning, joins Count Me In to talk about business transformation.
Business transformation is a term we often hear in finance and
accounting, but there are numerous perspectives on the topic.
Jennifer is a success driven, high impact and commercially astute
executive that has a history of driving value creation, excelling
in dynamic, fast paced and demanding environments and one who has
a passion for driving continuous improvement. So, in this
episode, she discusses her view on transformation, the finance
function's role, various benchmarks to consider, and the value of
change management. Download and listen now!


Contact Jennifer Wolfenbarger, CMA:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-wolfenbarger-cma-5534ab1/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch:
(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 today you will be listening to episode 155 of
our series. The speaker on today's podcast is Jennifer
Wolfenbarger. Jennifer is the vice president of finance at Owens
Corning. She is a success driven, high impact and commercially
astute executive that has a history of driving value creation,
excelling in dynamic, fast paced and demanding environments, and
one who has a passion for driving continuous improvement. So it
is only appropriate that her focus for today's episode is on
business transformation. Specifically, Jennifer addresses the
role the finance function plays in enabling transformation and
the need for effective change management. Keep listening to hear
more as we jump over to the conversation now.


Adam: (01:05)
So today we're talking about business transformation and it's a
term we're hearing a lot in finance and accounting and to get
started. I just wanted to take, get your take on why is it so
important now, especially?


Jennifer: (01:16)
Yeah, I think, is a great question and, you know, no matter what
industry you operate in and I've, I've had the opportunity to
operate in, you know, heavy equipment, building construction
products, automotive med tech, and now, and building construction
products. And no matter what industry you operate in, it's likely
competitive. And the question is how do you differentiate
yourself financially from your competitors? And what I've found
over the course of my experiences at margin expansion is super,
super critical. And business transformation is a key enabler to,
to margin expansion, process improvement, like LEAN have been
around for decades and typically drive incremental gains, which
is important, but transformation is really key to moving the
needle on margin expansion significantly to the point where, you
know, you're, you're looking at revaluing, potentially the, the
value of your company, business transformation is also critical
to, you know, to a business culture, to be readily adaptable, to
capitalize on opportunities to improve, whether it be through
business growth or cost transformation, supply chain,
transformation, et cetera, you know, having a culture of business
transformation where it's, it's feels as natural as it possibly
can is a game changer for a company and really a differentiator.


Adam: (02:46)
So when we're looking at the finance function specifically,
they're going to play a role in completing the, that
transformation. So how does the finance function play a role and
then what are some of its top enablers?


Jennifer: (02:57)
Sure, sure. You know, I see the finance function playing a number
of key roles and oftentimes may not even feel like they're really
finance roles, not only in just completing the transformation,
but also really kind of, even before you, you set the set,
forward on, on, transformation itself, a key key role. They play
finance plays is an identifying opportunities for transformation.
And, you know, no matter from my experience, no matter where you
are in, in terms of organizational capability and so forth, there
are always opportunities. And sometimes prioritizing those
opportunities is, is half is, is a battle in and of itself. So
that's where finance plays a unique role in identifying and also
helping prioritize what are what's going to make, you know, give
us the biggest bang for our buck, the biggest return on
investment, and be key to really moving the needle from an
enterprise perspective. Then once the transformation
opportunities identified, finance plays another key role in
establishing governments, governance structures around how we
measure progress, how we stay on track, how we stay on scope,
through our goals, scope creep is, is, is quite common,
particularly in transformation initiatives. And so it's important
that we stay, that we have guard rails and governance systems to
keep us on track. And these structures may not necessarily be
financial. Oftentimes they're not financial guardrails, many
times they could be operational or timeline-based, what have you,
but finance plays a huge role in, in establishing governance
structures. These, these structures are really critical in terms
of ensuring how, how we hold, the necessary and applicable
leaders that are driving the transformation, how we hold them
accountable and also highlight early and often where we might
need to course correct, which is, which is super important to
enabling the success of a transformation. Some of the top
enablers for completing transformation. I would say data can't be
underscored data often plays a big role in, something that I'll
likely talk about as we get into the podcasts a little further,
but change management is super important in any transformation.
And oftentimes that really what that means is influencing. And,
it might mean getting, getting key stakeholders on board, but
this is not only what we need to do, but how we need to do it
from a transformation perspective. And then I'd say, lastly,
enterprise focus is a key enabler. This isn't about hitting an
isolated goal. When we're talking about transformation, this is
about really shifting the needle on our enterprise performance.
And I mentioned change management that is so easily overlooked
in, in transformation. And what I've found from my experience,
you need to ensure that you properly invest in train change
management, because what you're going to find is that no matter
how much data you put out there and how convincing it is that we
need to take action. And, and this is how we need to take action,
not everyone in the business is going to be on board. And that
could be day one day, two days, day 30. So it's important that we
go through that we take the time to invest in, in change
management and ensure that we have everyone that's involved in
the transformation marching in the same direction.


Adam: (06:47)
Of course. So it's like you're steering a massive ship and you
gotta make sure everybody's doing all their parts to get where
you're going in a sense. Right,


Jennifer: (06:56)
Exactly. Exactly. I was just going to add to that, you know, I
think, you know, choosing the folks, the team members that are
part of the transformation are super important. You kind of
touched on that a little bit, made me think of that, about this
is that diversity in terms of an address diversity in terms of
gender ethnicity, it's diversity of thought is super important as
we, you know, we think about who we want on, the, the, the
stakeholder, the leadership team of the transformation is super
important, so that we do challenge one another. And, and where
that change management plays a big role, as we all agree that
this is the goal that we have in mind and how we get there might
vary along the way as we kind of challenge one another. I think
that's, that's super important too.


Adam...