Introducing Dave Burnett
Dave Burnett is a distinguished finance executive known for his exceptional problem-solving skills, business partnering, and agile leadership. Throughout his career, he has consistently taken on challenging situations that others shy away from, applying his expertise to devise and implement innovative solutions.
One area where Burnett has demonstrated his problem-solving prowess is in leading multiple Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) reporting and finance system releases. In his most recent role at a global manufacturer, with annual revenues exceeding $10 billion, he spearheaded addressing the organization’s challenges with data, reporting, and analytical capabilities as part of a series of ERP releases worldwide.
Recognizing the need for a fresh approach to data, reporting, and analytics, Burnett’s efforts resulted in the design, development, and implementation of a new comprehensive reporting platform. This new platform became the blueprint for six ERP releases, providing interactive reports and dashboards to over 3,500 sales and marketing employees and enabling analytical efforts for more than 350 finance professionals around the world.
With his extensive experience and track record of success, Dave Burnett continues to be a driving force in transforming organizations through technology-driven solutions and effective leadership.
Victoria Fide had the opportunity to interview Burnett to gain some insight into his experience as a transformational leader.
Q: Did you use a formalized process for the implementations you have led? If so, what did that consist of?
With the majority of the releases I’ve led, we started with a rough project plan, but we were never able to follow them too closely as reality kicked in. Here are five key process elements and learnings that I would emphasize for successful transformational efforts:
1. Start with the end in mind. With everything I take on, I always start by defining what we are trying to achieve. I begin by asking what issue(s) are we trying to address? What problem(s) are we trying to solve? Once there is a clear vision, we can then develop the roadmap, timelines, and a more detailed project plan to achieve that vision.
2. Be flexible. Nothing ever goes as planned. Things never move as quickly or as smoothly as we’d like or expect, necessitating the ability to promptly identify issues quickly and make necessary adjustments.
3. Leverage others’ experience. I firmly believe in the power of collaboration and actively seek opportunities to engage with others to tap into their expertise, leverage their experience, and gain different perspectives. Recognizing that diverse and experienced insights can lead to more comprehensive and innovative solutions, I prioritize creating an inclusive environment where ideas are shared and collective knowledge is harnessed for successful outcomes.
4. Embrace digital transformation’s potential to refocus your organization. Technology initiatives are often seen as limited to IT projects or implementations, but I’d encourage you to zoom out and think broader. Digital transformation projects offer unique opportunities to redefine how employees operate while aligning their focus on driving value within the company. Again, start with the end in mind by clearly defining the desired end state of the business, and then leverage technology to enable that vision.
5. Don’t underestimate the criticality of change management. Success requires adoption from users. It is critical for users to not only see, but to experience the value of the new tools and platform, before they are willing to adopt it. It’s not enough to simply document and communicate the benefits; true success is attained when individuals experience the benefits firsthand through the use of real data and insights in their daily work – Help users truly experience the benefits of the transformation.
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Q: How important is C-Suite buy-in for digital transformation?
In any transformative initiative, leadership must consistently demonstrate commitment by sharing the vision, emphasizing the initiative’s benefits, providing adequate resources, ensuring regular updates, and celebrating successes and milestones.
Leadership’s involvement should begin with a clear vision for the initiative. This vision should be developed by gathering and understanding challenges and opportunities for improvement from both the business and technology teams.
When resourcing a transformative initiative, leadership must comprehend, prioritize, communicate, and honor the commitment of business and technology resources dedicated to the transformation. It is crucial to respect the effort required by the initiative, effectively manage additional demands on teams, temporarily backfill roles, if necessary, and empathize with the implementation team and the broader organization in light of the effort and change brought about by the initiative.
It is essential for leadership to remain actively engaged throughout the implementation effort, providing support and making informed decisions. They should strive to remove hurdles for the implementation team, make/confirm key decisions, assist in managing priorities and scope, and consistently communicate updates and the value of the initiative to the broader organization.
Equally vital is the act of celebrating with the team when significant milestones are achieved and the transformation is successfully completed. Recognizing and acknowledging the collective efforts, dedication, and achievements of the team fosters a positive and motivating work environment. Celebrations not only boost morale, but also serve as a testament to the team’s hard work and reinforce the importance of their contributions to the overall success of the transformative initiative and the dramatic impact on the broader organization.
Q: What are 2 to 3 challenges you ran into and how did you resolve them?
In addition to the above process priorities, two specific challenge areas that I would watch out for are:
1. Data management – Several factors contribute to data management challenges, including the need for maintaining master data cleanliness, ensuring seamless connectivity across different systems and sources, and striking a balance between business and technology team ownership of data. These aspects play a crucial role in effective data management and should be carefully addressed as accurate and reliable data is the foundation to digital enablement.
2. Testing new systems without accurate data volume or complexity – In a number of releases, we have tried to emulate the transactional data as part of testing phases, but we couldn’t create the volume, complexity, and issues with data necessary to truly test the performance of the new platform. The importance of obtaining realistic and comprehensive data sets for robust testing cannot be overstated. Proper testing ensures the system’s capabilities align with real-world scenarios and demands.
Q: What wins were achieved? What did success look like?
I always encourage setting tangible metrics and targets whenever possible. Make sure to capture/establish current baseline numbers as context for measuring the impact of digital transformation. Measure against tangible metrics such as spend versus investment plan, adoption percentage, usage metrics of the new platform, and other key performance indicators or “KPI’s”.
However, certain metrics, such as productivity and efficiency improvements, prove more challenging to evaluate. To address this, it is crucial to engage in upfront conversations to establish baselines and assess the impact. For instance, to measure the true impact of digital transformation on sales growth versus other business factors, a specific target, such as a 5% increase in sales without adding additional sales headcount, can be se; however, the challenge comes when assessing whether the realized sales increase was driven by the digital transformation or broader/other business and external factors.
Driving Value Through Digital Transformation
Digital transformation initiatives have the potential to increase a business’s efficiency and growth. To ensure success, leadership must be actively involved in the process from start to finish by setting a clear vision for the initiative and providing adequate resources to support it. Additionally, data management challenges need to be addressed up front while testing should always include realistic datasets as part of robust testing scenarios. Finally, tangible metrics such as KPIs or productivity improvements should be used when measuring the impact of these initiatives on business performance so that organizations may truly reap the benefits they offer. With the right planning and execution, you can leverage digital transformation projects to drive value within your company today.