From Metrics to Meaning: Building a Customer-Centric Finance Org

Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the CFO Playbook podcast with me, David McClelland. And here on the CFO Playbook, we get under the skin of how world class finance leaders leverage technology, set goals, make plans, manage teams and much, much more. And in today's show we're speaking with the uh, CFO and um, managing director of a Berlin based fintech unicorn about customer centricity, strategic focus and the leadership lessons learned from steering companies through hyper growth and hyper crisis.

Speaker B: Yeah, in crisis you really, it's not only about people, you know, really showing or demonstrating character or so on, but it's also, you know, how you lead companies in uh, crisis is a very, very demanding but actually also where you can learn a lot. So for me the lessons were to stay authentic, very basic, you tell the truth, set a clear direction and put, uh, you know, rebuilding the way forward step by step, with purpose in mind.

Speaker A: CFO Playbook is here every month with EXC Finance Leadership Insight. So do make sure you subscribe, have a browse through our back catalog and do get in touch as many of you do, because your suggestions, they really do help to shape the show. Right, let's meet today's guest.

Speaker C: This episode of the CFO Playbook is brought to you by Soldo. Trusted by over 25,000 organizations across 31 countries, Soldo combines programmable cards, an intuitive uh, app and a powerful management platform to replace manual processes with efficiency and control. To find out more or to book a demo, visit soldo.com.

Speaker A: Mo Omeizat, CFO and managing director at taxfix. Welcome to the CFO Playbook.

Speaker B: Thanks David, it's great to be here.

Speaker A: Great to have you here and where is here for you? Where are you joining us from today? Mo and well, what can you tell us about your, your work week so far and what's still to come?

Speaker B: I'm drilling from Berlin today where it's uh, wonderfully snowy. So if I look outside of my window, it's snowing here. I hope, uh, in London it's not and the weather is better there. Today is Tuesday, as you all know, I already had my sea level sync on Mondays where we discuss the weekly priorities, how we steer the operating parts for the company. Next up, um, is product roadmap, check ins and check ins with my finance teams and what I'm really also looking forward to. At the end of the week we have our AI garage day where we give teams time to experiment, of course, with all the use cases in mind and how to become either internally more efficient or, uh, drive customer value with AI. So an exciting week, uh, and I'm very much looking forward to the rest of it.

Speaker A: Sounds like a really exciting week. Maybe. Uh, well, I'm not sure if we'll get time or not, but love to hear more about the Friday later on. Uh, but first of all though, Mo today what I'd really like to talk about is your journey as a finance leader. How you've developed this distinctive customer focused approach that's perhaps, well, maybe it's unusual, maybe it's not completely typical. You tell me, uh, for a cfo. Also, I would love to learn about some of the lessons that you've picked up through some fascinating and challenging chapters in your career. And then back to that customer focus. Perhaps some advice on how you instill that in the teams that you build. Does that sound okay as a plan?

Speaker B: Absolutely, David. It was exactly the conversation I was hoping for. So let's start and dive in.

Speaker A: Ah, loving the enthusiasm, um, and well, your enthusiasm about your current company tax fix. We're not here solely to talk about tax fix today, but I think it'd be really helpful context for our audience if we could start by you giving us the top line about what you are doing at Tax Fix and whereabouts it is on its journey. Because you've been unicorn status for what, almost four years or so now.

Speaker B: Of course, there are two tax fixes. Europe's, uh, leading AI first tax accounting platform. With over 8 million tax returns facilitated and filed across Germany, Spain and uk. Our mission is to fix finance for all by making tax and financial finance simple, accessible and stress free for our customers. What differentiates us is the hybrid model we use. AI. It's embedded into our products and how we deliver the solutions to our customer. But also certified accountants. So people get speed, advice, efficiency, but also the trusted human partner. In the process, we are also building a platform for our tax accountant partners to deliver services to them. And we're continuing to service more and more customers with even more services and products, focusing on assisted and building out our tax accountant platform further.

Speaker A: Okay, so working with accountants partners, but your relationship is also directly with consumers as well. But let's come specifically to your role there, or rather roles, uh, CFO and joint managing director. I think I understand. Certainly far from the first time though that we've spoken with a CFO here on the show who wears more than one hat. So how do you define your remit at ah, tax Fix and how do those two responsibilities, uh, complement, interact, conflict? I don't know. You tell Me?

Speaker B: Good question, David. So I treat it as one uh, integrated uh, remit. So it's about not only planning, strategy and executing, anchored in financial discipline. So as a cfo, I oversee legal compliance, risk finance and corporate development. That's all about steering the business, the business performance, capital allocation, risk management and long term resilience of the company and investing behind the right priorities. As managing director and very close to our operating uh, model and pulse. So how we deliver cross markets, with which teams, who do we partner with and which customers do we deliver which solutions. So both interact very much. And I integrated the cfo, uh, is a big chunk of the managing director position both have in common. I constantly think about how to grow and focus on value creation for our customers and other stakeholders.

Speaker A: Now you mentioned customers there and um, something that's striking I think when uh, I've spoken with you before and hearing the other conversations that you've had in public certainly is how often that word customer comes up. Customer value, customer benefit, customer experience. That level of customer centricity isn't always something that we necessarily associate. I uh, won't go so far as to say it's not always typical for a cfo, but it's not something that we associate traditionally with a cfo. So where does that come from for you? Why is the customer really at the center of, of what you do and how you do what you do and whereabouts did that begin for you?

Speaker B: Yeah, actually uh, it started uh, David, with uh, everything that I did professionally just after I levels, I did bank traineeship, you know, in Frankfurt with a very large German universal bank that was about delivering customer saving products, how they transact transaction services. It continued I, uh, since 2010, focused on the scaling and leading growth companies in fintech and consumer platforms because that's where you can see the customer impact most immediate in online payments, where I helped scale, um, an E wallet online payments company out of London where people that allowed people to move money securely and very cheaply. And one testimony that resonates so it's more than 15 years almost ago, still resonates very well with me. On an Africa trip, I by accident met a customer of our company at that time and that they were so enthusiastic as though they loved us. They say, you guys are really doing good stuff, you know, by allowing us to transact online and not having to be charged by the traditional uh, remittance companies, you know, lots of money on that. And that still resonates uh, with me today. It gives me of course energy and uh, uh, uh, Purpose, uh, I also helped build um, online food delivery platforms and you might perhaps also have seen it in a student. Instead of this old fashioned printed leaflet in your mailbox and then ordering by phone with friction, getting them the wrong order or the phone number is not up to date with the menu, you have this wonderful app which uh, increasingly even all the AI driven recognizes when David is on its way home and asks you whether to order dinner for family or so on. That's really what makes uh, me tick, what gives me great energy on a Monday morning, uh, uh, about the customer and what we deliver. Context, uh, when first putting that first means you also then uh, allow uh, for a larger adoption. Usually all the good unit economics. And I'll follow on from that. Since then I've carried that uh, operating belief with me, especially in a growth company where everything should start and end with customer journey in mind practically. Uh, it's how I also lead all the teams that I have led during my professional career. So it's deeply understanding what we're building for, whom we're building and why we're building that. And then you have a lot of matrix, financial and non financial matrix, lifetime value, frequency retention and so on. That all follows then that customer journey.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, of course. How can you build something unless you know who it is you're building it for? And you're particularly in a competitive market, you need to understand your customer. Uh, I mean that all stands to reason. I guess one of my questions is how that manifests itself day to day for you and how you understand your customer. Because you mentioned you're in Africa, you accidentally met one of your customers and you got such positive feedback from them, that's great. But in a market like you are in right now, in an industry like you are in right now, what kind of feedback mechanism do you have with customers to ensure that you are reading their pulse, reading their temperature correctly and um, building something that best fits them. And you aren't building something that you think fits with the customer because it's very easy to pay customer centricity lip service, but not actually to be listening to your customers.

Speaker B: Really the answer is as trivial as you got to serve your customer as well. You got to try. You got to block time in your calendar where you look at uh, the front with the customer, the teams that service the customer. And then you also need to not do this only as a lip service as you mentioned, as a one off. You need to create habits around it. So you need to do it regularly. You need to Include it in plans. You need to have the standard customer satisfactory uh, uh, measurements, uh, like nps. But you need also to embed budgeting, planning and all the very uh, analytical financial models and tie them back to what that means from a product perspective and so on. And that you also then include in more formal cadence and so on uh, to review that. And that's how you keep the customer focus in mind and not only think about them once a year or so.

Speaker A: So as well as the usual feeds and speeds that finance uh team would have in terms of how's the company operating, so on and so on. Actually those customer mps, customer sentiment, other figures like that also feature very highly on the dashboards essentially that you use in order to shape the strategy for what you will do next. Where you will focus resources, focus um, you know, product decisions next.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Okay, okay. Uh, on that. You've previously described Tax Fix as having a three pronged growth strategy, products, customer segments and geographic expansion. So they're axes in different directions there. What's your approach, what's your framework for allocating resources there? Because there are going to be opportunities, there are going to be trade offs. So how, how do you structure your thinking about where to focus your resources say for 2026 or 2027?

Speaker B: The overarching criteria is of course an ROI. In our case it's a more customer centric ROI. What is that? It's something like in a way again you embed not only customer feedback, customer focus groups, but you also very much have a big chunk of non financial KPIs that reflect that in that uh ROI calculation. So it's about customer value and how it translates in sustainable unit economics. So again how many times your customer returns, uses your product, uh, defines how sticky your customer uses, stays with the company and that underlying uh, behavior uh, other than of course influences your business case. We strengthen also the core our AI native platform while investing selectively in, in expansion where we can win with differentiated experience and trusted outcomes. So we always have in mind market specific experiences uh on a scalable platform we of course have plenty investment opportunities because um, we're only at the beginning. I think you see that although from our mission it's about fixing finance for all, we're still at the very beginning of our journey but at the same time we also tackle the opportunities step by step so we stay focused and execute uh, and don't get uh, to distract it by executing and too many opportunities at once.

Speaker A: Yeah, you mentioned the market specificity there and obviously you work in a Very highly regulated space tax financial services across multiple jurisdictions there. How does that complexity uh shape if not shape certainly play uh out in your role as a cfo? Are there particular challenges that that international expansion axis uh creates particular opportunities perhaps that it creates as well. How do you see?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's both. Yeah. I think uh, uh on the one hand side it's challenge because you need to adapt your go to market. No one size doesn't fit all preferences in the UK with regards to tax filing or who needs to tax file what the regulations are necessitated differentiated not only go to market all but also product uh solution. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: With regards to regulation you of course need to um. Heavily invest in that platform. But I think if you take a step back what all the regulation is about. It's actually for me it's about trust. So if I do the right thing regardless of regulation, our basis of our business is the trust with the customer. So it's data security, protecting leases at the core of our business. That's how we operate. This allows us of course then also to understand our customers customers better uh by investing in compliance and so on. And these insights then again can drive you know if we embed them in our product development cycle can then embed you know a better understanding and a better delivery uh, um for our customers. And that's where you have then the opportunities. You don't understand it only as admin burden also but more about you know how do I serve my customer, how do I secure their interest in regulated uh environment and then reducing actually nowadays of course for us um that uh time and resourcing through AI where there are standard tasks uh involved. But the learnings out of how you set that up uh are very important for us and how we embed them into our product development.

Speaker A: Let's talk about your journey to the point where we are today. Mo you've quarter uh of a century uh of experience across uh investment banking, private equity, corporate management. What was the foundation though whereabouts how did you start?

Speaker B: It started in the 90s when I had an early interest economics finance. And I did the traineeship that I told you about and I went on to study uh in the US Germany of course and uh. Belgium. And after the study my first job was in the city, London City with UBS. That then was all about M&As, IPOs and capital uh markets and so on. So it taught me about the markets, market dynamics and also how to transaction driven create value. So that then underpinned my discipline and also my Analytical rigor. Then I went on to uh, be an investor with a private equity fund which was then at that time a very hands on investors rather that taught me it's not only how you create by investing, not only about leverage and financial engineering, it's also how you look after the assets and how you really become deeply involved into the operations. From there I moved into um, around 2010 I moved into growth companies and fintech because I really enjoy both. I enjoy numbers, the analytical rigor, but I also enjoy them in a way where I see how they can drive operations, customer value delivery, the right allocation of priorities and so on. And that's really what still shapes my thinking today. Uh, impact through numbers, Understanding of and driving impact through numbers and being a uh, strategic operator by leading and scaling and internationalizing teams and businesses.

Speaker A: Yeah and of course that was a really exciting time. 2010 you mentioned there just kind of in the eye of the storm of the financial crisis there. But at the same time you mentioned that word fintech and certainly around London but also in other hubs around Europe and in the US A lot of excitement around the Internet but around the opportunities particularly that mobile presented. And there was a lot of excitement particularly in the fintech space there. Um, you mentioned working uh, with portfolio companies there. Rocket Internet, uh, you spent a chunk of time there. What did that teach you then in terms of not only scaling businesses but the intervention that you can bring but also about operational discipline when you are having to watch your pennies, watch your pounds, watch your euros.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. I think if I look back at that time I think it's rocket Internet was pretty strong in execution. So that was basically what they innovated is basically kind of almost a manufacturing approach of how to scale and build out ventures across the globe. So many different business models, uh, multiple uh, teams and continents. And why I took from it, it's that strong operating cadence really matters a lot. You know, it's clear priorities, fast execution loops and measurable outcomes and actually all the clear rules when to stop and abort. Uh, and uh, that really helped. Then also you know, write that scaling handbook, ah, playbook, you know for how to internationally scale companies. And um, it's all about hungry local leaders that you always need because they understand the market and they uh, have usually regardless of continent as a similar mindset. So you really hire for character that can be replicated across countries. It also of course then reinforce um, that every growth strategy is the talent. It starts and ends with the talent and that's that's what I took.

Speaker A: Uh, from that time you also worked in online payment. You spoke about that earlier on. And particularly in terms of understanding the customer impact there. And then we come to WeWork. You joined as international CFO in 2019, literally days before that failed IPO was announced. Um, I saw you said elsewhere that the party was over five days after I arrived. I know that feeling. It's normally about five minutes after I arrive that the party finishes. But your time there, that was quite a baptism of fire. You opening the door and setting foot in there. What's the one leadership lesson that you've taken away from your well documented time at WeWork that perhaps has served you well in your, in your subsequent journey?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm very grateful for that experience. You know, um, as you said, you know, it's something like very different when I onboarded from then, that's what I have been uh, planning, you know, to be, uh, uh, joining and uh, looking back, I think I'm really grateful for three things that I rerun. It's in crisis, you really, it's not only about people, you know, really showing or demonstrating character or so on, but it's also, you know, how you lead companies in uh, crisis is a very, um, very uh, demanding, but actually also where you can learn a lot. So for me the lessons were to stay authentic. Yep, very basic. You tell the truth, not only stories and what might be the truth about tell the truth, set a clear direction and put, uh, rebuilding the way forward step by step, with purpose in mind. Because the mission and so on and how to serve customers there was pretty strong, but some of the execution and the capital allocation was uh, not really focused um, on discipline in hindsight. So what you need to do is balance empathy with uh, decisive, uh, decision making and execution, especially when times and circumstances are highly uncertain.

Speaker A: You've also mentioned in the past that, uh, each number is a person when it comes to dealing with restructuring. You've spoken about how close you are also to your customers. I'm sure that in leadership positions that also translate to how close you are with your workforce too. So how do you maintain that human perspective when making difficult financial decisions around restructuring?

Speaker B: With a workforce, everything really starts with trust. So um, trust, uh, for people are important as customers, as employees and so on. It's all about people. So it's a people impact as first order, not secondary. And it's also culturally very valuable, uh, asset. So um, I think for me it was always about being respectful but still direct and fair communication. And also remembering not only where people have to exit a business, but also the ones that stay that you also um, give them clarity and stability. What is going to happen, uh, on the path forward.

Speaker A: That clarity, understanding the why as well I think is something that I hear a lot in these situations. Helping those who are impacted, uh, one way or another, helping them to understand the why behind it can certainly help. But clarity, transparency, very important. Looking across all of those experiences Mo from investment banking to rocket Internet to uh, payments and to WeWork and now to tax fix. Is there a thread, is there a common thread between all of those? And if there is, what do you think that that's helped you to understand about yourself as a leader?

Speaker B: Yeah, there is one uh, which I learned over time. Of course. It's something like I'm really attracted to things where I can build scale, lead teams by shaping strategy, but also the operating parts, meaning how do we deliver outcomes that matter most to our customers. So what I've learned for me is basically that a blend of three things are very important. Coming back to empathy, logic and trust. Particularly when the situation is complex. What does it mean? Empathy is you signal to the other person, I understand you, which position you are, why you do certain things and so on. That creates a first step in relation. Logic is I will apply in this situation or to that problem logic so people can relate to that. It's not something like highly uh, volatile uh decision frameworks as well logic. Then if you have both, you have the foundations, you know, for trust building. So you are um, empathic, you apply logic and that's where people then all then uh trust you start to trust you or trust to start you again. You can also rebuild trust with it. And uh, that I uh, believe is uh, uh also very important value drivers. When finance is very close to the business. It's not only about policing any budget or something like it's really about steering and not only reporting you know, as a partner, uh, the uh, the uh, delivery of the company to the customer.

Speaker A: So let's, let's lean into that a bit then. And in terms of being that, that, that builder, that, that that co pilot uh role you've, you have a distinctive leadership philosophy. When you are building your, your teams. Let's come back to that. Customer centricity. It's one thing for you to have it in your DNA mo, and you certainly do. But how do you make sure that those beliefs, that customer centricity in particular, how do you make sure that you build that into your organization, that it Permeates throughout the organization. What are the strategies you have?

Speaker B: First of all you gotta understand it's not a one off exercises. Hey, what's the customers on? It's something like, think about it like building habits. Building habits, how you talk to your employees, Building habits, how you build plans. So it's something like you always need to embed in your system cadence habits and uh, your repetition of uh, rituals in daily work. It's about uh, making the customer value explicit in finance. Linking the budget. What does this mean actually? Why uh, are the unit economics looking like this? Because the customer comes back. How many times do they come back? Why do they come back? Do they use the same product and so on. That's where you naturally, by linking these numbers to customer behavior, customer cohort behavior, you have automatically daily link. When you look at the financial model, ideally you know, uh, to the customer. And then you need to have all the, you know, very clear outbound signals. So you know, for every team you can build you have your like dashboards, a screen where you show customer KPIs. Uh, for the finance team you have graphs which show customer retention. Also legal teams you can show also how many markets the operators you can find for all of the teams which they also then personally uh, relate best for finance. It allows them to move even closer to the product. Because when you think about the customer, you need to think actually what are you selling and delivering to them? So it's a real business partnering and all of that then uh, uh, is further underpinned. So formal retreat. So you do postmortem. We have launched something. Did the customers take it up? What was the absorption rate? Which customer caught, which vintage months did uh, act, how and so on. How did this then translate into our unit economics and then into the P and L? And that's uh, a, a very healthy perspective because we focus on what matters most customer, but then ties it back actually other than to your P and L. And so and at the same time it creates that rigor that you always are being pushed back to the customer view.

Speaker A: Great. And then just taking a bit of a step back from that. Not just around customer centricity then, but uh, the role of the CFO in creating, shaping, maintaining the overall company culture. I don't know if at tax fix you have any it not mission statements but any statements about the company culture that you try to create there. Uh, but what, what role do you as a CFO play in helping to create and maintain nurture that culture?

Speaker B: Um, I think there are things that you play with regards, you know the function meaning like you know when you do budgeting, planning and so on you embed that uh customer view. And when you do that in a, in a more uh partnership setup saying let's look at uh this our resources, these are the opportunities we have. Which opportunities do we put, which resources behind that dialogue? Also with Product Console helps keep capital allocation very efficient because uh, it's not about a top down approach. It's also bottoms up approach. And then uh, that helps improve uh prioritization. It crystallizes trade offs where needed and helps finance anticipate issues earlier on in company direction and help steer uh the business uh, uh decisions accordingly.

Speaker A: And then looking ahead mo, what are you most excited about not just for Tax Fix but for the finance function more broadly. You mentioned AI a lot today and uh, particularly around how AI is being infused into what Tax Fix offers to its customers. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for CFOs over the next few years and the biggest opportunities for CFOs to add value next?

Speaker B: I'm really excited about the areas I operate in. I think for Tax Fix it's the AI first journey that personalizes the entire filing experience. It learns when David has come back the second to third uh time what your situation is that with the learning and the collected data increasingly proposes to you and not only ask us that's something like we are very excited and we also of course the deeper UK expansion that we envisage and the partnership with our tax advice. For finance I think uh, it's AI driving customer value, customer solutions, so on. For finance it's AI, um, it's um how to standardize automate standard task. So automate low value work but by that also give the bandwidth for the team to elevate. On the other side it might be also challenge for some people though you don't do repetitive or easy calculatable tasks or what have you with a clear playbook. But then you need to uh elevate and create actually insights scenario modeling and increase in partnership with the other departments decision making, quality. So I think in the whole office of the CFO function what I'm really also excited about, it's the biggest opportunity is connecting the dots especially in our business model with all the data. So as I mentioned to you, David comes back the second uh third time. What have you learned about him? And then actually all the customer data, uh to see different customer cohorts, how they evolve over time and feeding that into product development is something like I'M really excited about and I think that will drive a lot of uh, improvement also on the customer experience side, uh, and of course all the facilitator and the streaming function.

Speaker A: M a lot to be excited about and I can see how excited you are about those opportunities as well. It really comes through here. Thank you for that. Mo. Uh, we are rapidly running out of time for our conversation today, but before you go, there are some quick fire questions that we put to all of our guests here on CFO Playbook. Are you ready?

Speaker B: Yes. Let's do it.

Speaker A: All right, so what is the one thing in finance or procurement today that you would like to leave behind and why?

Speaker B: Finance as a gatekeeper or uh, policing agent. And the mentality is that, you know, there's the business and there's finance. Yeah.

Speaker A: If you could automate one part of your role tomorrow, what would that part be?

Speaker B: The manual data gathering. So data ingestion data, uh, uh, quality checking, reconciliation and so on. I think that is tasks that can be also done, uh, automated and through AI.

Speaker A: And if you could nominate any company's CFO to appear on the CFO Playbook podcast, who would that be and why?

Speaker B: Great question. I would nominate uh, Emmanuel, who during my time at Rocket Internet was a delivery hero. And I very closely worked with him on a number of projects. How to scale delivery Hero and also how to prepare for the ipo. There was a good uh, time and also very lots uh, of lessons for me to learn.

Speaker A: And finally Mo, here on CFO Playbook podcast we are building an actual Playbook, A collection of top advice from finance leaders like yourself that we plan on turning into a resource for the community. So what is your top piece of advice for a fellow CFO that you would like me to enter into our CFO Playbook?

Speaker B: I would go probably with uh, an advice that I got a long time ago. It was something like went like this. If you touch it, stick with it. What it meant, uh, is basically to choose wisely and then commit fully, uh, and make also the trade offs explicit that you had uh, done implicitly by choosing uh, that and that is also about pressurizing the why, why, why, uh, setting non negotiable matrix and following through with discipline so fewer uh, higher quality bets but then really with conviction that then compound impact and build trust with your team and stakeholders. You know that's uh, what I would like to share.

Speaker A: It has been truly great to speak with you today. Mo, thank you for joining us here on the CFO Playbook.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me, David. Have a nice day and thank you

Speaker A: all for joining us as well. Don't forget to join us every month here on CFO Playbook for more insights from finance leaders. But for now, from me, David McClelland and all of the team here, bye. Bye.