Mandy Morgan is the Chief Financial Officer for Seenons in Amsterdam, a scale-up business on a mission for a waste-free world. Originally from South Africa, Mandy started her career as an Audit Manager at KPMG, before working at several businesses across South Africa and also setting up her own company.

What excites you about working for Seenons?

It's a company that is disrupting an established industry, and it's also a company on a mission.

Whenever you've got a good story, a mission-driven company, it adds a whole different dimension to the level of excitement when it comes to work, because you're not only striving for profitability - yet profitability is very important.

You're also trying to change the world and changing it into a better place for future generations. That's what excites me, and, because of that, it attracts people who are excited about what they're doing.

That's what makes Seenons special. We're about 83 employees now, and it is a company almost bubbling with enthusiasm in terms of changing the world for the better.

How would you describe the company culture at Seenons and how that compares to some of your previous employments?

Large, established companies always have great, solid structures; they have great training programmes, they've got a good network, they've got all those sorts of things, so there's huge value in that.

But I think that Seenons is excitement wrapped up in a bubble. We have a people-first philosophy, where we place high importance on people and their happiness within the organisation.

We have a very dynamic, young culture. I’m not saying that all staff are young, but I think it's the vibe that you feel within the organisation in terms of, we move quickly, we make a difference, and we do it as a team - there's no I in Seenons.

What are the challenges that await your business and how do you hope to overcome them? As a scale-up, there must be some interesting challenges.

Absolutely. In this economic climate, I think every business is under more pressure than they previously would be. I think investment and valuations have dropped significantly over the last six to 12 months.

Having said that, I think they are regaining some ground, and it’s fundamental that we are able to raise capital in order to grow, but we are doing well in that area.

Also, finding good people and keeping them is high on our agenda in terms of growth. I think your company is only as good as the people that you employ, and the passion that they have to make a difference and execute on the dream. That is generally what a scale-up is.

Also, in order to be successful, we need to automate as much as possible and make it scalable. Seenons is going through the stage where we've gone from start-up to now scale-up, and that drive for automation is essential, but is not an easy step.

What are three to five key drivers to success in Seenons that you see the most?

We look at our cash burn rate very closely, because that determines how long we've got with whatever funds we've raised. That goes without saying.

One we look at a lot is revenue per FTE [full time equivalent], because that's an indicator of how automated our business is becoming - the higher your revenue compared to the FTE base, the better it is.

And, we looked to a degree of customer growth, but that will come with time. We've secured a few really big customers recently, and those are the ones that we ensure have optimal service delivery at the moment.

Customer growth will probably become really important in the second part of 2023, and then monitoring our working capital is also very important for us.

What is the most memorable moment from your career and why?

Probably in between my Financial Controller role and going into consulting. I had a time where I took a sabbatical to have children. During that time, I built my own web-based business.

Ultimately, when I sold, that was one of my career highlights, because it's something that I built myself to the point where it had enough value to sell. That was a huge milestone for me.

Then, a variety of auditing days in my career; I always like to do something that actually makes a tangible difference.

I struggled to find that sometimes in auditing. But, I remember finding some poor soul who had double paid their medical aid contribution for a number of years and got a massive refund as a consequence of us finding little things like that.

Then I worked in software in South Africa with Paymentology, and they focused on helping people start their own business, through a program they called “Changing Lives”. That was a large part of the role I performed; I did a lot of mentoring and coaching of people who wanted to start their own businesses. Helping people start their business and helping them to realise their dreams is really important to me.

How can leaders create diverse teams?

I come from South Africa, where diversity has been a topic of conversation for a lot longer than I think it's been in European circles; it's more mandated in South Africa and encouraged in Europe, I'd say, and it's been something that I have focused on a lot over the last ten to 15 years in terms of building teams.

The biggest thing to realise is that, if you have all the same people, all your ideas are the same. So, by ensuring that you get different people with different backgrounds, different genders, etc., each person has something unique to bring to the team.

Even in building the team I have at the moment, I don't look for people who complement the skills that I have - I look for people who have the skills I don't have. I think that is the most fundamentally important thing - looking for the skills, versus saying, “I want a particular person,” and then trying to make it fit in.

How can you stand out in the current market? Any advice you can share?

Having been through that recently myself, I found it to be quite a challenging process and I think the biggest challenge is the fact that a lot of AI [artificial intelligence] is used in CV screening.

You need to get enough on your CV to make sure that you have enough to get to the interview. Then, I think it's the interview stage where you sell yourself.

I don't have the time to wade through pages and pages of CVs. So, I think something that's short, concise, catches my eye, has a few highlights shows me that the person has structure - and I'm talking from a Finance perspective – that, to me, is good.

Then, the interview - it's showing passion, enthusiasm, willingness to learn and ownership. This is because, often, people don't want to own their growth or own the process, but are happy to go for the ride; that makes a big difference in the people that I look for.

What advice would you give someone starting their career in Finance and Accounting?

You need to be adaptable to change, because the role of the Finance professional is going to change significantly.

Where we used to be responsible for crunching numbers, in the very near future, that's going to be taken over by technology. So, being adaptable to change and to be able to think out-of-the-box, to learn and understand and interpret things differentiates you from a tool.

If you can ask enough questions and you can challenge yourself to grow your knowledge continuously - along with being able to reason and explain processes - then I think the role of the financial is secured.

If you just rely on your ability to crunch numbers, then I think you your career prospects may become quite limited.

How is the growing focus on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) changing the function and how does it relate to your role?

Very nicely, because we are a mission-driven company from a social and environmental perspective. We are seeing it a lot more in investment rounds; it has become a big focus from investors, as well.

From that perspective, it's great that we already tick a lot of those boxes and we are a people-focused company that values diversity. Ethics and trust are fundamental when it comes to your governance component, as well.

You can break trust in a second, but it takes years to build it up. I think a focus on that is good for the global economy, regardless. If every business focused on their governance and ethics, became a trusted organisation, I think the world would be a better place. To me, all three of those are a win.

Who's the most inspiring person in business for you and why?

I think the CEO of Tutuka Software (now Paymentology), Rowan Brewer.

He inspires me, because I worked for the company for quite a long time, and he was always emphatic about ensuring that it was for the best of the company and for the right reasons.

He was the one who promoted the Changing Lives programme within the company, because he believed his success needed to be shared with all those around him.

He believed he was successful because he had opportunities that a lot of other people didn't, so his focus on that was incredible. He's made an incredibly huge success of his company, but he was always approachable, friendly and caring.

He always thought about problems differently, and he always made sure that he did things for the right reason - I think that's an inspiration. If anyone was to compare me or put me in a similar category to Rowan, I would feel hugely honoured, because he really is an inspiration.

Thank you to Mandy for speaking to Georgia Wright, Associate Director in our Finance & Accountancy recruitment team in the Netherlands.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.