Vacasa CFO Talks Modernizing Finance Through Collaboration

Though a diligent financial strategy is essential for companies across verticals during times of economic volatility, certain industries have been more exposed to the market fluctuations resulting from the coronavirus crisis.

One of them is the travel sector,  a space that continues to experience significant shifts as business travel remains muted, and as consumers widely trade faraway trips via air in favor of road trip-friendly vacationing. For Vacasa, a company operating in the vacation rental management space, the pandemic has perhaps reinforced its business model as home-sharing platforms remain relatively resilient in the sector.

Still, financial forecasting and strategic planning continue to be essential to the ongoing growth of the company, according to Vacasa’s incoming Chief Financial Officer Jamie Cohen.

Cohen will be stepping into the role in March from her current position as CFO at ANGI Homeservices. In a recent interview with PYMNTS, she discussed her key priorities for Vacasa as a leader of both finance and digitization strategy for the organization and offered her insights into the value that the role of CFO offers to enterprises that continue to face plenty of uncertainties.

A Focus On Collaboration

According to Cohen, Vacasa had already implemented a remote workforce model well before the pandemic, meaning she’ll be stepping into a company that already has successful workflows in place for the finance team. Although in separate locations, finance professionals at the company already have a proven method of streamlining key functions like financial reporting and forecasting.

That doesn’t mean a remote workforce doesn’t present unique challenges.

Among the largest, she said, is facilitating an entirely digital hiring and new employee onboarding process, as well as fostering a collaborative environment among current employees.

“In my experience, the biggest challenge we have had to overcome is maintaining an engaged culture when people can’t be together in person,” she said. “Team-building activities are that much harder, but also that much more important now to keep people connected.”

For Cohen, one of the most important roles a CFO can play within the enterprise is to act as the facilitator of that connectivity, not only within finance teams, but across the entire organization.

“I think that finance can often be that communication hub between departments, where finance is talking to sales, or talking to operations, making sure they’re also talking to one another about initiatives,” she said.

Forecasting Through Digitization

Though she declined to name specific FinTech solutions, cloud-based software tools are an important piece of Cohen’s strategy to foster collaboration for a disparate workforce, as well as to enhance finance professionals’ ability to drive more actionable analysis for the corporation. The company encourages ACH payments in its accounts payable and accounts receivable department over paper checks, for example, while Vacasa has already adopted several FinTech tools to further digitize its financial operations.

Again, she pointed to the importance of collaboration and communication to strengthen workflows like accounts payable and payroll — functions that touch multiple points across the enterprise — and noted that video conferencing and messaging tools like Slack have been particularly helpful.

Financial forecasting is a key focus in today’s environment, particularly for the travel industry. Not only does the organization need to understand where it is through accurate reports, but it needs to understand where it’s going, and to pivot quickly in case market factors change.

Luckily, said Cohen, the vacation rental industry has remained strong despite volatility fueled by the pandemic. Still, taking a collaborative and digital approach to financial functions is top priority.

“The role of finance is critical to projecting the payback of our investments and opportunity costs, the risks of not modernizing, and helping the organization to look forward,” she said. “It’s critical to putting together that playbook to say, ‘How do we achieve our growth objectives together?'”

Being a CFO can often mean making “tough decisions” and saying no to certain opportunities, added Cohen. As she readies to step into her new role in Vacasa, collaboration will be front and center, and digitization initiatives will play an important role in enabling that cooperation across team members, whether it be through data integration, electronic communication or cloud-based tools that can be accessible from anywhere.