CFO Studio Magazine with Dominic Caruso, CFO, Johnson & Johnson

16 WWW.CFOSTUDIO.COM Q4 2016 FEATURED CFO A nthony Conte, Chief Financial Officer of EPAM Systems, Inc., a company of over 18,000 employees in 25 countries, believes that the CFO needs to bring a resource management perspective to the overall business, no matter what that business might be. Conte came to this realization through “a lot of blocking and tackling” in a period of high growth. At EPAM, a provider of product development and software engineering solutions, he was performing the 21st-century CFO role in hyperdrive, integrating acquisitions and developing planning tools. “What this requires,” he says, “is a high degree of flexibility and innovation to continue to create a financial organization that supports the business.” What EPAM engineers do, Conte explains, is to envision a more productive, cost-efficient way for companies to deliver services and products, then align multiple technologies to make it happen. For example, the engineering team created the ability for viewers of a leading cable and satellite television channel to watch episodes of their favorite shows across various devices — laptops, tablets, smartphones, and TVs — by streaming the shows from the website. EPAM’s redesign for the site loads fast, even when fans click through to multiple pages; and it is always real-time, featuring whatever show is currently on the air. Conte knows that to deliver on his role as CFO, he has to understand the technology that is driving both the financial and operating metrics of EPAM. He believes his success is “directly tied to my ability to interact with the head of our IT operation and the head of our delivery organization.” Loving Numbers Back when Conte was in high school, he had a teacher who spoke of accounting as “the backbone of the business world. He viewed it as the language of business,” says Conte, “and that resonated with me.” Conte remembers talking to his dad about this notion that accounting provided stability for companies, and not only that, a career path leading to continued employment and success. Certainly that part of the vision his teacher created has been true for him. He received his degree in accounting from Northeastern University in Boston, started his career at Coopers & Lybrand, obtained his CPA, worked at John Hancock Financial, then at McGraw-Hill, and in that company worked his way up to divisional controller. He took a corporate controller job at EPAM in 2006. But numbers alone don’t provide a financial executive with enough information. Business decisions are increasingly complex; numbers need context. Conte says that as his company seeks to grow from $1 billion to $2 billion in revenue, the organization has built various internal tools for such things as research planning and production systems. “Now we’re incorporating these things into our financial systems, creating data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) applications,” he says. “It creates a holistic picture that we use to plan for the future.” If, for example, the company needs Java RACING FORWARD “By the time you finish the forecast, odds are, something is going to have happened that changes that forecast.” — Anthony Conte, Chief Financial Officer of EPAM Systems, Inc. A COMPANY IN HYPER-GROWTH MODE PRESENTS ITS CFO WITH CHALLENGES — AND EXHILARATION BY JULIE BARKER