What’s your three-year outlook and how does it affect your duties? Does your company use social media and is there a return on investment? Describe your relationship with the CEO.
Brady Aase<br>Pacific Dental Services
The next three years for Pacific Dental Services have the potential to be every bit as bright as the three prior—which have been brilliant.
Growth has its challenges, of course. However, if we are able to continue to associate ourselves with world-class dentists and support the administrative side of their practices, freeing them up to dedicate their energies towards their patients, we should do very well.
Specifically, our growth will present a talent challenge. We’ll likely need to attract about 2,000 dedicated employees in order to support our projected growth.
We are highly engaged in social media through the Smile Generation as a source for patient advocacy, education and engagement. We also leverage the Pacific Dental Services brand as a source for recruiting top talent, conveying company culture and industry engagement. We recognize that in order to connect with consumers, we have to be where they are, and we have made significant investment in making sure we have a clear strategy for social media.
For Pacific Dental Services, we base return on investment on quality recruitment and employee retention as some key examples for measurement. For our consumer-oriented social media channels, we are very ROI-centric in that we leverage industry-leading analytics provider Adobe Omniture to monitor and track key conversion metrics as well as consumer engagement tools that show us brand awareness and reach.
Steve Thorne, founder, president and CEO of PDS, is a visionary leader in our industry as well as a great partner and boss. Working side by side with Steve over the past 15-plus years has been more than a job—it is a life’s work. I have been privileged to see the impact that PDS has had on the lives of the many dedicated dentists whom we serve.
Helping leading clinicians outfit their offices with state-of-the-art technology and systems that liberate them to spend a majority of their time on patient care is incredibly rewarding. And on the non-profit side, working with Steve on PDS’ ‘We Serve’ initiatives—building playgrounds and parks in the inner city, providing clean drinking water to people around the globe, and providing free oral care both here and overseas—has been very rewarding.
Paul Holt<br>Quality Systems Inc.
The outlook for Quality Systems continues to be very positive given the continued adoption of electronic health records by physicians in the U.S. and the availability of significant government incentives to encourage meaningful use of electronic health records.
The fast growth of the company has resulted in an expansion of my duties. My role has expanded to include implementing a new enterprise resource planning solutions, or ERP, system, creating a financial planning and analysis function, and additional merger and acquisition activity.
At the same time, we now have structured the company into four separate business units to reflect recent expansion in the business, all of which require support and direction to help make sound business decisions.
Finally, our recent growth, coupled with the popularity of the healthcare IT space, has led to increased investment community interest. Now, with nearly 30 analysts covering the company, this requires attention as well.
We are actively posting on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Our posts include video interviews, YouTube links, upcoming events, photos, articles, press releases and various materials from other resources.
We recently had 1,572 Facebook fans, 6,267 Twitter followers and 2,800 followers on LinkedIn, representing a 10% increase from last quarter.
To engage our followers, we compare interaction levels on each post to learn what our followers respond to in higher volume so that we can continue to post information on topics that will keep our audience actively engaged with us. We use social media as a branding and communications tool in which we take consistent action to educate and engage our followers.
We use various analytical tools to see the breadth of our social media reach. Using these analytics, we can see the ROI of specific activities that we engage in via social media.
We also use Google Alerts to measure our brand’s influence as these alerts notify us every time our company name or other target keywords are mentioned.
We are currently looking to incorporate software to assist us in the more effective measurement of our measuring our social media activities.
My relationship with the CEO is very good. We communicate with each other most days even when we are on the road. He relies on me to keep him up-to-date on various areas of the company as well as use me as a sounding board. I think a key aspect of our relationship is trust and understanding, which I think is a vital component of any successful CEO and CFO relationship.
Our CEO is a veteran leader who has a great business sense and vision for the business. He also does a great job of encouraging me and others in our roles with the company.
Ed Jordan<br>Nolet Spirits U.S.A.
The spirits industry is very dependent on how the economy, restaurants and disposable income are. So until we see a full recovery, business will continue to suffer. As you know, every business does as well as their sales do, and our duties reflect how well we do with our sales.
We are engaged in social media and use it frequently to communicate with industry leaders and our consumers. We measure our success by the amount of follow-up and additional exposure that we receive from our efforts.
I work for a great CEO and a wonderful family that has been in the spirits business since 1691. I am very lucky to enjoy the trust and confidence of both our CEO and the Nolet family, so it makes my job and my team work better.
Pat McCullough<br>Amonix Inc.
The solar industry, our specific segment (concentrating photovoltaics), and Amonix Inc. are all planning for significant growth.
Given our early stage, we expect double- to triple-digit growth rates over the next three years. Ironically, growth like this is challenging to manage. The list of top duties for my position includes scaling a business efficiently in multiple end-markets, defining and implementing an effective go-to-market strategy and helping to coordinate corporate fundraising.
We invest modestly in social media. Our aim is to gain the attention of the younger, clean-energy-conscious population. Honestly, today it is a small expense, and we treat it as a fixed expense without measuring a specific return on the investment.
I have a strong relationship with my new CEO. I have found throughout my career that CEOs, in general, seek courageous, business-oriented finance leaders that can ensure a timely and accurate financial close, reporting and forecasting process. Impacting the business results and leading decision making are very important elements to gaining a CEO’s confidence.
Self-confident CEOs seek CFOs who are their equals in business leadership, allowing both professionals to “divide and conquer,” fill in for each other and have twice the organizational impact. CEOs often look for corporate leadership in business decision making, corporate risk management, and admin and statutory matters.
The most important element for a CFO to gain confidence and success as a broader business leader is to build and empower a very strong team beneath his/her position.
Steven Wagner<br>Orange County High School of the Arts
The school is currently in a growth mode. We are in the process of opening our 12th arts conservatory this fall in the culinary/ hospitality arts. This opening will allow us to add an additional 40 students to our enrollment.
We are continuing to grow our commercial music program, and we have plans to open our 13th arts program within the next three years in digital media arts.
This growth, coupled with the challenging financial environment—both in California state funding and our school and foundation fundraising efforts—has made our ability to predict accurate three-year budget pro-formas critical. This growth in program will also require additional facility for the school and several remodel projects related to existing facility.
During the next three to five years, I will be involved in managing this facility acquisition, remodeling projects and all aspects of budget development and oversight. In addition as a former school principal, I will have oversight for the development of the arts instructional programs curricula.
We use social media primarily as a method of information dissemination for our parents and students. The school, our executive director and each of our conservatory department have their own Facebook page.
We are using these pages as a way to build a sense of community within our students and parents, provide information to prospective families and promote active dialogue within our various school groups. We are using Twitter as a means of parent notification in the event of an emergency situation on campus.
The school’s executive director and I have been working together for over 10 years. We share a common vision for the school but have different backgrounds, experiences and skill sets.
We bring these differences together in a collaborative and respectful relationship in which we feel comfortable discussing the merits of each important school decision from our differing points of view. We have often found that the areas of overlap and agreement are often the decisions that work best for the school’s future.
I have a great deal of respect for Dr. (Ralph) Opacic and the leadership he provides for the school. I see my job as providing the resources and support for the school’s continued growth and improvement, while maintaining a solid and stable financial foundation.
