- Hi! I am Santosh Marathe, an MBA in Finance and Master of Commerce from India.
- From starting my career in the FMCG sector to now being a seasoned finance professional in the healthcare industry (after more than two decades), I have come a long way.
- I have been a CFO all along, until the last decade, wherein I realized that I have a flair for healthcare operations as well and moved to an extended role in operations as COO.
- Here are some learnings from my journey so far: How was I able to grow in my career and hold coveted posts like those of a CFO, COO, and unit head?
How I Ended Up Pursuing a Career in Finance
During my schooling and college days, I took a liking to reading on topics relating to management and industry practices (as a kid, I have always been an avid reader). This introduced me to the world of finance, management, and business, and since then there has been no turning back!
I began relating the knowledge I gained from books to real-life examples early on, and I followed the lives of successful leaders and business tycoons.
I was amused by the fact that any transaction in the organization has a “financial implication”!
I realized that there is finance or math in almost everything. If you want to acquire or sell, grow or de-grow, hire or fire, invest or divest, plan or execute, or just stay put, there is finance!
All of this got me so excited, and therein started my career in finance!
Since I knew early on that I wanted to do something in the field of finance and management, I took up the commerce stream, and after graduating in commerce, I decided to go the MBA route!
Having multi-faceted industry exposure
As an MBA Finance freshmen, I started my career in the FMCG industry, and over the years, I worked in various industries and profiles.
I was a finance analyst, finance manager, and head of finance and operations in the manufacturing industry before moving to the healthcare sector in 2002!
There was an opening available for a CFO role at Apollo Hospitals Pune (India), which aroused my interest.
During the course of my interview with the senior leadership of Apollo Hospitals, I was provided with a lot of insights about healthcare. This was a eureka moment for me, having always seen limited aspects of healthcare, and that too as a patient.
Apart from the exciting work opportunity, I was also humbled by the sheer fact that I could contribute to someone’s healing journey despite not being a clinician.
My earlier exposure to manufacturing and FMCG helped me build my skills in product costing and ABC costing methodologies, which are so vital now in the service industry. Thus, having multi-faceted industry exposure has been very advantageous to me.
Skills (not degrees alone) helped me become a “C-Suite Executive.”
Educational degrees or work experiences are all fine, but what matters most is “how effectively you transform your knowledge and practices into action.”
In fact, the ability to “walk the talk” is a critical barometer for success in any organization.
A CA or CPA may be useful… but the core competencies for the CFO role have evolved so much over time that understanding these nuances at work is more important than degrees or bookish knowledge!
If I had to list the qualities that helped me grow in my career, they would be the following:
1. Interpersonal skills
- The more I progressed in my career path, the more I gathered that in any career, human relationship management is the core to success.
- Having good interpersonal skills is key. I have seen a few people have their career journeys halted or derailed just because they did not have interpersonal skills.
- Herein empathy & humility are two traits that I would advocate for everyone to practice not only at the start of the career but also at the higher level of one’s career path.
- A person may be knowledgeable or highly literate on a subject, but if he/she cannot execute the ideas to bring about the success or growth of the Organization, then the knowledge is futile.
- I follow the “KISS” principle at work: Keep It Simple & Straight! It’s all about removing difficulty levels, whether while evolving plans or in execution.
2. Self-Introspection
- I do a lot of introspection periodically, both in my personal and professional lives. I have been a very obedient student all along.
- Over the years, I have learned that “asking the right questions is the key to getting the right answers.” Working with multidisciplinary teams gives you a 360-degree overview of any subject.
- I strongly support the participative work style. However, since I hold a leadership role that carries a lot of responsibilities, I make my own decisions after consulting subject matter experts, so I make informed decisions.
3. Having fun at work
- While I am a taskmaster at work, I do not lose any opportunity to have fun at work. The level of laughter within the organisation depicts the level of team bonding and informality in work ethics.
- It is also very important to keep one’s sense of humour intact at work. This creates informality, which is critical to teamwork activities.
4. Dealing with Challenges
- Challenges are common in any organization when you deal with multiple sets of processes, different people, ever-evolving statutory and competitive compliance pressures, and customer demands.
- The trick is to use any challenge as an opportunity or take a short pause to reengineer the process or look at competency gaps.
- One of the lessons that I have learned when faced with challenges is this: “When you are in a hole, stop digging!” Maintaining poise and being calm when faced with challenges is a sign of a true leader.
5. Being a good team manager
- Setting the “right expectations” with your team is also key to avoiding any surprises or challenges.
- I have seen junior staff bloom like flowers the moment you give them the purpose of work and full empowerment—this is very critical in healthcare.
6. Recruiting people smarter than me
- Recruiting people who are smarter than you sets the goal very high. This is what gets the knowledge ball rolling while creating a healthy work environment through smart discussions within the team.
- I’ve always been a progressive thinker who has benefited greatly from having a mature outlook in both my personal and professional lives.
Questions I get asked most often are:
“How important is technology in the field of finance?” “How should I equip myself?”
Finance professionals have a bright future, no doubt.
It is important to have a skill set based on financial, analytical, governance, and risk mitigation skills; however, it is equally important for the finance professional to use technology smartly!
The Finance role has evolved from accounting to governance, with implicit functions such as forensics, taxation, costing, actuarial, and so on.
IT-enabled data sets are critical to having real-time reporting on meaningful indicators. Managers and seniors require “insights,” not just “information.”
Data, if managed well, has the potency to have a significant impact on the business decisions that one has to take. Technology also adds to efficiency while ensuring that the data is consistent and credible.
“How important is making data-driven decisions?”
I have had a flair for IT since my early career days and have always fascinated by IT-enabled solutions.
Data knowledge is the new IPR and Data reviews are very essential to business. If presented and analyzed properly most of the data sets have an ability to talk and communicate.
My experience has been that “what gets reviewed, tends to improve.” There is an overload of data nowadays. A significant amount of data collected through customer interface solutions is still unstructured.
Extra Tip: For managers who are always pressed for time, the focus should be on creating “exception” reporting systems. The manager’s job is to focus on exceptions and not the routine!
“Tips on making better data-driven decisions.”
While reviewing data, “the data trend review” is critically important. Only then will you know if things are progressing or regressing.
The second step to this is to understand the levers that have influenced the trends to behave in a particular manner. This will only help to scale up what has positively influenced and scale down what has negatively influenced!
Obviously, there are times wherein you are compelled to undertake business decisions even though the data does not substantiate the same, or you would have to hold onto the trends for a long time to understand the sustainable impact.
We can present the one data set in healthcare in different ways: payer-group-wise, region-wise, specialty-wise, diagnosis-wise, new and repeat, age-wise, gender-wise, etc. Getting the right levers for growth is very important.
Each business stream should be considered an SBU with a separate P&L orientation. This way, we can track each segment of business based on the individual cost of acquisition, direct costs, etc., thereby knowing our case mix and margins for each segment. Thus, a strong decision support system helps managers take more educated and predictive decisions for patients and the business.
In short, I have a huge appetite for data management, and we are always discussing expanding and evolving new strategies, long-term planning, and improved client experience journeys.
“How is the CFO role evolving nowadays?”
In whatever industry you work, it is important ‘to understand the service or product that you are dealing with thoroughly’.
CFOs are increasingly expected to “accommodate business needs and be more proactive in participating and influencing growth.”
The CFO needs to be involved in more timely escalations of deviations and corporate governance and risk mitigation strategies in a very effective manner.
A CFO needs to understand business and technology. Apart from the routine fiscal and governance functions, he or she must manage multidisciplinary teams.
CFOs should break down the stiff barriers among their workforce and handhold colleagues to enhance financial and regulatory literacy within the organization. They need to understand the pulse of the operations of the organization and serve as an advisor and leader to the CEO and the Board in making business decisions.
Given the expectations and fast-evolving roles, CFOs need to be thorough in their planning and should have faster reflexes in their decision-making. While doing so, they need to maintain professional and personal work-life balance to avoid burnout.
They also need to adapt to new technological, regulatory, and environmental changes relevant to their industry. Lastly, they should never stop learning and executing what they have learned.
Another important role of a CFO and the finance team is to enhance financial literacy within the organization as well. They should decode the financial jargon and help team members understand the financials of the areas they deal with. I firmly believe that finance and marketing in any organization are everyone’s job!
Once you have the opportunity to get elevated into a higher management role (CEO or COO), it is very critical to have the finance hat underplayed at times!
It is very imperative to have a broader vision while getting into a larger role, where understanding finance is important but also needs to be balanced with other functions of the business.
You also need to “think from the business perspective as well as from the financial perspective.”
Santosh Marathe is a Master of Business Administration and Master of Commerce with almost two decades of leadership experience and successes in the healthcare industry, combined with 8 years in the manufacturing, distribution, and engineering industries.
Passionate about varied topics like big data, finance, supply chain, patient centricity, quality, etc., he speaks at various international events.
