A consultancy CFO's No.

1 KPI
According to Halloran Consulting's Tania Zieja, there is
one KPI that is vital for nance, accounting and HR.
By Jane Thier
Published Feb. 6, 2020

Tania Zieja, CFO of Halloran Consulting Group, has a lot on her

plate. Bolstered by over 20 years of accounting experience, Zieja
manages the HR, accounting and finance departments of the
Boston-based consultancy. Among her several operational duties
on a day-to-day basis, she manages one integral role with an
especially deft hand: knowing how to support company growth
with new software system integration.  

Zieja spoke with CFO Dive Thursday about her keys to success as
CFO, the best way to measure success, and how her intel on which
systems to upgrade has evolved from her time at IBM to her time
at Halloran. 

Prime KPI: billable utilization

Among all the data Halloran compiles through its software

programs, Zieja tracks one KPI most intently: billable utilization. 

"Any billable time our consultants put on a timesheet goes through

[cloud accounting software] Sage Intacct, onto a client invoice, and
becomes revenue for the company," she explained. "It’s a healthy
metric that shows we’re doing resource allocation correctly, and
that we’re hiring at the right speed." 

Zieja said that at consulting firms specifically, resources are mostly

shared, "so it’s really important to have your finger on the pulse
with what’s going on with your resources, because they cost a lot,
and if they’re sitting on the bench, they cost even more."

Billable utilization is Zieja’s main metric, and she and her team

share it freely with the board. 

"We’re very transparent with those numbers across the

company," she said. "Which is not meant to shame anyone if
they’re not meeting targets. It’s truly meant to start conversations,
to make sure everyone’s sharing the workload, no one’s suffering in
silence, and to ensure we’re on top of hiring."

Understanding yield and billable utilization, Zieja says, is key for

any financial team working with contractors, and consultants
especially.

Tracking time spend

An upward trend of time spent on things such as budgeting or

forecasting, year over year, shows Zieja that, because of
Halloran’s growth, and the data they’re looking for, workers spend
more time on a particular task. 

"Is there a better use of my team’s time? Is there a program that

can replicate what they’re doing rather so they don’t have to
crunch numbers on Excel?" These questions, she said, are the key
drivers for her next implementations. 

"I tend to spend a lot of time looking at the forecast and budgets,
and reconfiguring them if need be," she said. "I also read a lot of
slide decks.

"My theory is: if you can create a template of the data, and you can
click a button and fill it in from the data source, then you’re not
spending time downloading, uploading, and manipulating trends
and graphs. Put in the time upfront and reap the rewards later,"
Zieja said.

Upgrading while expanding

As the company's need for resources and headcount expanded, so

did the systems necessary to support them. "While we were
implementing our new system, we were still growing and adding to
our headcount," she recalled.

"Our people are our product. Their salaries are our main
expenditures. If we start spending a ton on systems, software, and
other operational expenses that go into running a consulting firm,
we kind of strangle ourselves a little bit with our growth, because
we need to have that capital available for their salaries, and
generating their revenue."

Financial planning & analysis (FP&A) helps support

that, Zieja said, but "it’s a bit of a circular argument ...Who’s more
important? I don’t think anyone," she said, but the relationship
between consultant salaries and FP&A implementation costs are
"very symbiotic."

Compared to Zieja’s former employer IBM, Zieja assumes they’d

"have to provide the majority of their staff with a user license, and
that’s where the costs can go up exponentially with these systems."

In any upgrading effort, Zieja stressed the importance of deciding

which systems need changing and which are best left alone. To do
that, she asks her teams to report on their trend sheets where
they’re spending their time. 

Programming rules for small vs. large companies

Zieja noted there are differences between upgrading a system for a
big, established company like IBM, where she worked as a revenue
accountant, and for a smaller, fast-growing company like
Halloran. 

"When I came to Halloran, it was really in need of some serious

upgrades," Zieja said. "Expenses were being entered in manually,
and I just knew that the way we were doing things would not allow
us to grow and expand at the pace we truly wanted to."

One of the first systems Zieja eliminated was Paychex, which she
replaced with Paylocity. The switch enabled her to work on the
front end with onboarding, benefit administration, and payroll, she
said. 

Her second endeavor, in 2017, was moving from QuickBooks and

Netsuite’s cloud-based OpenAir to Sage Intacct, all the while
keeping Salesforce, which integrated well with Sage. 

The thoughtful switches have alleviated several pain points, Zieja

said. She points out that the need to keep FP&A spend relatively
low in consulting can be tricky. 

Tackling integration woes

One common system upgrade snag, regardless of company size or

spend: integration. Does it ever make sense to change a system,
even if it would potentially create integration problems?

"Integration is definitely key," she said. "I’ve gone through an

integration that broke often.  The problem with that is that you
could have a system that might be very helpful, but if you can’t rely
on the data, and get the data out, or you have to reconcile it to
prove the data integrity is still there, it kind of defeats the
purpose." 
Zieja cites a real-life example from her time at Halloran. When the
company used Netsuite OpenAir for timesheets, expenses, and
product reporting, they took the data and pushed it to QuickBooks
in an effort to expedite their financial reporting process. The two
systems spoke to each other well enough, Zieja recalls, but there
would often be some type of missing link, such as one system
needing an upgrade while the other needed new code.

"That can really be a time-suck," Zieja said. "I find that when you
can’t trust your data or its source, you’re really putting yourself in a
bad position. And if your management team can’t trust the data
because the system integration broke, they won’t trust it in the
future. And that’s not a good cycle to get into."