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As a ‘veteran’ in the world of financial consulting Penny has learned many lessons throughout her 30+ years. In her latest position as Head of Customer Development for Sysynkt she’s combining her experience working both for the software authors of SunSystems®, various partners (including working closely with the authors of Q&A), and directly for her own clients with her passion for keeping customers happy. In the second of our ‘To Be Sysynkt’ series of chats we dig a little deeper into what success looks like according to Penny.  

Q1: Hello Penny — you officially joined Sysynkt in October 23 BUT you’ve been working with, and on, our XFMS solution in your consultant’s role at TouchstoneFMS for nearly 2 years. So, what intrigued you and enticed you to become a fully-fledged Sysynkter?  

David Singh from Touchstone introduced me to Sysynkt and Kalev almost two years ago and I had a real OMG moment. For me, it was like seeing Q&A for the first time — those old enough to remember that moment will know what I mean! My first thought was, “This is exactly what the SunSystems’ world needs — and everyone will want it.” That thought has not changed in the least and the more I work with Kalev and the team, the more excited I am.  

I am very pleased to be bringing the possibilities of digital transformation to the world of SunSystems companion products by joining Sysynkt. We have such a talented, young team with a truly innovative product that I know we'll go far - watch this space.

Q2: As with all startups there probably isn’t a typical-typical day — that said what are your key activities/responsibilities/tasks and what would 24 hrs in the life PP look like?

My first job every morning is to check the support desk. I make sure we have nothing outstanding and everything is progressing as it should. It’s also the last thing I do every day (often in the evening!). My days are taken up with speaking to clients, partners, and prospects about our projects and prospective projects and I spend time every day discussing product too. We are a tight-knit team, and we all bring our experience when it comes to shaping the product. It’s crazy but I'm passionate about keeping our customers happy and luckily for me Sysynkt makes that such an enjoyable task. It's refreshing to be working for such an innovative, dynamic company.

Q3: What does customer development and customer success mean to you and is there a difference between ‘development and success’?

It may be an overused claim, but I firmly believe we are only successful when our customers are happy. Making more customers happy is my number one goal every single day. In practice, this means implementing and running successful, efficient projects and also building positive ongoing relationships with our customers — we genuinely want to hear their pain points and do our best to solve them.  

You may not know this, but we go onsite to our clients twice a year and sit with the end users to get their feedback. This is a crucial part of keeping our customers happy and providing them with the user experience and functionality that makes their working life easier. The important thing is we are always doing our best and that our clients can see that. That is our goal right across our company.  

For me, customer success and customer development are inextricably linked. However, if I were to make a distinction a key part of my customer development role is around the product direction. Direct contact with our clients and prospective clients means I know what they are asking for and this knowledge allows me to influence product development. As we all know every request cannot be accommodated as a priority in a product roadmap, but as the customer advocate, I can ensure their needs strongly influence our product direction so that we continue to develop a useful and effective solution.

Q4: What in your experience are the three top mistakes companies make when looking (or not looking!) after their customers?

There are many mistakes I’ve been witness to but three recurring and inexcusable ones as far as I am concerned are:  

No. 1 Complacency. There are organisations who have been using SunSystems for 20+ years. Often these companies are sort of left to their own devices so long as the money keeps coming in. They often don’t know about nor get to reap the benefits of changes in the marketplace like Sysynkt.  

No. 2 Lack of innovation. I have been in this industry a long time and I know how slowly change happens in our marketplace. By this I mean change in both the products and actual innovations in technology. We are all accountants after all and generally quite a conservative bunch. However, this means we have not taken advantage of all that SaaS, cloud and AI brings. This must change.

No. 3 Ignoring the little guys. Often companies are focussed on the big or prestigious clients and deals and the smaller companies are presented with huge barriers to entry when trying to take advantage of new products and tools that come along. They end up stuck with ‘previous’ generations of products. Luckily, Sysynkt smashes these barriers with features such as our unlimited users model.

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Q5: How does Sysynkt’s software and the company structure make your job easier?

Truly out-of-the-box integration is a dream to work with. This, along with the clear and simple user experience and unlimited users, are the things that give me a thrill every time I use Sysynkt. It really is a joy to work with.  

Each team member has clear responsibilities and is also encouraged to bring their ideas and knowledge to all areas of Sysynkt – there are no egos. The biggest difference between Sysynkt as a company and other places I have worked is that we walk the walk. Everything is automated. All our tools are SaaS and cloud — even our projects are managed on a cloud SaaS platform that integrates with all our other tools. I love it.

Q6: There are currently six main modules offered by Sysynkt that customers select as they need them. Tell me in one sentence the module and your favourite/most useful feature from each…

Banking – This is easy. The suggested payment run listing attaching all the actual invoice documents you are paying is such a valuable feature.

Purchasing Invoicing – Audrey! The way the invoices are ingested, and the data is extracted is honestly so impressive using embedded AI.

Procurement – The way we can control at each stage in the workflow, which data is mandatory, what attributes are visible etc. You can raise a purchase request and not even know who the supplier is or how much the items cost.

Sales and Service – Recharges. You can tag any purchase (expenses or purchase invoice) as a recharge and choose to recharge at cost or with an uplift or at a different price then pick these items up on a sales invoice. It is really neat.

Expenses - Our mileage expense calculator. You can see your route on a map and work out your mileage expense based on HMRC (other tax jurisdictions are available) official mileage rates. Super easy and saves time and money.

Integration and Plugins – Microsoft® Graph. This tool allows us to integrate with Teams, receive PDF invoices from your mailbox without polling for them, and work with any MS product.

Q7: You mention SunSystems a lot on the website and in your marketing — is this the only ERP Sysynkt is compatible with?

So, Sysynkt was designed from day dot to be finance system agnostic. Of course, having been designed by SunSystems consultants, there are lots of features and functions that will appeal to SunSystems user. We absolutely have it on our roadmap to create connectors to other Finance Systems. Watch this space.

Q8: How do (Team Sysynkt) make sure you are not only listening to customers and partners but actually acting on their feedback?

We take this seriously at Sysynkt. Much of the functionality you see in the Sysynkt XFMS came from a user request. Remember, both Kalev and I started as SunSystems users and one of the worst things for us was for good ideas and critical feedback not to be acted on. As I mentioned before – the bi-annual visits we make to each customer is just one of the ways we show how serious we are about listening to what our customers need and have to say.

In addition, part of what I do is to research how we can satisfy our clients’ requests. For example, I have recently been looking at carbon footprint calculations for our Expenses module. This came from a client’s request about whether we could do it. It is now very firmly on our roadmap. We also listen to our partners. From our two recent training events we raised dozens of enhancement requests, just through having open and honest conversations with the partners that were present.

We believe in collaborative ways of working. Every day we have a quick stand up to see what everyone is up to that day, and we also have regular open sessions where anyone can bring their ideas or frustrations, plus highlight anything they have heard a client ‘complain’ about. We also make sure our developers get out and meet the customers and see for themselves how the product is being used. This is so important if you want to have a coherent, well-designed solution.

Q9: What five attributes make you good in this role and why do you think these skills are necessary (don’t be shy now Penny!).

In short, I have several decades-worth of experience in implementing and supporting SunSystems for large multinationals (especially in Oil & Gas and Hospitality) and smaller clients. I have worked for the software author, Systems Union, and also the creators of Q&A on product design and have transformed business processes at hundreds of companies over the years. The main skills I bring are:

• I am a born problem solver – I really cannot help myself.
• I am one of life’s doers, so this makes me pragmatic and energetic.
• Analytical skills. I am good at getting to the heart of a problem or teasing out a client’s requirements.
• I am a people person so (I hope) this makes me easy to work with.
• I value collaboration and communication right across the company.

Q10: You’re known as PP, Penny, Penelope and Lady P — tell me more about who you are, and what occupies you when you’re not bringing happiness to the world of Sysynkt.

I am based in Italy, with my husband and teenage daughter, where I have lived for over 20 years. We have an olive farm and in fact I am Italy’s only British, Female professional olive oil taster. It is my passion project (aside from Sysynkt of course). Farming keeps you grounded and teaches you to accept what life throws at you. I think this pragmatism is just as useful in my professional life.

I also co-admin a Facebook group of nearly 5000 British citizens living in Italy which helps people with their post-Brexit rights. That has been very intense at times but also very rewarding. We have helped hundreds of people since 2016 and we regularly meet with the British Consular teams in Rome and Milan and the European Council Citizens’ Rights team. Our group has also given evidence to many UK Government Select committees over the years. I have a strong sense of fairness and I think that is why Sysynkt and the ethos of digital inclusion really chimed with me.

Common months for ‘closing the books’ (year-end) are December and March — which means many companies have just completed or are working on making sure their company’s finances are in order  

As anyone who has ever been involved in this knows it is a stressful time with many finance teams finding themselves overworked especially when tracking down and matching invoices, payments, employee expenses — not to mention having to chase debts and ensure they are complying to the latest regulations while continuing to support the everyday running of a business.

For some businesses, the technology they have invested in means their finance teams can concentrate on the more complex issues and make better decisions (by analysing their data in near real-time) as they have automated many of the functions. But this isn’t the case for far too many.  

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DEI – Diversity, Equality, and Inclusivity

Promoting DEI is important to all at Sysynkt — and we don’t just mean concerning people! One way we do this is using our affordable software to enable digital inclusivity — which we see as making sure companies of all shapes and sizes have access to being able to transform and automate their finance operations and gain competitive advantages by doing so.

Software implementation costs and the scarcity of skilled resources plus the ‘user licence model’ have long been barriers to many businesses including NGOs, smaller companies, and startups being able to invest and benefit from software solutions that will make them more efficient and give them an opportunity to cut their overall operational costs.

In the challenging landscape of 2024, where many businesses are facing a tough start, it becomes increasingly crucial to create an environment that levels the playing field. Ensuring that every business has the best opportunity not just to survive but to thrive is of paramount importance. By reorganising and revamping finance functions using technology, companies can restructure their processes and procedures without having to completely replace their existing systems.  

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Advantages of Digital Finance Transformation

The advantages of automating your finance function are wide reaching including:

• Increasing efficiencies: automate the everyday, repetitive tasks so your team has more time to work on more complex or rewarding tasks (for them and the business) such as debt collecting, more 121 time with key clients and suppliers.
• Joining the Open Banking revolution: reach new customers, reduce late payments, manage real-time cashflow, access cost-effective finance, and streamline business administration.  
• Accessing your valuable and relevant data so you can make better and more timely decisions.
• Making life easier for your team and suppliers. Your people can upload and ultimately get paid for expenses from anywhere in the world—gone are the days of returning from business trips with a stack of receipts to sort through. With a supplier portal your suppliers can onboard themselves, open their invoices, orders and update or validate their details.
• Improving your carbon footprint.  

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Save money. Save the planet!

For too long companies have been tied into user licenses for complete product suites where underutilisation is rife. This not only wastes money but is contributing to climate change as everything needed to power emerging technology, for memory systems and data centres takes up masses of electricity the generation of which produces vast amounts of GHG (Green House Gas) emissions.  

53% of SaaS licenses go unused while companies use over 300 SaaS apps on average

‍(Ref: Productive, June 2023)

As Sysynkt was designed and built by consultants who wanted to stop such waste it was important to be able to offer unlimited users, the ability to select one or more modules—from banking to procurement to expenses—and to be able to give access to as many people as you need to, for as long as you want, and only pay for usage.  

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Technology Can Be Great, But People Still Matter

Even the best SaaS solutions won’t be effective if you don’t have the right team in place to help manage your business. No matter what the size and stage of your company is, you need to take a long hard look at recruiting the right people to ensure the financial health of your company.  

There’s an increasing trend (and demand) for chief revenue officers (CROs). To some extent they carry out the role of the more traditional VP of Sales but, according to Gartner®, “A chief revenue officer (CRO) is a corporate executive responsible for all revenue generation processes in an organization. CROs are accountable for driving better integration and alignment between all revenue-related functions, including marketing, sales, customer support, pricing and revenue management. They are also responsible for overseeing the strategy for profitable revenue generation over the organisation's long term.”  

When recruiting be mindful, as with filling all roles, that you employ a CFO or CRO that is the right fit for your business—if you are a startup or small company in the tech space going after a previous CRO/CFO of Google, Slack, or Stripe is probably not the best idea. The cost of such talent will of course be prohibitive but their skillset and mindset more than likely not what you need! You may also be better placed to recruit a CRO to help boost revenue alongside the CEO who can work with a strong accountant than invest in a CFO in the early days.  

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Four Key Takeaways

1. Becoming part of the digital revolution doesn’t mean throwing out your existing ERP or other finance systems. However, if you haven’t been able to invest in any finance technology you can leap ahead at a fraction of the cost and hassle with systems such as Sysynkt!

2. Save money and the planet by stopping paying for individual user licenses.  Ensure you are only implementing (and paying for) the modules you need – if you only have a few suppliers, you may not need to invest in a purchasing module until you grow.  

3. Like all things in life, all SaaS systems are not created equally. Do your research and don’t be fooled by ‘shoehorned cloud solutions’. Look for those specifically designed and built for the cloud with embedded AI that has a purpose. Then get comparative demos and costs...

4. Integration should not mean huge consultation costs, disruptive amounts of downtime, or a 12, 18 or 24-month project. Seamless integration should work smoothly with the existing system without inconsistencies whether on-cloud or on-premise.  

It’s time to level the playing field. We’d of course like to help you! For more info www.sysynkt.com