A catch up with 3EN’s Chief Financial Officer - Sharon-Louise McKay

Leadership

2 Mar

We recently sat down with our CFO, Sharon-Louise, to talk about her role at 3EN, and how things have changed over the past 24 months. Sharon-Louise has been at 3EN for over 3 years now, and during that time so much has changed! Along with the rest of the world we’ve battled through a Pandemic, which we have still not fully emerged from, but despite this 3EN have managed to increase sales each year, almost double our workforce taking us to just under 60 staff, and most importantly keep our company values at the forefront, despite working remotely this whole time.

Tell us a little about your history. Have you always had an interest in Finance?

I started out in London working for Philip Green (Arcadia) Topshop / Dorothy Perkins / Debenhams / Oasis etc calculating ratios to where to send different trends of clothes. A role came up in Finance and I have been in Finance ever since. To this day still some of the best perks – free clothes!

Based on your experience as 3EN’s CFO, what do you think your most important duty is, and how has this duty impacted 3EN?

Highlighting awareness of the financial position. Tracking Cash flow and financial planning and analysing the company’s financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing strategic directions.

The last Year and a half have posed challenges for all industries and all roles, have you found many changes yourself?

Things have dramatically changed. Funding looks completely different CBIL loans for example and the banks have changed. Our contacts just disappeared over night and channels we would have used vanished. One of our strengths would be our financial planning and suddenly no one could answer how long is the pandemic going to last. That makes it very difficult to forecast and plan ahead.

How have you found the increase in remote working and the “new normal” we now find?

I think at 3EN its not had that huge an impact as we are cloud based already, we just got in the car and half an hour later we were all back online. However not all companies had that ability and it impacted on our customers and suppliers and certainly slowed down things for a few months. After 2 years the world has got used to that way of working. I can see it going back to normal but a new ‘normal’ particularly in the financial world I just don’t see banks going back to the big offices they used to have.

How has NetSuite supported these changes? Have you felt more or less prepared?

Being on Netsuite definitely helped. When I said earlier we went home and half an hour later we were working again – we really were. Because Netsuite is cloud based you can even use it on your mobile so there was no business interruption.

And looking to the future, what challenges do you think businesses are likely to face next?

I think the next year is going to be much tougher than anything Covid brought. Everything went into emergency mode and there were things like CBILs / furlough / grants. Now they have gone and with the cost of operating costs going through the roof and the unknown impact of the Ukraine / Russia War businesses are going to have quite a few tough years ahead of us.

What financial trends do you think we’ll see going into 2022/23?

There is a huge boom on BNPL Buy now pay later at the minute. Offering customers financial transparency, no added fees, instalment plans and a great alternative to traditional crediting. However companies are going to have to manage the funding and its not free to them and they need to manage cashflows.

And how to you think NetSuite could support these?

Netsuite offers a number of elements that will support these changes. Such as ARM advanced Revenue recognition, Cashflow management and also they have an excellent Planning and Budgeting module that automates and streamlines the process. No more spreadsheets with formulas going wrong and it delivers advanced capabilities such as predictive forecasting. Its definitely the way forward!

Alessia Caldwell