This article was originally published by CFO Dive.
For CFOs facing price pressures and talent shortages, figuring out a strategy to steer one’s organization through turbulent economic times can be a challenging task. For CFO Niki Heim, the focus and perspective “is always about being more efficient,” she said.
A nine-year veteran of Norwalk, Connecticut-based LogicSource, Heim joined the procurement services and technology provider in 2014 as its controller before being appointed to her current role as finance chief and chief administrative officer in January 2020.
This focus on efficiency was paramount during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the company was angling to put itself in a position “to thrive, not just survive,” Heim said in an interview. That same philosophy can be put to use during the current macroeconomic environment, when finance leaders need to both trim costs as well as keep a sharper focus on where and how effectively their organizations’ current resources — including their people — are being put to use.
Balancing the hiring scale
One way to improve efficiency at one’s company is by leveraging previously unused data for better insights. When joining LogicSource, Heim looked to leverage the company’s untapped data not as a way to help boost employee efficiency, but to better understand key aspects of the business, like gauging how long an initial sales meeting with a prospective client might take and the probability that such a meeting will turn into contracted revenue.
When it comes to their employees, LogicSource utilizes a time-tracking system that allows them to “know, down to the half an hour, what everyone in the business is doing,” she said. This is not used to monitor employees, but rather to provide leadership with a better understanding of when the company does need to hire or to shift employees from one project to another, Heim said.
Offering companies solutions that can help them to reduce their procurement costs, LogicSource has grown rapidly despite the complications and challenges which arose during the COVID-19 pandemic and which are now occurring among present economic circumstances — for its past three fiscal years, the company has increased its revenues by over 220%, according to an April 2022 press release detailing the $180 million it raised from growth equity investor FTV Capital. The company anticipates it will continue its growth streak, with an expected revenue growth rate of 170% between 2020 and 2023, it said.
As it looks to continue its growth, however, the procurement solutions provider is one among many companies taking steps to sheer off unnecessary costs. LogicSource is working on downsizing its office space, Heim said, and has also found a nearshore partner which allowed the company to increase its capacity while keeping costs down.
Despite being an organization where the majority of its costs relates to payroll, LogicSource will “absolutely be doing a significant amount of hiring” over the next year and change, Heim said.
Ensuring that the business is well-staffed is paramount to running an efficient operation — it’s about “making sure that we really understand that lever between, when do we have to hire versus when do we have to reallocate, so that we’re never over invested, but we’re never also under invested,” Heim said.
