Transitioning and Taking Opportunities in Treasury with Tanya Kuznetsova

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I speak to treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show I'm joined by Tanya Kuznetsova, the director of treasury at Centric Brands over in the U.S. centric brands are leading lifestyle brand collective, as they call themselves, with creative minds from fashion, commerce, technology, marketing and digital. They've got kids wear, womenswear, men's accessories, basically right across a number of North American and international markets. But in actual fact, they also license a number of core categories as well. Now, big company, everything else. I'll get Tanya to explain that to us a little bit later on in the show. Natania, if you would. As people will detect very quickly, you've actually come from across in Russia and then you make the move to the US but perhaps if you would take us back to your earliest experience of treasury, how you heard about it and then talk us through the early parts of your career and as we come through and then the transition to the US So as I say each week, enough from me over to you, perhaps talk to the listeners and tell us the background story for Tanya, over to you.

Thank you, Mike, and thanks for having me on this podcast. This is really exciting for me. Yes, I have experienced working in different environments and in different countries. I will be glad to share that. First, I started my career in Russia. I worked in Moscow for the last 11 years. I worked in X5 Retail Group, which is the largest retailer in Russia. Currently it operates 16,000 stores. When I joined the company, they only had 600. So I was with them on this journey of really rapid and successful growth from 600 stores to 13,000. And that's been quite an experience and I'll be happy to share more about that then. I just thought that the time has come to move on and pursue new opportunities. So we transitioned with a family to the US and currently I am with Centric Brands fashion apparel company, as you have already mentioned. And it's, it's been quite a journey, but I really think it gave me a lot and keep giving me a lot in terms of new experiences and understanding how things work globally and all. That's been really, really great journey for me.

Okay. And then taking it back right to the beginning, I mean we've just asked a high level, but if we jump back into your Russian days and things, but before you discovered sort of treasury as such and things. You were corporate finance, you did your MA and obviously you got amazing English. Better than my Russian, I've got to say. But you started with Russian Railways, you know, how did that start come about, what happened there?

Yeah, so yeah, that's interesting. I studied in Moscow University of Railway Transportation and this is an old and great university founded back in 19th century and they have a great finance department there. So it just so happened that I was an intern in Russian Railways when I was graduating from the university and so I just moved on with their finance team. And this was back in days when in Russia the capital markets and everything just started to develop. So it was a really great experience to join this team and just come on board with all the new things for the country and see how it all develops. And being a part of this has been really gave me great experience. So yeah, I started with corporate finance and was more on the side of working with capital markets and not really doing much of treasury functionality. But as I moved to X5 Retail Group, I joined treasury team there and they were building new treasury team. I just seem to have this experiences over and over because as I'm saying it, I'm thinking that. So I moved to X5 Retail Group to build a new treasury team and the same thing is kind of happening right now with me in Centric Brands because it's also a new company and we are just building all the systems and all the processes from scratch. So yeah, this is something that builds your experience and skills really.

And how did you discover Treasury? You're obviously working in that sort of corporate finance role and did you know about treasury before you joined or was it all brand new to you? What was the situation?

Yeah, we had a separate Treasury Department and from what I understood back then it was mostly payments related and this is how this profession is still viewed for many people. So this is actually something I would like to get more word about because it's really the finance profession in general is viewed as an accounting as like payments related which treasury is usually thought of. But it's actually much more to this and really from company to company I see that the functionality distributed very differently. Sometimes treasury has corporate finance on board and accounts tables even and so they're doing really the full cash cycle, overseeing the full cash cycle there, which makes sense to me. Some companies do differently and more specializing in some areas. But yeah, initially I thought of treasury as being like more just payments related. Then when I actually moved to X5 Retail Group, it is a retail company. So Very transaction heavy transactions oriented company as retail basically. Especially when you like when you work in B2C sector you just have to be really, really, you know, detailed and transactions oriented. Make sure everything like every small bit gets where it should get.

So Tanya, do you were a project finance manager. Just a more of a independent contributor if you like running those. You're growing quickly and everything else. And then your role transitioned if you like to you became the assistant treasurer for X5. And as you said before the sort of the company itself was massively growing and everything else. So you went in and then you grew a team. So perhaps talk to the listeners. You know how you grew that team where it was started and went to because you were real had to recruit lots of people which he loved to hear about recruitment issues on the show hosted by the treasury recruitment company. So tell us how that happened or what happened from there.

Yes. So first I joined as a project manager because the company had more was more prioritizing new projects and organic growth projects. So we had to structure the financing of all these deals and it was for a couple of years we were doing this. Then I was promoted to assistant treasurer position which was high level position and I was hiring the team for Treasury. I was overseeing a specific functionality in treasury which was cash collection and liquidity management and systems. So I was hiring a team which ended up to be a team of 10 people reporting to me directly and also 10 people in our shared services center. So this was quite.

I was going to say 10 people. What was that like? Sort of from being just an individual to then. Right. Recruit a team of 10. You know, tell me about that.

Yes, this didn't happen overnight. Obviously we were slowly growing. As I was saying it was more of an not only organic growth but also acquisition deals. So as the company grew we hired more people. First I started with hiring only three and we were a team of four people including myself. Then as the company grew we did some restructuring and hired more people to support the transactions. As I said, well, we had a team and shared services center because some of the transactions were outsourced to the services center and we would just put the methodology in place to make sure all transactions are taken care of correctly. But as the team grew I had to really find the talent and if we are touching on the recruitment side of it, it's always very tricky and you know that better than me. It's really challenging to find the right people for your team. So you have to understand more of personalities, what personalities people have, how to figure out which skill set will better suit which role. So I basically think that the core for me there was to. I figured out that you need different people to do different tasks, which sounds obvious but you really have to make it clear for the people you recruit as well. You don't want someone to get on board just for the sake of getting on board. You would like to make people aware of what exactly they're going to be doing and how they will feel. And if they are totally great with this, then the company will be the right fit for them and they'll be the right fit for the company. So it's really a two way thing. It never works only one way.

I was talking to a client in New York just last week and it was a challenge if you like because I spoke to the client, I said look, why would someone come and join you? And they've got a big, big blue chip name and everything else. One thing I discovered I wanted to share and I would perhaps put it in the show notes to share. I wrote an article a number years ago but it still holds true today and the title of the article is it's not about you anymore, it's about them. We talked about what the value proposition for a company is and they were like people, you know, 30 years ago you had a job for life and you were lucky to have a job and everything else. But things have changed. You know, you have to think about what you as a corporate and what you appeal to people now. How did you do that when you were in, you know, okay, you were the largest Russian food retailer, you know, so there's some equivalents in the UK and the us. You got Walmart, you got Tesco and things. But why would they bother to join you guys? What was it that you, what did you do to attract them? Well, obviously working with your good self, of course. But what were you looking for or what did they promise to those new employees?

Yes, this is a very interesting question. The company and the brand definitely contributes a lot noticeable in the market. So when the job opening is out there people would know mostly about it. But I really wanted to make sure that, like I said, that people really understand where they're going. Because being in treasury requires specific skill set and specific personality if you will. Sometimes it's very detail oriented and you have to be, you have to be this person to enjoy it and to love what you're doing. I strongly believe that you won't be successful in something you don't like doing every day and coming to every day. So this was very important. And during all interviews I would ask people what is their career plan? Not meaning like where you see yourself in two years from now. Not exactly that, but meaning what do you know about the finance profession? And this will be mostly for more junior people. I wanted to understand what is their understanding of the finance profession, what different paths they see in finance, if any, and what leads them to apply for the position in Treasury. Because this is something very specific in this finance environment about the group itself.

And your treasury experience, because you will talk about it as we're just going to move on to it in a moment or perhaps this will lead us into it. You love technology, you help create this digital roadmap and you re engineered processes and it's SAP. Is that typical within a lot of Russian companies? Because obviously you had this amazing experience over there. But you know, explain again for the listeners what was it like when you joined and what was the digital IT technology journey that you guys went on?

As a matter of fact, I do think that Russia, and specifically large Russian business is on top of the game right now. And many things contributed to this also. One of them was that they started this journey later on. So they didn't really adopt very early stages of some of the technologies like credit cards only appeared like 30 years ago maybe. But it also turned how the things developed later because adopting newer technology from the beginning made them make bigger progress over time. So with X5 Retail Group being the largest retail company and operating so many stores, technology was the key and the IT budget was really large, I mean the yearly budget. But we had obviously to make sure we're using it properly and the investment brain stayed the best results. So very soon I realized that in my role in finance I also have to be very technology oriented because this is what will enable me to operate as the company grows. Because you cannot stay in the same place when the company is moving so fast. So I would have to think two years in advance and three years to make sure the place where the company will be in two and three years I will also be there with all the technology and I will be able to enable all the operations, the continued operations. So this is something some companies don't face every day just because, as I said, just because of the pace of the fast growth. But it was really challenging and interesting. And so all that led me to really dig into the finance technology, fintech as they call it, and make sure I know I'm aware of all the new things appearing in the market and to understand what we need what we don't need going forward and make sure we are on top of the game.

Yeah, I know what you're doing. And then you made a transition from Moscow across to North Carolina in the US with Centric. And rather than just dive straight into Centric, how you know, why did you decide a move to the us? What's that transition been like? And then how have you seen it different? You know, not in a, you know, the different countries, you know this, but in treasury terms, you know, what are the similarities and what are the differences? Because there'll be people again listening. They might make a transition from say Spain to UK or they might be making a move from the US or something else. Just be interesting to what are your thoughts? As it were.

Yes, so initially I planned this transition for about two years and the motivation primarily was to gain more opportunity because the US market is the largest market and I just wanted to have more opportunity for me and to work in different businesses and maybe different industries as well. Because in Russia not all industries are so well developed as the customer related ones that I've primarily been to. So I feel that what allows you to find better business solutions is your personal experience and it's not always necessarily even the professional experience, meaning if you've been to some situation before, you will be able to solve it in the future. Not only this but also everything that you experience in life contributes to this, to being able to find new solutions for problems and to even working more effectively if you will. So I really think that it's a very good experience just to just different life experiences contribute a lot to your work and that was also one of the motivations as well.

You come in Centric, your Director of treasury there. What's the role, what's the company? Just give us a quick overview for. Again some people might know it in the US but other listeners maybe UK and Europe go Centric is it some more fashion apparel company? But explain for the guys listening out there.

So there was an acquisition deal and Centric Brands was formed as a new company splitting off Global Brands Group. So Centric Brands being a new company with a great experience in the market already and being a part of Father Group, but new company has just been established. So I knew from the beginning that the company will require to put some new processes in place and to build something from scratch. So this was a very challenging experience from the beginning and I was interested to come on board to try build this with the team and the treasurer who invited me, very thankful to him as well, because he also felt I had this really well rounded in terms of my experiences and skills and he felt that this will contribute to the team a lot. So we are still in this journey right now and the role is still evolving and the Treasury Department is still changing.

And you say where are you on the journey? When you joined, was it relatively startup treasury or were there established processes you had to throw in the trash? Or where were you on that journey towards being this slick treasury machine, as it were?

I joined in January, the beginning of this year, and we started with, as I said, we were splitting from a different company. So many processes did not exist. They were done in the past, but some people were not there anymore and some relationships with banks and customers had to be established for the new company because formally it's the same relationship, but it's just setting everything up for the new company and all the new details. It's just something that has to be done. So our first step on this journey was really just resetting everything that existed before to the new environment, but not really changing a whole lot of things. The second step here would be to really start the changes and here when the change management really comes into play, you have to rethink everything that you were doing before and to see where the efficiencies are, what needs to be automated maybe, and how to really improve even more.

What was done before and with the group itself. Again, for the listeners, can you explain what the group's about?

Yes. So it's a fashion apparel company and the company is operating licenses from different brands and owns a few great brands. So we would be mostly managing the licenses and operating under the brands that we own. We sell to the largest tail chains in the U.S. including Walmart, Walmart, Target, Ross, Burlington and many more. We also have retail business and there we operate B2C in B2C sector. So it's basically omnichannel strategy that the company takes. And for treasury it basically means that you have to be very flexible and you don't focus only on one thing. You basically have all bank products and instruments in place to be able to support all the payments, all the be able to collect from different sources. So we're being really well rounded on this.

Yeah, and I know that, Tanya, one of your real passions, if you like, within treasury is the use of technology to sort of improve things for everyone and make their jobs a lot more interesting. And you've really looked at the adoption of different fintech things and processes, automation and things. I talked to lots of people about this, but what does it mean? You know, how do you make it work in your day to day Again, I was talking to Steven, one of my other podcast guests and recently said, well, it's all very well all about this, but if you've only got you and another person, how do you bring in AI? How do you bring in robotic learning? Now maybe you've got bigger team, but how do you actually pick the best fintech to use in your business? What's driving that? Rather than just oh, let's bring this in, see if it works or thing. What do you employ to do that?

This is a great question. I think that. Well, first of all, I heard this somewhere, but I really agree with this phrase that someone said if you have a mass and you automate it, you get an automated mess. So you really don't want to do that. And this is what many people forget about. When you start this journey of digital transition of this automation. First thing you need to do is to make sure you already have the right processes in place and people know what they're doing and you have everything documented. Maybe sound a bit boring, but this is the key to everything in the organization has to be very processes oriented first. As a first step, in my experience with X5 Retail Group we once had, we were trying to implement the robotic processes automation and our accounting team was leading this. Many people were involved cross functionally. So from what we saw there was you really cannot even put this robotic process into work unless you have a specific, specifically well structured process in place. If you don't have a process. And by process I mean when people are interacting with each other in systems and doing from point A, you know, to point B and then to point C, they are doing specific, they take specific actions to lead to specific results. So you just have to make sure it exists in your organization. Otherwise you won't be like no artificial intelligence will help you with this. This is something that people have to make sure is in place first and designed the way they want it.

Yeah, make sure there's an effective process before you then throw technology at it, as it were, so they make sure it works. And again, and from that, you know, again, when you've been recruiting, when you've looked at people, obviously the technical element of it, I don't think it's an interesting one where we're doing a lot of the recruitment campaigns recently and I don't find people saying we want, we want people that are system savvy, but they don't say, oh, they must have, have IT two they must have Reval, they must have Treasury Express, they must have all these systems or exposure to them. It's more are they good at different systems? Do you actually look, when you're looking for people, how do you recruit in terms of looking at those people from a technical IT type background and not saying specifically for an IT role but you're looking at a Treasury manager? How do you assess that when you're trying to bring on good people and things?

I really try to see if the person is adaptive and thinks of himself as one, which is the most important. So some people, from my personal experience, they stay like take adverse kind of attitude so they just really don't want to get into this and it's fine as long as the person is comfortable doing something else which he's good at or she. But if you want to bring someone on board who will be good with different systems and changing systems, I don't really think you need to put experience with specific systems on your job description. Not necessarily because, well, unless it's something really, really specific which also happens. But generally speaking I don't think it's really, really important for someone to have like two to three years of experience with specific system because in a few months you may be moving from this system to someone to something else, to something better, more effective maybe. So what would you do then? You will still have to train and make sure everyone adapts. So I really think that ability to adapt fast is what is really important. And again, communication skills to communicate if there is any problem and what training is needed, when and where. I really believe that the team has to be on board. It's not up to the leaders, only in the organization to facilitate this change management. You really have to get all the people on board and just communicate up and down in this environment of change to make sure everyone knows what they're doing and is on the path to success.

Tania, if you are looking at someone from that and you're wanting to assess their it, how do you do that? Interview stage? You know, if you're saying you're not worried about a specific system but how do you assess someone actually they are going to be, oh yeah, I'm really system savvy. I've used this system, I'm really good at it. Da da da. What if they're not telling the truth? How do you dig into that Again we'll have listeners thinking oh yeah, that's something we need to assess. What would you recommend people do?

I would recommend asking questions to understand if the person had this experience in the past. So I'm not saying you need to hire someone with no experience working with systems. I'm just saying that it's not necessarily one specific system that you want to stick to. I think if a person is well rounded in terms of having experience working in different systems and different kinds of different processes, maybe that would require going back and forth from different systems, things like that, when they feel really comfortable talking about them working and learning to work with new systems. I think this is the key.

And where do you see yourself developing? Where do you see your career? We're talking about the future of treasury as you see the technology and embracing that, that's the sort of direction we've gone. But do you see your role becoming more tech heavy? Is that where you see your career developing or is it an add on to your career sort of thing? What do you see as the future of Treasury?

This is also a great question. Yes, I actually do think that for me personally and for the treasury roles, leadership roles in general, all going to be more tech oriented. Not for the sake of being tech oriented, just for the sake of doing new things. And you know, like some people get scared of the technology taking over and many people think they're going to lose jobs in the future because the machines will take their jobs. And there are different opinions on that. My personal opinion is that, and it comes from my personal experience is that when you implement technology you get even more jobs. They're just different jobs. In my experience in X5 Retail Group, I just want to give a brief example on that. We were implementing a supply chain finance platform which was not really a standard one, it was customized to work for of factoring arrangement more. And we did have, not us, but our suppliers, hundreds of our suppliers, they had this factoring arrangements with their banks and they never needed a platform for this, it just was there. And we had one accountant who would take care of all the requests inquiries that would come back and forth from the suppliers just to facilitate the payments to their factoring companies. Later, when we faced certain risks associated with all these arrangements, we wanted to do something about it. And that primarily drove us to implement an EDI platform to help facilitate this arrangement. And so yes, that accountant stopped doing going back and forth with the suppliers. So he just took another job in the company in accounting. But no one got hurt in this situation. But I'm just saying that he didn't have to do any of this previous, any of that previous job anymore. So that one was eliminated. But Again, other jobs were created and we actually hired five more people in our shared services center to help facilitate the platform. But on the other hand, it may sound that this brought like it was more costly for the organization and brought more pain, but it wasn't. So along with this technology that we implemented, we gained a lot of benefits, including lower rates for our suppliers, for the organization. We were able to mitigate all the risks associated with fraud because when we were doing paperwork before, there was some room for fraud and we were facing some even suit trials as a company, that was also very costly in terms of legal. So we cut a lot of costs and gave more opportunity for our suppliers to be financed and to be more stable and we actually strengthened our supply chain. All that would not be possible even in the previous environment without this technology in place. But after we had this technology in place, it just allowed us to do much more things. But again, it also created the jobs to facilitate this technology and to be and to work with this. So this is, to my point, this is the example of how technology can change, can be a game changer really. And it not necessarily cut people out, it just gives them more, even more.

Room for creativity and it makes their jobs more interesting. So we've talked about this before.

Exactly.

You're not just replacing people, you're just getting rid of process, which means that the stuff that you do will be more interesting and be faster.

Exactly.

And interesting. Okay, as we sort of approach and wrap up today's show, as I said before, and say every week we'll put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so people can connect to you if they think it's the right thing to do in part of your treasury network. But Sandy, if you would just looking back over your career and thus far and there's more to come from you, what would you say or what tips would you give to people if they say, do you know what I want to make a move? I'm looking at maybe moving from Russia to the States or making this or growing my treasury career. Assistant Treasurer now Director of treasury role. That's the sort of thing I want to do and their career might resemble yours. What tips would you give to people? We've had it before with Mark, who, congratulations has recently been promoted the global treasurer. Johnson controls his advice. But way back when in one of our earlier shows was to take an opportunity every time. Bit like yourself. He's moved around the world. He started off with Johnson Controls in Brussels. He then moved to Milwaukee, then to Singapore, back to Milwaukee and Now eventually got the global treasurer job. So maybe that's a thing with yourself that, you know, be taking those opportunities directly related to you. He's got where he wanted to be. And really, number one, is that where you see it with your career or, you know, what advice would you give to the listeners?

Well, definitely not shy away from opportunities when you face them. That's. That's number one. I also think that people should not try to stay in one specialization. Some people tend to do that, especially more junior people when they just got to the point when they're really good in doing something, which is great. And I heard a lot from my team members, they would say, oh, so why would I need some more training on anything if I'm so good in doing my job? That makes perfect sense to me. But it's just not really leading you anywhere career wise, which not all people want to do. But if you really want to move forward with your career and try out new things, you really have to look around and be aware of what other people are doing. Not only know what you are doing, but look at the someone sitting the next desk to you and ask them what they are doing and just be aware of the whole process, not only the part that you are doing in it, but how the whole thing goes. You may see what needs to be improved and changed there and that's how the conversation about the taking your roles and promotion starts.

Yeah. So getting to know other parts of a process or everything else, not just sitting aside low and just thinking, right, this is treasury, this is what I do sort of thing. So. Yeah, amazing.

Exactly. And I think Treasure, people in treasury are really well positioned to do that because you are managing the cash cycle, you are seeing all the business. Basically you have to do your forecasting, you know what your inflows and outflows are. You really know the business well. It's only a matter of you putting your own frames on what you're doing that holds you back.

Yeah, amazing. Great advice. Thank you very much, Tanya. It's been lovely to chat to you today. As I said, we'll put your link to your background and everything else in the show notes. People, if you want to connect to Tanya, please do. If she's right to have you in the network and her network, that is as you will connect. Thanks for your time today. Great advice and as we say, you know, look around you and get involved with other people. So don't just do your own job. Trying to get involved in from there as well.

Yeah, thank you, Mike.

Thanks very much.