Our Stories > Nicole Thompson - Finance Director
Nicole Thompson
Joined Caspian One in August 2019
Finance Director with responsibilities across the operational teams
Board-level professional Involved in the company’s technological and data-led advancements
[Interviewed August 2020]
What was your background before joining Caspian One?
After school, I went to university and did a computer science degree. When I graduated, I realised that I didn't want to work in programming - it wasn't really 'my bag'. I wanted to go off and do all sorts of other things, but I ended up working at an IT company – in IT, funnily enough.
I was at my last company for over 20 years, so since graduating. Effectively I had a new job every few years, from working in project management, technical authorship, some team leadership, business analyst, user experience and software design.
During that time, I did my MBA through the Open University. After I then had my daughter, it was a question of - "where do I want my career to go?". I'd had my first career, and it was time to look at a second that offered new challenges.
When I went back to work after maternity leave my MD said - "look, can you do what we've done for all our customers and come in and sort all our back-office systems out, and all our current functions?".
Really, it was a case of streamlining all our systems, which was what we were doing for our customers but have wouldn't normally invest in doing for ourselves.
Between 2006 and 2008/9, I worked for what was essentially my own small company within a company, in terms of re-doing all the back-office systems and putting in appropriate controls.
I realised from this, combined with what I'd learned on my MBA - that I much enjoyed finance and the systems side of IT.
Fortunately, my last company-funded me to do my CIMA qualification. Ironically, I'd had another job offer when I left university to be a CIMA accountant at British Airways. Back then I didn't know if I wanted to be an accountant as I was 20 and well, accountants were boring. So inadvertently I ended up coming back to the same career quite a few years later, but I think the right way round. I say this because, when I was doing my finance and managed accountancy training, I came at it with the experience of helping to run a small business for quite a long time.
I was Head of Finance at my last company for quite a few years, which was great – but I got to a point where I'd been there, done that and was ready for my next career move. It was time to take on that next challenge.
How do you go from such a diverse amount of activity to joining Caspian One and Directing Finance? – although, I'd now say you have fingers in many pies here also...
Ha, what a surprise, I've ended up in the same kind of situation. So as said, I realised I needed a new challenge. My choices were either to move back into large-scale IT program management and work in PMO offices – or, I could specialise much more in the finance and accounting side. After quite a bit of thought, I determined that I love technology, that's never going to change, I love shiny things; but, where I really get my 'buzz' is in solving business problems and providing information for other to use.
I decided that I wanted to stick with finance and accounting. However, it's not a surprise that in joining Caspian One, as a smaller company you get involved in other projects, right. It was always the intent that it be finance, accounting, and back-office - but quite naturally, I find myself doing whatever I can to benefit the company.
For me, I suppose the challenge at Caspian One and what attracted me to Caspian One is – well, I'd gone from a lovely little company, it had 100 staff who were very close, you knew everybody.
I wanted to keep the same kind of ethos but move into an environment where there were many challenges to be overcome. From a CV tick box perspective, as an accountant, there are certain things that you need to round off your skills.
Caspian One offers a group of companies, which is an accounting 'tick' - as is multi-currency and the more considerable turnover compared to where I was before.
Historically I was quite anti recruitment agencies. Whenever I'd try to hire through them in the past, I'd get sent poor quality CV's, or they wouldn't have that necessary specialist knowledge. When I was first approached about the job at Caspian One, I wasn't entirely convinced because of this.
However, I went away, found out information about the company, did the research and realised Caspian One isn't at all like those other companies.
For a start it's very specialist, working in real niches with a genuine interest in its customers. I guess, what attracted Marcus and Lee to me is the background I have in consultancy. My last company was an IT consultancy – so I quickly understood Caspian One products like the new CPC model and the financial requirements. Things like how CPC projects should be run, milestones, contracts, all of that makes sense to me.
Also, we knew that we had to modernise all the back-office systems and they wanted dashboards and reporting – and that is really my bag. It's where I come in and say, "what is the business need, what systems can we make work and integrate, what do we need to replace? Etc...". With my background, I can then manage the implementation and the third-party providers involved.
Inherently I'm quite lazy; I hate doing the same task over and over again. What I loved is that Marcus wasn't interested in making his people conduct repetitive tasks. He wanted to bring in automated systems with this real vision of technology and how it should be used, which I align with.
That gave me the scope to put in systems and processes that add real value. We didn't have the day-to-day management information needed, so much of my work in the last 12 months has been around this idea of a single source of data. All our reporting now comes from that single source, and we can flow that information all the way through the business.
What's critical is allowing people to self-serve that information. Within the sales environment, there is so much knowledge that the guys need, therefore if that information already exists, we should be able to push that out to them. Really, data is useless as data but can be vital as an information resource.
We've recently launched our new consultant dashboards. These allow them to now see all the data on their daily activities; enabling them to manage their pipeline better and more effectively What we're attempting to do is push information directly to the end individual, making them responsible for their own outcomes.
Caspian One does offer an excellent career for salespeople that can focus and self-manage. These dashboards help them to achieve this.
I think we've been so successful so far during lockdown because everyone in the company is supportive of change, for the right reasons. They listen, ask the right questions, and they're open to different ways of working - adapting once they can see why we're doing it.
We've had to make many changes as an organisation, with home working and having the right technology to both track and predict our pipeline and company performance.
All the decision making has been made possible because of the groundwork we put in before the pandemic, and because of our people's willingness to try something new and different.
All the way through COVID-19, the company has had this great attitude towards doing the best for its customers, adapting, changing, being the best in the market and making life easier for everyone.
For example, our new timesheet system is all about making life easier for contractors and clients. It removes the capacity to make common mistakes and increases transparency for clients that wish to view reports, make approvals online and understand what's happening real-time.
I guess, for me, it's a case of – don't get a person to do a repetitive task that a computer can do effectively. I'm aware of my own infallibilities; if a computer can do something better and faster than me, I'd much rather spend my time and effort on systems which help us to be lean. We process so many timesheets, invoices, payments to contractors and freelancers and so-on. If we didn't have systems in place, we'd need way more people doing not very interesting jobs.
I'm trying to move all the finance team away from repetitive tasks. Many of them have accounting training, so there's no point in them processing data when they should be doing something they've been trained for; interpreting data, presenting data in specific ways, etc... It's about getting the systems to do the boring jobs, reducing errors and making the whole business slicker.
Are there any key projects or activities that have happened in the past 12 months you're particularly proud of?
I've spent the first year putting all the building blocks in place. The new finance system, the new timesheets system we're in the process of rolling out, new dashboards – and we've been pulling data and creating a data warehouse out of our CRM, along with connected systems. For me, it's the fact that - by putting all these systems in place, we've been able to make data-led decisions during lockdown.
Really quickly, opportunity tracking reports allowed us to quantify work in the pipeline, forecast and create forward projections – letting us see the data around ongoing work, tracking trends all the time. It empowered us to track activity, week-by-week with accurate data – which, in turn, allowed us to make better data-led business decisions. It's why we've been able to keep trading.
When I first joined Caspian One all we ever did was look backwards. Which is what most companies do, looking at management accounts and what happened last month or last quarter. Now, we've shifted to looking ahead at what's being forecast for this week, month, quarter.
That's what I'm most proud of. That we could use information in order to know that it was okay for us to keep trading without having to use furlough leave extensively, and in advance, know approximately what to expect.
Companies are like container ships – if you want to turn 90 degrees right in 10 miles time, you start turning the wheel now. Suppose you want to be profitable in June/July 2021. In that case, you need to know if you'll be profitable in March/April - because if you're not, there is not enough sales cycle for them to turn that around.
What they're doing now influences what happens in three months, so if you're always looking back then you're suddenly in the crisis before you even know it's happening!
It's a question of trying to present information which will help people understand where to focus their efforts today.
It's funny, someone asked me what I'm going to do once all the new systems are in, and I laughed.
If I look back over what we've completed in the last year, it's a massive achievement, right. However, in reality, we've just scratched the surface of what's possible.
We've put all the basics in place, but over the coming years, now the building blocks in place we can really capitalise on that investment.
How have you found being part of the company, its people and culture?
Initially, it was a real culture shock for me.
I'd come from not only being at one company for quote a while, but it was an IT company where most of the people are quite shy and quiet. My first impression of the office was that it was just so noisy. Everyone was friendly, talking to each other in the kitchen and around the space, which I found a little intimidating to start with.
I'm an introvert by nature, and everyone was larger than life. Still, quite quickly, it was easy to start building those relationships with people. That attitude of adaptability, wanting to help everyone else and to do a good job, is engrained into the business. As such, it really didn't take long for me to feel supported and believed in.
For me, I really didn't think that I'd be able to find that family, friendly, pleasant working environment again – but actually, I don't think that could be further from the truth. It's fun at Caspian One, we have many laughs, we do a lot of work, but it feels like a family which means you go that extra mile.
I couldn't be happier. I've felt challenged. I've felt supported, I've built some great relationships, and I wake up in the morning happy to work.