The ongoing shortage of accounting talent has put strain on overworked finance teams tasked with doing more with less as well as on finance chiefs themselves.

One way SaaS company Xactly has been able to navigate that ongoing shortage is by bringing in entry-level talent that doesn’t necessarily have a traditional finance or accounting background and training them in those skills, said CFO Jason Godley.

“We've been able to do that quite successfully because we're very fortunate to have a very strong leadership team in my accounting organization…who are interested in developing the team,” Godley said in an interview. The San Jose, California-based company offers AI-powered revenue intelligence and sales performance management solutions, according to its website.

Learning the language

CFOs, regulators and financial experts have looked to various solutions to potentially address the dwindling pool of potential employees in the industry, from bringing more automation into the finance function to ease the time and resources it takes staff to do manual tasks, to potentially raising starting salaries or possibly changing the requirements to gain a certified public accounting license in the U.S.

Bringing in talent from other areas of the business can help to mitigate the shortage — and it can be easier to find employees from other professional arenas to fill in the finance function than one might think, Godley said. While it’s crucial for professionals to have an in-depth understanding of their own business areas, such as sales or marketing, “ultimately, the language of business is the financial information,” he said.

“So I've seen in my career, individuals who are non-accountants, non-finance, people from other functions,” but who are interested in taking the time to study the field, “are able to be very successful because they can communicate in the language of business,” he said.

Godley has served as Xactly’s CFO for about a year, having joined the company in February, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to Xactly, he logged four years at transportation company Booster, serving in a variety of roles including as its president and its chief operating officer and CFO. He has also held various executive roles for companies including Big Four firm PwC, Citi, and Jefferies.

Xactly has sourced financial talent from the usual routes, including enticing alumni from the Big Four, which provide a stable training ground for a successful finance or accounting career, Godley said.

However, the SaaS company has also brought several of its employees from other parts of the business into its finance team, Godley said, pointing to one employee who started in customer success and sales before pivoting to finance. The company seeks out those at the beginning of their careers who might have some experience, but are eager to learn: for example, it could bring in a collections analyst from another company, before offering them the training to become an accounts payable manager or to take a similar role.

“You've had a year of experience or two years of experience, and [we] bring you in and then surround you with training and guidance and get you up to speed,” he said.

Becoming the translator  

Attracting talent is one thing — retaining skilled staff, especially in a competitive environment, is another. One way Xactly looks to keep talent is by ensuring their company culture remains attractive, but the company also takes steps to rotate “folks around to give them different experience,” Godley said.  

The SaaS provider is in a sweet spot when it comes to its ability to do so: large enough that it’s able to offer employees the ability to gain different experiences, but small enough that it can sustain an “intimate” company culture, he said.

“My leadership team is always very focused on, ‘how do we make sure that we are giving individuals unique opportunities?’” he said.

Having those opportunities can provide critical benefits both for up-and-coming finance talent and for businesses themselves, especially as the role of the finance function becomes more strategiclly-focused.

Ensuring one has the technical skills needed for the role is essential, but it’s also important to remember that “we don’t do accounting for the sake of accounting,” Godley said. “We do accounting for purposes of understanding the financial performance of the business so we can then make strategic business decisions about where the company needs to go.”

With that in mind, those individuals “who have an open aperture around what it is actually that we're solving for, beyond just closing the books, I think will find themselves gravitating into more, leadership, management positions, because you're able to be the translator,” he said.