Using Automation and Empathy to Unlock the Potential of Finance Teams -- Ruchi Kasliwal, Head Of Finance and Operations, Novo Insurance

Ruchi Kasliwal has a career characterized by her ability to build and lead finance and accounting teams from the ground up. She is driven by a passion for making finance organizations key partners within companies and fostering collaboration across departments. Her dedication and hard work have enabled her to achieve great success in building scalable and successful companies that optimize both human and system resources. Kasliwal has the distinction of taking two companies public and has earned recognition in the industry for her resilience and perseverance in building strong and empathetic teams. 

Ruchi is the head of finance and operations at Novo Insurance. Novo Insurance is a subsidiary of TeleNav, a company that has been in the navigation software business for over 20 years. Novo Insurance provides insurance based on a person's driving behavior and aims to improve driving habits. Ruchi's role includes finance, accounting, FP&A, reporting, systems integration and streamlining processes. She believes that the role of the CFO has changed and evolved over the years, moving from a traditional financial role to a business partner and strategic leader for the organization. In the next five to ten years, Ruchi sees the role of the CFO becoming more tech-savvy and focused on leading high-quality teams by providing them with the right tools and resources.

In this conversation, Ruchi discusses the importance of automating routine and mundane tasks in accounting, such as data entry and reconciliation, to free up time and resources for more strategic and valuable tasks. Ruchi believes that automation can help companies save money, improve cash forecasting, and make better investments, but also stresses that human analysis is still necessary to make meaningful decisions. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the CFO Corner. I'm your host, Nick Ezzo. In the CFO Corner, we sit down with CFOs 

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and corporate finance professionals to hear about the innovative approaches and technology 

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they use to scale and grow their organizations. They share the challenges they're facing with 

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mundane repetitive tasks, and they give their takes on what they'd like to see in the corporate 

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finance functions that can help CFOs achieve a stress-free working life. With me today is, 

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Ruchi Kasliwal, Head of Finance and Operations at Novo Insurance. Ruchi has extensive experience 

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scaling finance from zero to IPO and beyond. Welcome, Ruchi. 

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Thank you, Nick. Pleasure to be here. Great to have you. So before we get started, really with the 

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questions, can you tell me a little bit about Novo Insurance and TeleNav, your parent organization? 

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Sure, sure. So TeleNav has been in the business of navigation software for over 20 years. All the navigation software that's, 

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embedded in cars like GM cars, Ford and Toyota, that software is all provided by TNNF. What Novo is a little bit of pivot in the direction of consumer based 

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industry. So with our technology and getting driving data, we decided to pivot into insurance 

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and provide insure tech. What we do in Novo is we provide insurance, photo insurance codes based on 

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your driving behavior. So if you're a great driver, you get very cheap roads. And if you are not so, 

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great driver, you'll get an expensive one, but we'll be right along with you to guide you to 

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become a better driver. Oh, that's excellent. If you ask my family, they don't think I'm a very 

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good driver, but that's, you know, irrelevant. So tell me about your role. You've got a very 

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interesting title as head of finance and operations at Novo Insurance. What does that entail? 

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So, we launched this company about a year and a half ago and I got promoted from my, 

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original role at Telenev and was chartered to give, run finance and operations. Now, 

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in my role, I'm not just responsible for accounting, FP&A and reporting, but I'm also 

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responsible for systems, when systems integrations and streamlining processes. That's where the 

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operational aspect comes in? Like how do we make the company more operationally efficient 

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so that we can scale for growth. 

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So you work for the CFO, you support the CFO. In your perspective, over the last five or 10 years, 

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how has the role of the CFO changed and evolved? 

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I would say the CFO role has changed quite a lot, especially with so much technology coming in. 

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PFO org is no longer just the encounter, which was the traditional role what CFOs used to do, right? 

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Nowadays, I see CFOs being the business partner, not just for the CEO, but also for the wider organization. 

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They are there to help streamline processes, to scale processes, to find technology that 

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works well with their internal systems. 

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So it's more about business partnering and being the strategic leader for the organization. 

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Excellent. Excellent. So where do you see the role heading in the next five or 10 years? 

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It's going into a great direction. Like, you know, nowadays, CFOs are very tech savvy, which is amazing because I myself believe 

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that it's not the quantity, but the quality of teams that you lead. 

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And if you provide the right tools and resources to your team, they can do wonders. 

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It's no longer a back office, GL function, GNA, who's not, it's a time-tested job if you think about it. 

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But with the technology and with how much more we can add value to the organization, 

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it's changed its course quite a lot. 

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Yeah, I totally agree with you that, you know, CFOs used to be backward looking, 

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you know, looking out the back of the boat. 

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And now they're expected by the board and the CEO to be looking out the front of the boat 

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and helping to guide and steer the business. 

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So on that vein, what are the expectations of the CEO and the board? 

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And what do they expect from the accounting team and the CFO specifically? 

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So I'll split it into two different areas. One is definitely accounting, which is managing your core business and the financials. 

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But the other area is the strategic learning. 

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So from an accounting perspective, you absolutely have to close your books on time, 

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make sure the right controls are in place, you have the right approvals for pay, you have the 

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right processes and policies. And on the FP&A and strategic planning is you're showing the board and 

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the CEO what can happen for the company. What are the different scenarios you can play out for the 

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company? Where can you help the company? In which direction do you go into? So part of GPM strategy 

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year alignment, right? 

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Growth alignment, market alignment. 

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This is where the CFO role has come about quite a lot in the recent years. 

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So that sounds like a big task, a lot of responsibility there. 

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And when you and I spoke earlier, you mentioned something called burnout. So CFO burnout and 

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burnout of the accounting team in general. How does your company or how should people be thinking 

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about mitigating burnout among the CFO and the finance team? 

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Absolutely. I think this is one topic which is not widely addressed by organizations, 

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especially for the CFO org. Like you know we hear about engineering burnout, product burnout, but we 

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also need to look within our companies and see how is the support function doing. We still have 

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to go through the invoices even if you are making two million, two hundred million or two hundred 

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thousand. We still have to do all those things. So a few things that I like to do and I would 

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encourage other CFOs to do is to look back internally within your orgs and identify the 

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burnout. Bring in people and resources and tools that help eliminate these like you know automate 

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the mundane tasks, don't make it too hard on your PPAR guys that they have to have every single thing, 

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try to be more empathetic towards these people because we don't recognize the finance org as much as we should be and this is the main reason why they go into burnout. 

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Like one of the parts I did, one of the things I would love to do in my org is have a CFO team off site. 

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Let them put everything on their desk, some out of their normal day-to-day activities and some spend time with other co-workers within the finance org. 

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Learn how they are dealing with something. Learn what can we help you collaborate. 

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These are things which we don't see more often in the CFO side. 

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So it's very important to address that. Yeah, I've often thought that the finance team 

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and the accounting team is one of those roles in the organization. 

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And there's a few of them where you don't wanna be noticed. 

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And because if you are noticed, then that means you've messed something up dramatically. 

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So, yeah, so it's a high wire, like tightrope walk every single day for that team. 

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So given that, if you could magically solve, you know, One problem in finance and accounting, 

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you can wave your magic wand, Ruchi. What would you solve? 

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I would say eliminate the mundane tasks like you know these are things that we have so much, 

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automation out there, RPAs out there, just eliminate entry data entry of invoices, 

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cash collection, GL reconciliations or simple modeling right, repetitive reporting. 

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If we can eliminate these tasks the value that these people will bring in by bringing on and 

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adding on their strategic hat or thinking hat is tremendous. So if it was for me, I would eliminate, 

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all mundane tasks. So you mentioned some of the mundane tasks of data entry and reconciliation 

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and things like that. What are the areas, what specific tasks do you think could be automated 

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today or should be automated today? The invoice receipt from an AP site receipt of invoice, 

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matching it up with the POs, getting approvals. These are things a system can easily do. 

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If you have an AP mailbox, identifying the vendor, identifying the amounts, matching it up with the PO, 

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eliminate those things. You don't need a person to monitor that mailbox day in, day out. 

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Just imagine like today if you have 20 vendors, tomorrow if you have 200 vendors, 

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The first thing everybody thinks is, oh, I need more headcount. So step back, think of things that 

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you can eliminate and instead of getting that headcount, get a tool that's going to help you 

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because if your company is growing and I hope it's growing tremendously, you would want those 200 

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vendors to turn into 2000 vendors. You can just keep adding headcount. There's a cost to headcount, 

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training cost, there's not overhead. So think of things that you can solve by automating simple tasks. 

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That's one thing I would definitely encourage people to do. Well, you're speaking my language. I love that answer. 

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So if we take those routine mundane tasks and give them to the automation, 

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doesn't that mean that robots are going to take away accounting jobs? 

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Not really. This is still data entry, right? You still need human brain to analyze the data that's going in. 

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Are we paying some customers very fast? Could we come up with some negotiating tactics that we have so much volume video? What can we do? 

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These are things where you need people to come in and do that analysis and ultimately help the, 

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company save money. On the AR side, we can look at how fast are we getting the money? How is our 

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cash application working? This is all about cash forecasting. Using these tools and reports, 

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you can do better cash forecasting. And taking it one more step ahead, if you have good cash 

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forecasting, you can do better investments. You right away get more revenue, more investment 

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income that you can add to your portfolio. So there are lots of things that people can still do 

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by eliminating the mundane tasks and they still have the brainpower to do other better things. 

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Yeah, and I think that to your point about burnout, it could actually help alleviate some 

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some of that burnout. Absolutely. They'll be more excited to be in the APAR team, right? 

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Because now they're not just doing data entry, they're actually adding value. Because of them, 

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we're able to make investments. Show it to them that way. Show the value that they add. 

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All right. Well, this has been a wonderful interview. Thanks so much for spending the 

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time with me today. I'd like to thank on behalf of Auditorium and the rest of the team, I'd like to 

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thank Ruchi Kozloval, the head of finance and operation at Novo Insurance. Thank you so much, 

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Ruchi and have a wonderful day. Thank you, Nick. It's a pleasure.