August 15, 2011, 1:25 PM — Name: Scott Davidson
Age: 45
Time with company: Eight years
Education: Bachelor of Science in Finance, Florida Atlantic University; MBA, University of Miami
Company headquarters: Aliso Viejo, California
Number of countries: 63
Number of employees: 3,460
Number the CFO oversees: 300
Yearly revenue: approximately US$800 million
About the company: Quest Software develops software that helps companies manage and monitor applications such as databases, hypervisors and OSes.
The following is an edited interview with Davidson.
1. Where did you start in finance and what experiences led you to the job you have today?
I actually started as a financial analyst with an investment banking firm. And after I came out of graduate school I was recruited by the U.S. Treasury. I became a national bank examiner with a focus on trust and investment banking. I decided that it was great to travel from bank to bank but I wanted to be on the side of the table where I was making the decisions to have an impact in a particular organization. So I left Treasury and decided to join a company that was a services-based company, which today is Interactive Group. At the time it was a standalone company called Precision Response Corp. I stepped into that role as a manager of revenue, analysis and pricing. And then I had an opportunity to leave there after about a year and go to Citrix Systems. I really joined in on the finance side of the house and stepped in as the director of finance, treasury and investor relations. I did that for about four years and came to Quest and initially joined as the treasurer. I had been at Quest for four years when the CFO left. I jumped at the opportunity because I thought it was a great chance to move beyond accounting finance in a more of a specialized, narrow field into the broader CFO role.
2. Who was an influential boss for you and what lessons did they teach you about management and leadership?
The gentleman at Citrix who hired me, Jim Felcyn, he was the CFO at Citrix. That was my first real exposure to dealing with life as a public company CFO and a software company that was going through hypergrowth. Jim was very good at helping me learn how to be an influencer and when and why to influence. The other thing he had was exceptional feel and knowledge for dealing with Wall Street. He was a very good person to learn from and follow in his footsteps and sort of help guide me through that because that was all new to me. The other person who was influential was Dennis Arsinski. Dennis was the person who recruited me out of graduate school and my first real boss. Dennis was always really good at figuring out what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it by keeping this in perspective. I learned a lot about getting high performance out of very tight-knit groups and teams.
3. What are the biggest challenges facing CFOs today?
The CFO role has become much more of a strategic contributor to certain aspects of the organization. Some of the things that a CFO has to be able to do is not just understand the numbers and the analytics behind it but to be able to take that data, build information out of it and help guide decisions. At the same time, the CFO job has become more operational in terms of interacting with sales organizations or the R&D organizations and building decisions around how you invest to drive growth or extract efficiencies. It's gone from the sort of back-office role to more of a partner driving the business.
4. What is a good day at work like for you?
For me a great day at work is to be able to engage with my peers that run sales or that run some of the operational roles, or our CEO. A big part of my job is I've got to focus on getting with my team and figuring out the obstacles that are blocking them from doing their job and how I can remove them. So if I can identify those and remove them, that's a really good day for me because I know they're making progress, which means we're all making progress.
5. How would you characterize your management style?
My management style ideally is one where I like to set the bar in terms of follow by example. So from my perspective I want people to view what I do as someone who is working hard, who's trying to be a driver, an influencer, but doing that by knowing the business. My management style is I find self-motivated people who want to win, who are competitive, who are technically proficient.
6. What strengths/qualities do you look for in job candidates?
