Kathie Powers joined Riverside Research in early 2017. During her tenure, she restructured the CFO department, transformed systems, and created a more flexible department informed by meaningful business metrics.
In 2019, Powers implemented new financial, payroll and HR systems to help scale the rapidly growing business. 2020 was a year of working through the challenges that new systems bring on top of operational changes that came with moving the year-end, month-end and payroll periods, all at the same time.
If new system implementations were not enough, significant contract wins in both Riverside Research as well as its subsidiary, Applied Research Solutions, brought operational issues forward that needed to be solved.
As the entire company grew from the mid $80 million in 2017 to over $300 million in consolidated revenue at the end of 2020, both companies needed to rethink operational policies and procedures. This wasn’t just for the CFO department, but across the entire company.
Why Watch
2021 is all about putting financial tools into the hands of the technical staff so they can do their job as effectively as possible. The team is improving systems, working along with operations to understand their requirements, and keeping up with the ever-changing technology its work brings to its customers.
Through Powers’ experiences in operational finance roles and restructuring and managing through various stages of transition, she learned how to work with operations to successfully accomplish the goals of the organizations. These skills, honed over time, have provided her the tools necessary to transform the financial systems at Riverside Research.