At SuiteWorld 2023 in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of interviewing Xenia Tovchykh, Head of Global Accounting Operations at Mozilla Corporation. During our conversation, Xenia gave us an inside look at accounting and finance at the maker of the popular Firefox web browser.
Some key topics we covered included Mozilla's recent NetSuite implementation, how the company has embraced remote work, and the global accounting talent shortage challenges. With team members located everywhere, from San Francisco to India, Xenia has a unique perspective on leading a distributed global accounting team.
Read on to learn more about Mozilla's business model, their rapid 5-month NetSuite rollout, and Xenia's insights on retaining accounting talent in today's tight job market.
How Mozilla Makes Money
While Mozilla is best known for its Firefox web browser, the company has diversified its business model over the past 25 years.
Mozilla earns revenue through partnerships with search engines like Google. When users search within Firefox, Mozilla receives a percentage of search ad revenue. Mozilla has also launched subscription services, including its VPN and Pocket reading app. The company acquired Pocket back in 2017.
Between the growth of Firefox and its newer subscription products, Mozilla has seen rapid employee growth in recent years. According to Xenia, Mozilla had around 200 employees when she joined four years ago. By the time COVID hit, the headcount had ballooned to over 1,000 people.
A Remote Team Spanning the Globe
Like many tech companies, Mozilla has embraced remote work for its global workforce. But as Xenia explains, they were remote-first even before the pandemic.
Xenia manages an accounting team that spans multiple continents and time zones. While she is currently based in the Canary Islands, her team includes members in Berlin, San Francisco, the East Coast of the US, and India.
Xenia herself was born in Ukraine before moving to Spain. She spent eight years living in Berlin while working for Mozilla before recently moving to the Canary Islands, where her husband is from. She joked that no one in her diverse family was born in the same place!
This global distribution allows Mozilla to operate around the clock. Xenia leverages the offshore team in India to handle more routine accounting tasks. This frees her up to focus on more strategic initiatives and retaining top talent.
Navigating the Talent Shortage
Like many accounting leaders, Xenia has struggled to recruit qualified candidates despite Mozilla's strong employer brand. The global shortage of accounting talent has made it challenging despite offering competitive pay and an engaging workplace.
To help offset the talent crunch, Xenia has focused on retaining the team she does have. This means providing career growth opportunities and assigning them more meaningful work. Offloading the high-volume repetitive tasks to the India BPO team gives her onshore accountants capacity for value-added analysis.
Xenia also brought in a US-based recruiter specifically for accounting roles. Having the recruiter onsite in Germany helped convey Mozilla's unique culture and values better than a third-party agency could. Through these efforts, Xenia has maintained a lean but skilled accounting team.
Implementing NetSuite in Just 5 Months
Before Xenia's arrival, Mozilla used another cloud ERP for its accounting and finance needs. However, as the company grew, they found it was not scalable enough to provide the visibility and transparency they needed.
Xenia led the charge to implement NetSuite, even without previous experience with the platform. She relied on NetSuite's professional services team to augment her small but mighty internal implementation crew. Together, they were able to go live on NetSuite in just five months.
The accelerated timeline was achieved because Xenia and her team stayed laser-focused on the core financials and revenue recognition modules. They didn't try to boil the ocean. This approach allowed them to realize value quickly from NetSuite.
Key Takeaways for Accounting Leaders
Our wide-ranging conversation with Xenia Tovchykh underscored some critical challenges accounting leaders face today. Here are some key takeaways from our podcast episode:
Mozilla relied on NetSuite consultants to accelerate their 5-month implementation timeline. Focusing on core modules allowed them to get up and running quickly.
Mozilla built a global accounting team by embracing remote work and centralized offshore BPO resources early on. This allowed them to scale while keeping headcount lean.
Finding accounting talent remains challenging, even for well-known tech companies like Mozilla. Creative recruiting and retention tactics are essential.
Listen to the full podcast episode for more of Xenia's insights on accounting best practices: https://earmarkontheroad.transistor.fm/episodes/suiteworld-2-the-art-of-accounting-at-mozilla-with-xenia-tovchykh
