CFO Intelligence Magazine – Fall 2024
Holly DeSantis
Konica Minolta CFO
Holly DeSantis’ journey with Ramsey, N.J.- based Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta) began in 1996 as internal auditing manager. By the time she ascended to the role of CFO in 2021, she had an insider’s view of the company. Despite that, DeSantis says she was still in for some surprises.
“I was exposed to many operations as I moved up through the organization, but some areas, like Credit and Collections (C&C), were not under my purview during that time. Upon becoming CFO, I found there were some legacy procedures hindering C&C, and there was almost no automation in the department.”
DeSantis and her team investigated and soon realized that, until then, “there had been no visibility to C&C’s productivity.” That soon changed. “We took a deep, six-month-plus dive and discovered some significant drags, including the fact that we were spending about $6 million a year in credit card fees alone. I knew that we could address that and other challenges with digital solutions, so one of the first things we did was bring back Denise Mendes, a longtime C&C employee — who had left some time ago for an IT position within the company. We hired her back with plans for a
new process improvement finance IT function, and promoted her to a newly created position: VP Credit & AR Operations. The idea was to break down the silos between IT and Finance.