Discover the Vision of Xavier Massot, SVP group Controlling and Finance Transformation at SEB
"All finance departments are faced with the increasingly rapid expiration of their strategic plans".
Against a backdrop of fast-changing business models and pressure on the ability to anticipate, the finance department is more than ever a key player in corporate agility and performance.
At SEB, this ambition is reflected in the structuring of a department dedicated to finance transformation, conceived as a lever for harmonization, management and innovation. In this interview, Xavier Massot, SVP group Controlling and Finance Transformation, shares the main thrusts of this evolution: integration of new models resulting from external growth, ongoing adaptation of steering tools, ramp-up of EPM and AI technologies, and structuring of extra-financial data with a view to sustainable performance.
His testimony is part ofa series of interviews with finance players conducted for an exclusive study carried out in collaboration with Ifop "IA, métiers, réglementations : les priorités des fonctions finance 2025-2026" for the white paper La Finance à l'horizon 2030 : pilotage et transformation technologique.
World leader in small electrical appliances, the SEB Group is undergoing strong external growth and has made significant changes to its business model. Xavier Massot, who is in charge of both Finance Transformation and Controlling, explains the implications of these changes for the Group's finance functions.
Why did Groupe SEB decide to create a department dedicated to transforming finance?
Four years ago, we decided to combine our project finance resources within a single department.
The aim was to have a central nucleus capable of designing, supporting and steering the profound changes in the Finance function across all business lines. This coordination was necessary to manage major transformation programs with pooled resources and a uniform project methodology.
Our first objective was to reduce the cost of processing accounting transactions by using moreshared services centers, centralizing them in three countries: France, Poland and Colombia. At the same time, we decided to standardize our processes and improve the quality of our accounting output. Digitization has enabled us to keep these tasks in-house, while optimizing our costs.
However, not all transformation projects are aimed at boosting productivity. In fact, some transformation projects do not generate obvious operational gains, and finance departments reluctantly accept the absence of ROI for some of them.
This is the case for compliance requirements, such as the Sapin law, which requires the implementation of comprehensive programs to prevent corruption. This type of project often consumes the resources of the legal and finance departments, with no tangible benefit for the company. Directives on electronic invoicing are also restrictive. Although their implementation makes it possible to obtain more qualified and standardized data, the gains are marginal for a group like ours, which had already anticipated the digitization of supplier invoicing.
Has the evolution of your business model also required you to transform your approach?
The SEB Group has long been focused on the sale of small electrical appliances and cookware to the general public. A long time ago, we developed our own management control tool, perfectly adapted to our needs and management philosophy, enabling extremely granular analysis of our sales and margins. However, such a system requires regular and heavy maintenance, as well as constant adaptation to changes in the business or regulatory framework.
The pace of external growth is also sustained, with significant acquisitions, particularly in the BtoB sector. This involved the integration of a service provision dimension, which is not part of the culture of a group that was previously very focused on the sale of standard products.
For a long time, all the companies we acquired were engaged in more or less similar activities, and the aim was to integrate them into our group management system as it stands. But when you acquire a company that sells kitchen pianos and professional kitchens, you enter into production patterns that are totally different from those of mass-produced household appliances, and this changes your approach to reporting and costing. We don't have an established doctrine, and we always envisage ad hoc solutions. Our aim is not to get in the way of the business, while facilitating the integration of our strong culture of profitability analysis and margin optimization.
Being able to define these prospective orientations with less structured data is a relatively recent phenomenon in corporate financial management, and is at the heart of the transformation of management control.
Are these developments also transforming the way finance makes forecasts?
The majority of finance departments are faced with the rapid obsolescence of their strategic plans and the need toconstantly adjust their forecasts, especially in the current international context. It is therefore crucial to identify current issues andinterpret information quickly, as decisions need to be taken without delay.
The impact is significant, as we have gone from long-term visions to much more frequent revisions, requiring the use of sometimes less precise data. Nonetheless, we need to establish evolutionary scenarios without seeking millimetric precision, which is illusory.
Being able to define these prospective orientations with less structured data is a relatively recent phenomenon in corporate financial management, and is at the heart of the transformation of management control. Financial managers must be able to cross-reference these external inputs with internal data to identify insights that will facilitate decision-making.
We are increasingly well prepared to meet these challenges, having acquired reflexes for cross-checking and harmonizing data. But this requires us to change the mindset of our teams, to move from precise analysis of the past to more forward-looking visions.
What are the implications for your technological choices?
This new situation poses a challenge for information systems: how can unstructured data be integrated into a global retrieval system?
We have acquired tools for more automated analyses of sales, margins or OPEX, some of which incorporate artificial intelligence. More generally, we need to make the right technical and functional choices, and determine which indicators are relevant to monitor at Group and entity level, despite the diversity of our activities and geographies.
Against this backdrop, the relationship between finance and IT is changing. For a long time, IT had the upper hand on most of the functional aspects, as the business lines were rarely mature enough to express precise technical requirements. The creation of a Finance Transformation Department has enabled us to better define business needs and give informed advice on available technical solutions. We have integrated into the team expertise in EPM technology and data models.
Many of my colleagues areformer financiers with a strong appetite for technology, able to challenge IT or data on tool choices and then co-construct.
In future, it will no longer be IT teams who specify business requirements. Editors are already talking directly to operational departments to offer highly scalable cloud tools, and these departments are increasingly able to make their own informed choices. Of course, IT will continue to play the role of arbiter and architect, to avoid the superimposition of solutions that would confuse or incoherent the application landscape, and lead to cost inflation.
The cloud enables us to benefit from updates and innovations in software publishers' solutions. These increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence.
Is your technology roadmap entirely cloud-based?
For the acquisition of new reporting tools, for the most part, but not necessarily for our ERP which supports our accounting.
The cloud enables us to benefit from updates and innovations in software publishers' solutions. These solutions are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence, without our having to do so directly.
The choice also depends on the volume of data and the invoicing terms: cloud solutions do not weigh in the same way on our income statement as those developed for our in-house infrastructures, which after a few years have a residual cost of almost zero.
The responsibility of a transformation department is also to measure the return on investment and arbitrate between business needs and the costs entailed by changes.
Groupe SEB has strong ambitions in terms of sustainability. What impact does this strategy have on the finance department?
First of all, there is the level of regulatory compliance, particularly around CSRD, which requires the mobilization of significant resources from the Finance department. In particular, the Financial Transformation department has developed a model for analyzing our carbon footprint that is quite similar to the model used to analyze variations in our operating margin.
The real change is that we are now faced with a much wider field of data and indicators, which we are helping to structure and industrialize.
The next step will be to integrate some of these indicators into the company's management system, such as the carbon footprint, the rate of use of recycled materials or the rate of repair of our products. This will mean measuring our company's performance from a new, complementary angle. This will enable us to manage our business proactively, going beyond the simple production of regulatory information.
Would you like to discover new testimonials? Find out about the other exclusive interviews conducted as part of the study "AI, businesses, regulations: priorities for finance functions 2025-2026".
