How EdgeConneX is spreading accounting talent across the business

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In the rapidly expanding data center construction and operation business, EdgeConneX and its finance team have played a pivotal role in its growth.

EdgeConneX’s CFO Joe Harar has been at the helm of its finance operations for over 11 years, but a recent career change for the company’s former chief accounting officer Jenny Zhan — who has worked with Harar for her entire tenure with the company — provides a real-life example of how spreading financial talent across the business, an initiative that many CFOs have been working towards, can be beneficial. Now the chief transformation officer, Zhan’s job is to lead the company through all digital transformation efforts.

The job

With the role of data being crucial both internally and externally at the organization, Zhan said her recent job change is largely due to the need to provide finance-inspired guidance around data usage.

With change and growth happening so fast in her industry, she also said she believes her background in finance and accounting can help provide a grounded baseline from an analysis perspective that can then translate into things like product development and strategic decision-making.

“The reason the company is having me take this role is because what made us successful today is not going to necessarily work in the same sense tomorrow,” said Zhan. “When it comes to technology implementation and transformation in fast growing businesses, we need to be able to analyze moving pieces of information, react to those changes and stay ahead of the market.”

Zhan said the role is slightly similar to what she was doing from a skillset perspective, but the value she can provide is more visibly impactful. “Though transformation is based in numbers and analysis, it’s also about being a good communicator and negotiator with colleagues across key organizational pillars that also influence to drive change,” she said. “My goal is to make sure we are armed with the right business intelligence.”

The work

Zhan said the work now is about putting in diligence in research and development, listening to customer demands and aligning the parts of the company needed to help develop and launch successful projects at this scale. Though the work has similarities to accounting, this is a bit more communication-centric.

Among a few other parts of the job that come with the onboarding process, one of Zhan’s main focuses right now is developing an end-to-end construction and real estate management platform. This project is creating a type of enterprise software designed to manage the entire lifecycle of real estate development projects, a core component of EdgeConneX’s business, from site selection through to construction, engineering, market enablement and ongoing support.