Agile Businesses: Alex Jenner Of Dext On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Start small. Don’t change everything all at once — start with a part of your business that’s not mission-critical or a smaller client base.
As part of my series about the “How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Jenner.
Alex Jenner is Head of Partner Success, Dext.
A driven and goal-oriented sales professional, Alex has a passion for building within the tech ecosystem, with experience in the marketplace, startups and B2B. She specializes in sales execution, strategy, training, management and mentorship.
Alex is a graduate of Brock University in Ontario.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I have always been a “people person” growing up, playing sports, working in restaurants and sales while studying at University.
I started my career in the Tech B2B sales space with a restaurant industry role in global expansion. I focused on leveraging tech and tools to help restaurants. And now, at Dext, I help accountants and bookkeepers grow and be more efficient.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you started? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
In University, I worked in the lawn care space. In the morning, I would get dropped off in a subdivision and given a 150-pound aerator, a tool that pokes holes in lawns. My job was to go door to door, asking if people wanted their lawn aerated.
One day it was pouring rain, and I decided “not today” and sat all day at a Tim Hortons and didn’t push the aerator. I had to pay my employer $10 for the day for a rental fee.
I learned that the path is not always going to be perfect. The environment won’t be easy, but you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t persevere or work within the challenges to move forward.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Several people have shaped who I am today and helped me through my career. My former boss, Jenn, was the most significant influence as she helped me find my voice as a woman in the Tech space and business. She taught me the importance of what we do, the ‘why’ from a coaching perspective and a value perspective for our customers.
I have become a better manager and coach from working with Jenn. She has had a huge impact on both my personal and professional development.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision and purpose?
When Dext started, when it was formally known as ReceiptBank, it began from a simple problem of handing receipts. Our founder, Michael Wood, was having trouble getting his receipts organized. It’s really as simple as that. We started with basically offering clients a mail-in service, and we offered them the miraculous turnaround time of 72 hours by digitizing their receipts into an organized spreadsheet.
Literally, from Day One, we focused on supplying these services to accountants. Since then, we’ve basically been a pioneer in trying to increasingly simplify and automate bookkeeping workflows to make them more productive, profitable and powerful with better data and insight.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you tell our readers a bit about what your business does? How do you help people?
Every business is compelled by law to keep books and therefore do bookkeeping. Dext’s aim is to make the process much, much more efficient by making accountants and bookkeepers and the businesses they advise more productive, profitable and powerful with better data and insight.
Dext has automated elements of bookkeeping for the best accountants and bookkeepers around the world. Our business requires us to look at every element of the bookkeeping process and provide the right tools to make it more efficient for our clients and partners.
Which technological innovation has encroached or disrupted your industry? Can you explain why this has been disruptive?
Looking at the accounting and bookkeeping industry, the digitization of receipts has immensely changed my sector. Being able to submit scanned receipts has helped us push towards our clients adopting Cloud technology.
COVID-19 was both a disruptor and an innovator for our industry, pushing for the digitization of receipts.
What did you do to pivot as a result of this disruption?
For our company, we brought on more products like Dext Commerce during COVID-19. As many of our clients moved online and are now selling with many different platforms (i.e. Shopify, eBay and Walmart), we had a greater need to provide products that could help accountants and bookkeepers support those small businesses working on multiple e-commerce platforms.
Was there a specific “Aha moment” that gave you the idea to start this new path? If yes, we’d love to hear the story.
There hasn’t been a specific moment where we decided we should start this path. We’ve been tracking Greenback, that we now call Dext Commerce, for some time. It’s recognized as having the most accountant- and bookkeeper-friendly product in the industry for getting sales data from e-commerce platforms.
Dext Prepare already has a “fetch” facility to gather billing data from utilities and telecoms providers, but the difference with Dext Commerce is that it collects digital revenue information.
Dext Commerce is about the revenue side of business. We’ve seen really fast growth in the area of e-commerce through the COVID pandemic, and it was a huge opportunity for accountants and bookkeepers to grow their practices by serving clients and taking on new ones who sell through these platforms.
So, how are things going with this new direction?
They are going well, we are now a more robust tool and have moved from a one-note product to a Swiss Army knife.
Client story or anecdotal story to share?
Robin Greatorex Miller has been a bookkeeper for three decades, with her own small business for nearly twenty years. As a trusted advisor, her clients rely on her to manage everyday essential bookkeeping activities so they can focus on building their own businesses.
As soon as she saw it, Robin recognized Dext Commerce as a game-changer, seeing how it could help one of her clients with a growing problem. The business, Karu Distillery, took the initiative to create new products and find new ways to sell them during the pandemic. As a result, they received sales data from a growing number of platforms, including their website, the bank, Square, PayPal and Shopify. Deciphering the information, checking and updating it was becoming time-consuming. It had the potential for costly inaccuracies to creep in.
Using Dext Commerce saves Robin between two to three hours per tranche of transactions. Dext Commerce receives the input from e-commerce and payment providers (e.g. Amazon, Square, etc) and brings them into one common format and then automates checking and uploading data to Xero. In the “beautiful Dext Commerce interface”, as Robin describes it, she sorts, selects, checks and allocates
all the sales transactions.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during a disruptive period?
First and foremost, the most critical role of a leader during this time is agility and investing in the right tools. These will help steer the course and keep the team afloat.
Something that I have learned through COVID-19 is that we are all human. And that your people are the most important elements of your business.
We need to ensure that we are still providing exceptional value to our customers. When you look at the accounting space, you are not alone as you have a trusted advisor to point you in the right direction for your business.
If we’ve learned anything, small business owners go into business by building a business and not working on spreadsheets.
What is the best way to boost morale when the future seems so uncertain? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
The most critical role of a leader or a small business owner is to be confident in what they are selling. Their confidence can come from accounting and bookkeepers when they understand the numbers.
Confidence is also a key leadership quality. If you are a decisive person with the data, credentials and results to back it up, you will be better positioned to serve your clients.
In a general sense, you’ll also be able to attract and retain a quality team because they will trust you and feel you have matters under control. You will naturally exude confidence if you know your subject and stance, believe in yourself and speak with poise and conviction. On the flipside, uncertainty begets uncertainty. If you doubt yourself, so will others.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Give the leader a sounding board to help them be successful. If your accountant or bookkeeper is bogged down with administrative tasks, they can’t support the leader.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make when faced with disruptive technology? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Most businesses are not comfortable with disruptive technology as these innovations do not satisfy their current clients. They only focus on the demands of the mainstream customers. If the customer wants better products, they’ll keep evolving the products instead of venturing into new products that are disruptive. Hence, these companies are ‘held captive’ by their most profitable clients, restricting them from pursuing disruptions.
In addition, leaders make the mistake of focusing on too many things at one time to deal with disruptive technologies which leads to unclear objectives, unfamiliar scope, ineffective communication and poor management skills.
Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to pivot and stay relevant in the face of disruptive technologies? Please share a story or an example for each.
Technology companies live or die by making customers successful. To help leaders bridge through that disruption is tough. Provide confidence by demonstrating that as a technology partner, you are wholly vested in the success of your clients.
Your customers are moving this way.
Start small. Don’t change everything all at once — start with a part of your business that’s not mission-critical or a smaller client base.
Engage your staff and teams.
Ask customers what their expectations are and work together to achieve and exceed them.
Can you please give us your favourite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Nelson Mandela has a quote that resonates with me.
“The greatest glory in living is not falling, but rising every time we fall.”
Growing up as a young girl, I understood that there are challenges that I will face, especially as a woman.
And in my career, there will be a lot of setbacks. My voice should always be heard, that I will make mistakes and that I don’t have to be perfect because I am a woman in leadership.
If there is one thing that should be learned, we are going to face adversity. The one skill to have is understanding and overcoming and not letting it wear you down.
How can our readers further follow your work?
Readers can follow our Dext blog here: link.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Agile Businesses: Alex Jenner Of Dext On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
