For Heather Dunn, simplicity is key.
Dunn manages three teams totaling 70 people in her role as senior vice president and chief financial officer of West Bend Mutual Insurance.
She has managed the streamlining, updating and building of systems that create internal efficiency and better serve West Bend’s clients, according to Kevin Steiner, president and chief executive officer of the company.
“Whether migrating the company’s budgeting and financial reporting from Microsoft Excel to a more sophisticated system adept at handling the needs of a large company like West Bend, or consolidating a vendor list from 14 to two, reducing costs and a lot of headaches, Dunn leads with vision and gets results,” Steiner said.
Dunn enrolled her billing team in an Effortless Experience program that trains employees on how to interact with customers and solve problems with confidence, and it is now being rolled out in other areas of the company.
Part of her team’s work is to proactively address potential issues before they occur to reduce the number of calls from customers experiencing problems. Thanks to Dunn’s forward thinking, her team was prepared to handle the unforeseen challenges and hard conversations resulting from the pandemic, Steiner said.
