Interview with Laurence Tracol - CFO of Skyscanner

Deloitte: The pandemic is hopefully subsiding, but the new way of working is still being discussed. What is the new normal at Skyscanner and where do you see the benefits of that?

Laurence Tracol: We’ve come back to the office roughly two days a week, but with heaps of flexibility. That’s something that’s really important to me, for myself and for my team. Flexibility has always been essential in helping me find a form of balance in work and life, in ensuring I make time for myself, family and my career. I want my team to have a balance too – it's key to a healthy, productive finance function.

We came to this two-day decision in a manner typical of how we work at Skyscanner, looking at data from surveys, workshops and focus groups and using this to create a set of principles to move forward with. Our core principles are centred around the importance of personal connections, collaboration and development, but with a lens of pliancy and inclusivity. We’ve also redesigned our offices to accommodate this hybrid way of working, including greater collaboration spaces to really help maximise time in the office with colleagues.

I see significant benefits in this: firstly, office time is now geared toward face-to-face meetings and building connections, fostering innovation and driving decisions. I know I speak for many people in the business when I say this is often a very simple way of breaking up a week: my time in the office is very people focussed, spending time with larger groups, my time at home typically involves ‘deep work’ and one to one conversations.

More widely, I believe offering this sort of flexibility and tailoring to individual circumstance, we’re better placed to be a business where everyone feels they can belong, and everyone can thrive. That’s a key talent attraction piece, as we want our business make-up to reflect the wide and varied audience of travellers who we serve.

Deloitte: In your opinion, how will a changing working culture drive the future of the finance function?

Laurence Tracol: Skyscanner was always the kind of place where people could work from home when they needed to, prior to the pandemic, but the formalisation of this has meant we’ve had to ensure finance processes are as straight forward and accessible as possible, from anywhere colleagues are located. Increasing an almost self-serve approach means finance teams like ours can better focus on truly supporting the business and driving great outcomes across our key markets and verticals.

We’ve also increased the regularity of our financial updates to the business as a whole over Zoom, and in person. Importantly, we’ve upped our game when it comes to celebrating financial milestones and successes as the travel industry starts to move from pandemic recovery to flourishing in this new world. From my perspective, it’s vital that not just the finance team, but everyone across a business understands our financial trajectory, how they can contribute to our collective business performance and help build a long-lasting and thriving travel tech company.

Related, to this, finance functions have so much opportunity in the changing working culture to positively contribute to empowerment of their colleagues and peers. From my perspective, I’ve recently become the sponsor for a company-wide financial literacy project for women in the business seeking to better understand investing and financial planning. As well as formal and informal mentoring, I’ve also had the opportunity to speak internally about my experiences as a woman in an often-male dominated industry, and how I’ve dealt with this, imposter syndrome, knowing my worth and climbing the career ladder.

With all of these, I’ve been able to connect with not just the people who sit directly around me, but with colleagues in Singapore to colleagues in Edinburgh and our offices in between. Indeed, I believe the changing working culture we’re seeing happen across many countries will be democratising in many ways: finance functions will need to be more transparent, less HQ focussed. Greater flexibility means those with caring responsibilities can manage their work around, say, school pick-ups: I myself know I benefit from the flexibility to fit exercise into my working day. I'm hopeful we’ll see a more diverse sector as a result of some of these, and other, changes.

Deloitte: Being a tech company, in what ways and to which effect do you employ the expertise and technology Skyscanner has within the finance function?

Laurence Tracol: I’ve been working in tech for a large part of my career and the finance function in a tech company has certain unique traits. Data and analysis are of course key for financial planning and modelling at any business – looking at how the company is performing and ensuring we’re building a strong business strategy for long-term growth. But in a tech company, you can do more with that data. For example, we’ve just been through a very unpredictable period in the travel industry; during the early stages of the pandemic particularly, travel was all but brought to a standstill. But our data allowed us to see and understand forward-looking intent, monitoring where travellers were looking to go and when they were converting that interest into bookings. This level of robust insight was instrumental in shaping our response to the complexities that were impacting our sector. It meant we weren’t having to rely on third-party predictions or market analysis – we could actually see real-time traveller intent in our own data. It helps too that, unlike in many businesses, our large internal data and analytics function at Skyscanner sits as part of the wider finance org – this function really supports the business in driving great outcomes. As such, we’ve built the wider finance team at Skyscanner in a way that allows us to monitor different parts of the business and leverage our data and insights to constantly improve, shape and refine our business decisions and plans. Going forward, we’re also working on a large-scale business system and process transformation project, meaning our approach will be even sleeker, accessible from anywhere across our global offices and highly efficient. In turn, we’ll have an even greater opportunity for further transformation in the way we work and the data we gather.

Deloitte: Resilience, resurgence, recovery are key for the travel industry at the moment. What part is the finance function playing here?

Laurence Tracol: There is no way around it – travel was hit hard by the pandemic. But the beautiful thing about the travel industry is its resilience. Personally, I love travelling and I’ve spent a lot of my own life exploring the world. I’m from France originally, but both of my children were born in California where I lived for over a decade and now our family home is back in Europe. I feel very lucky to work in a sector that means so much to me, and even more so now that we are able to get back out into the world again. We’re fortunate in that Skyscanner enjoyed a prime place in the world of travel already which meant we were in a strong position when Covid-19 first hit. We knew we were uniquely placed to help the world return to travel giving us confidence about Skyscanner’s recovery in the long-term. Despite that, we still had to overcome challenges and make strategic decisions. The finance team played, and continues to play, a significant role in ensuring we do just that. We have executives who partner with all aspects of the business and use data analytics to identify opportunities, set targets and drive the company to make smart, data-led decisions.