Finance transformation: Building a sustainable sports industry

[Music]

hi i'm melissa azzapati i'm the gm of

finance at the afl my job at the afl

entails looking after the end-to-end

processes for the finance team and that

includes looking after delivering the

game each week as well as the investment

into community as well as marvel stadium

in 2018 i joined tennis australia my

objective there was firstly to learn as

much as i could but also to help

transform the team to improve their

processes and get closer to the business

and really support the growth that the

organization was going through at the

time

there were many challenges in working

through the transformation of the team

firstly the processes were so behind

obviously the business had grown so much

and the investment was absolutely in the

business and the event so my role was to

come in and set a plan and try and bring

people on that journey of change that

was one of the biggest pieces that i

really had to work hard at and to really

engage the team and build their trust

and set that vision so that they knew

where we were going and to really help

them get there

i recently joined the afl as a gem of

finance and find myself in a similar

position around considering

transformation and working with the team

to set a vision and to improve our

processes so that we can bring the team

closer to the business

really exciting collaboration across the

afl as well as the clubs and everyone is

working as a team as you would expect at

the afl it absolutely there's a lot of

passion and a lot of capability and real

engagement in in the transformation and

in the change

when delivering on finance

transformation it's so important to have

a clear plan and a clear vision

understand where we are today and where

we want to get to having that plan

clearly laid out having clear

responsibilities and roles throughout

that program is absolutely core to

setting up success

from there it's collaboration engaging

all the people that are going to be

impacted by this transformation getting

their point of view understanding their

role and what they're going to play in

delivering on the program across from

tech to finance to your executives to

all the people out in the business and

then finally transformations change

people always act differently to change

and it's understanding how this work is

going to change what they do on a

day-to-day basis

how they're going to come and do their

role in the future and what

opportunities does it mean for them and

the big piece around finance

transformation is to put the core

processes streamlined automated so that

they can focus on partnering with the

business and doing the things they

really enjoy

i really love what i do because i'm

involved in something that means

something to everybody i love it when i

get to tell people who i work for and

there's always interest and there's

always questions whether it's positive

or negative it's always interest being a

finance professional in the sporting

industry such a unique role in that you

get to be across the whole spectrum of

the business and it is a business as

much as it brings us pleasure and we

love to get out to a game it's really

important that we build an industry

that's here today and here for the

future